Share my passion for all things gardening!
As you’ve probably discovered, I’m VERY into starting my own plants from seeds! In my opinion, being successful at it requires a decent grow light set-up. It’s true that you can put your flats of seeds in a sunny window, there are two problems with this. First, seedlings need about 16 hours of light daily. That’s not feasible since our […]
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Happy Spring, everyone! Are you familiar with anthocyanins or am I making you scratch your head? They are pigments that give purple, red and blue hues to different species or varieties of plants — whether it’s in their leaves or flowers. And they’re very healthful, although scientists haven’t completely figured that part out just yet! It just so happens that […]
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When planting vegetable seeds, there are some that should be sown directly into the garden and others that do better when started indoors first. But which is which? In my column in today’s edition of The Spokesman-Review, I take the mystery out of sowing seeds and am hoping you’ll find it really helpful. Here is a link to it: Different […]
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Early last fall, I decided to take the plunge and learn how to overwinter Canna lily bulbs. I’d never done it before but am crazy about Cannas and hate tossing them in the compost pile once the frosts hit. It turns out, it’s not all that hard. Here’s a video I filmed on the initial process: I stored the Canna […]
Read moreDo you enjoy starting your own plants from seed as much as I do? You’ll be excited to hear about a wonderful new seed-starting kit. It’s the GrowEase Seed-Starter kit from Gardener’s Supply. Here’s a short video on the kit’s features:Why do I like this seed-starting kit so much? Here are close-ups of the various components: This is the water […]
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If you live in the Inland Northwest, you know that we had a horrific windstorm on Nov. 17, 2015. There were peak wind gusts of 71 mph, four people lost their lives, there were power outages everywhere, and an incredible amount of damage left in its wake. Now that spring is nearly here, homeowners are working on cleaning up the […]
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Now that we’re into the month of March, this seems like the perfect time to do a wrap-up on growing vegetables through the winter. This was my 3rd winter of attempting to grow salad greens through our chilly zone 4b/5a winters and I’m happy to report it was my best ever! Hooray! As a quick recap, my husband and I […]
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The soil in our gardens is one of the most easily overlooked components. But it’s so very important to the success of our gardens. We tend to take it for granted and just assume all is well with it. That’s not necessarily the case! On the flip side, sometimes we do a bit too much to our soil. This can […]
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If you live in a northern climate, I hope you haven’t planted your tomatoes from seed yet! Yes, it’s easy to get excited but it’s still too early. I used to start my tomato seeds indoors in early February. I figured the plants need to be large and robust before planting them out into the garden in mid-May. I quickly […]
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Well, today’s an exciting day: my first column of the 2016 garden season runs in The Spokesman-Review! Here is a link to it online: Getting grounded. (You can also read my column below.) I know you like to be on top of the latest garden news, right? The topic is cool and exciting new vegetable varieties. I only had room to […]
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