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Well, today is a happy day! My garden columns are starting up for the season. They run every Sunday in the “Today” section of The Spokesman-Review until early October. Today’s column is primarily a season intro, where I discuss why it’s so important to grow your own food and what I’m growing this year. Here’s a link to it: Gardening brings […]
Read moreIt can be easy for gardeners to get into a routine of planting the same old vegetable varieties year after year. We all have our favorites, right? Just when we vegetable gardeners thought we had it all figured out, here comes Niki Jabbour. She takes us out of our comfort zone with her latest book, Veggie Garden Remix (Storey Publishing, […]
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Do deer drive you insane? It seems like they are a huge problem in so many areas of the country. As a result, I get a lot of questions about how to keep them out of the garden. While visiting a friend late last summer, I saw how she is dealing with deer — easily and successfully. And you need […]
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Our winter has been unseasonably mild for the most part. In December, we did have a spell of some very cold temperatures. I was sure it wiped out my lettuce crop in the hoop house. Well, surprise surprise! It’s back so it’s time for a winter garden update. I was certain the lettuce plants were toast. They certainly looked like […]
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I recently wrote about using “vernalization” for starting artichoke seeds. There are two other seed-starting terms that you might find both interesting and useful. Those are stratification and scarification and they apply to the seeds of different plants. I thought it might be helpful to define and elaborate on all three terms here. That way, so everything is together in […]
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For the past couple of years, I have been growing microgreens. Why? They supply us with fresh salad greens during the winter months. I’ve had quite a few readers asking me how to grow microgreens. I decided to shoot a video on the entire process. But first, what are microgreens? Growing them involves thickly sowing seeds that will be later […]
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Do you grow artichokes in your garden? I’ve been growing them for quite a few years now and have noticed that the plants can vary widely in productivity. Here in Spokane, Wash., which is in USDA zones 5 and 6, artichokes need to be grown as annuals. Each year, I start the seeds indoors around the first of March. I […]
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Did you grow a fair amount of garlic last year? Are you wondering how you’ll use it up before it becomes bitter? Well, here’s a simple way to preserve garlic for future use. When garlic is put into storage, the cloves eventually develop a sprout in the center, which can be quite bitter. One solution is to trim it out […]
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Have you ever noticed how we humans tend to focus on the things we have done wrong? Yet we neglect than all of the things we’ve done right? Well, we gardeners are no exception. We often fixate on our “failures” rather than learning from them, which ultimately leads to success in our gardens. As a garden writer, I often hear […]
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Last year, while looking through a seed catalog, I saw a listing for something called “solar mulch.” Hmm, what’s that, I wondered? I learned that solar mulch is a green plastic sheeting that will do two important things for a vegetable grower like myself: If you like growing warm-season crops such as melons, cucumbers, eggplants, tomatoes and peppers, it’s important […]
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