Share my passion for all things gardening!
I wanted to do a follow-up to my July 13 post (“Keeping the birds out of the cherries“) so you’d know how things are going. You’ll recall I recently purchased some 2”-wide holographic bird scare ribbon in an attempt to keep birds away from the ripening cherries. Well, it has worked great! While it hasn’t completely kept the robins out of the […]
Read moreDon’t you just love fresh cherries this time of year? I’m crazy about them but, unfortunately, so are the robins, magpies, starlings and sparrows. We have 5 cherry trees and it’s a battle to get any amount of fruit off of them. A couple of years ago, we tried an experiment of covering the trees with huge sheets of floating […]
Read moreCalibrachoa ‘Watermelon’ Here is a link to my column in today’s edition of The Spokesman-Review: For pots with impact, go for thrill, fill and spill. As you can probably guess by the headline, it’s about some of the most wonderful annuals to use in creating containers for your garden and living spaces. Even though I have a huge garden, I […]
Read moreHappy Easter! Here is a link to my column in today’s edition of The Spokesman-Review: With proper care, winter squash thrive. It’s all about growing winter squash and pumpkins. (you can also read my column below) Last year, I really got ours off to a great start by starting them early indoors. Then I covered the soil in their bed […]
Read morePhoto #1: Getting ready to swap out the old T Tape for Aqua Traxx Last year, my husband and I installed a new irrigation system on our raised beds. We’ve used soaker hoses on each bed for years but they frequently clogged with minerals, which reduced the amount of water coming out of them. We felt it was time to […]
Read morePhoto #1: drip irrigation Continuing our discussion (see previous post) of the new drip tape system we recently installed in our garden, I wanted to show you what we did on one of our 3′ x 8′ raised beds. Photo #1 shows the supplies we needed: 1/2″ tubing to make the manifold, 1/2″ figure-8 ends to seal off each end […]
Read moreThis young Chickadee mugged for the camera in my garden last summer. Here is a link to my column in today’s edition of The Spokesman-Review: Bringing in the birds. It’s about one of my favorite subjects, which is attracting birds to the garden. If you regularly follow this blog and/or my Facebook page, you know that I’m an avid birdwatcher. […]
Read moreFear not: those wimpy seedlings will grow into these big leeks! (Note: I think this post needs a subtitle of “How to torture your leeks” because that’s what I’m going to tell you how to do!) If you are growing leeks for the first time this year, congratulations! I’ve grown them off and on for years and just love their […]
Read moreI wrote about growing onions in my Sunday column but wanted to give you a bit more information about how you would plant onion starts. I planted mine today. This is probably the earliest I’ve ever gotten any type of onions in the ground! They are a cool-season crop so I haven’t jumped the gun in that regard. Also, they […]
Read moreNow that spring is officially here, there are plenty of gardening clean-up activities to take care of. Many can wait a bit but one of the most important things is to get our trees ready for the new season. And since deciduous trees don’t have any leaves on them yet, it’s a perfect time to prune because you can really […]
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