Planning to Save Your Seeds

Gardening involves a lot of planning. In fact, planning before you plant can save you many hours, if not days of backbreaking digging and hauling. It can also save you money. Good garden design and good planning that connects what you eat and what you plant will let you move those veggies seamlessly into some delicious kitchen goodies. If you’re a great planner, you’ll want to plan for next year’s garden as well. Yes, I’m talking about 2014. 2014? Yes. The vegetables that you plant this year can form the foundation for next year’s garden, but you need to plan … Continue reading →

Growing Greens In the Winter

After the rush of holiday eating, you may feel a deep-seated urge to go and eat something green. I know I do! But if you’re on a budget or want super local, fresh-picked greens in the middle of the winter, that’s impossible, right? Not quite. Here are a few ideas to keep you in the greens this winter. Sprouting This fall, I’ve enjoyed sprouting my own goodies for salads. For many years, I tried to sprout, only to be rewarded with mucky, mildewy, not-at-all-edible sprouts. Yes, I washed them according to all of the schedules, but they just didn’t work. … Continue reading →

Storing Garden Seeds for the Winter

If you’re a gardener, you likely have a stash of seeds. If you’re anything like me, these seeds vary from nice, neat and labeled packages gleaned from stores and friends to roughly-made envelopes with penciled names on them. Whether the seeds are gleaned from your own garden plants or from the garden store, you’ll want to keep them safe this winter so that you can plant them in the spring. Label your seeds so that you know what you have and where it came from. If you have more details about planting and growing that plant, add notes to your … Continue reading →

Indoor Plants That Survive Anything

My home has a talent for killing plants. It’s not that I’m a bad gardener. Outside, with decent lighting conditions and water, I can grow plants with the best of them. I love gardening, and I’m all right at figuring out what plants need. What my house is lacking is light. I live in the dark Pacific Northwest, in a house that doesn’t often get full light, even though it’s not really shady. This is tricky and deceptive. To a human, the house looks good. Plants give it the thumbs down. Or the leaves down, more likely. What can you … Continue reading →

The Sprout Bag

I’m on a mission. This winter, I will grow salad. Now, winter is a terrible time to grow salad. That’s why I’m doing it. I like a challenge, what can I say? Since I’m in a relatively temperate climate, it doesn’t generally drop far below freezing. That means that I can grow greens outdoors throughout the winter. This is good for the kale and chard in the garden, little hardy greens that grow well in a slightly sheltered area or just out in the garden under a very thin layer of snow. However, since my garden space is somewhat limited, … Continue reading →

Detoxing Your Home

Did you know that a recent study examining infant cord blood found it to contain more than 300 different chemicals? These are chemicals that are not naturally occurring in the body. Instead, they were chemicals and toxins taken in from the mothers’ environment or consumed through food. Many of the chemicals that we come in contact with every day, through touch, breathing or eating are toxic, known to contribute to diseases from asthma to cancer. While we can’t eliminate entirely the toxins in our modern lives, we can make sure that are homes, the place in which we spend the … Continue reading →

Growing Raspberries in Your Garden

Raspberries: these sweet, tart little nuggets are one of the best things about summer. Put them onto cereal or eat them straight off the raspberry bush. Yum! H ow do you grow raspberries? It’s quite easy to grow raspberries from the various potted varieties in the nursery. If a friend has a raspberry bush, ask if she has any smaller plants popping up in the gardens. I see baby plants in my garden frequently, and they turn into new bushes to give to friends or to plant elsewhere in the garden. Plant raspberries in a dry, sunny spot in the … Continue reading →

Deck Salad

Last night we ate deck salad. We ate some the night before, too. It’s rather good, this deck salad, even though its name brings to mind sweaty folks cleaning off the deck of a ship. This is my latest experiment in small-space gardening, and it’s working beautifully, probably due to our very cool and wet spring. The salad is growing on our deck in three planter boxes that I placed there last summer. If you have a small space, you can grow a garden too. It’s very simple! What could you grow? A tomato plant or two, a tiny apple … Continue reading →

When Should You Transplant Vegetable Starts?

When should we move our tender tomatoes and growing squash outdoors? This is the burning question in our house. When you’re living in a cooler and much wetter climate than most, when should you move your vegetable starts outside? How about when you live in a climate that’s just really cold until June? Or one that is hot, hot, hot come April? Here’s a quick guide to what you should be doing with your vegetable starts. First, let’s talk a little bit about why you start vegetables indoors. The majority of our vegetables are not well-suited to the exact climates … Continue reading →

Wall to Wall: Growing Food Indoors

I recently started following someone on Twitter who gardens in her bathroom. Vertically. All jokes about the availability of fertilizer aside, this is a good place to garden. After all, it’s warm and it’s damp, probably once a day at least. If you replace some of your bathroom lighting with a grow light, you’d have the perfect tropical conditions – that is, until you open your window! Now, I don’t garden in my bathroom, although I’m now feeling somewhat inspired to do so. Between the towel racks and the toothbrushes, there just doesn’t seem to be that much space. However, … Continue reading →