Successful gardeners know that healthy soil translates to healthy plants. See the guide to soils and fertilizers for the home gardener from WSU Cooperative Extension.
Archives: Garden Tips
Gardening tips and suggestions.
Garden Tip #149
If your cucumbers or broccoli have started turning yellow they are probably over ripe, and should be sent straight to the compost pile. To find out exactly when your home grown fruits and vegetables are at their peak check out these two detailed harvesting guides:
Picking Fruits and Vegetables by WSU
When to Harvest Vegetables by Georgia Extension
Garden Tip #24
Web resources for edible flowers:
Garden Tip #107
While vegetable gardeners are inundated with zucchinis and other summer produce it can be hard to imagine the winter garden. But July is the time to plant seeds for fall and winter crops of cabbage, Asian greens, collard greens, spinach and lettuce. Transplants should go in the ground in mid August. Perennial and biennial flowers can also be started from seed right now. For an excellent list of what plants to sow throughout the year check out The Maritime Northwest Garden Guide produced by Seattle Tilth. It is available for $22.00, including tax and shipping. Call 633-0451 or order a copy online.
Garden Tip #189
The Washington State Department of Ecology has many publications to assist homeowners and others interested in learning about Washington state environmental regulations and resources. Of particular interest are the free publications on protecting slopes, bluffs and hillsides from erosion. All are available for downloading from the Department of Ecology’s publications web page.
Garden Tip #23
Here is a short list of good books for both the arm-chair kitchen gardener and for those who like to get their hands dirty:
- The New Kitchen Garden by Anna Pavord (Dorling Kindersley, $29.95) has lots of photos and diagrams with well organized, concise text.
- Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini: The Essential Reference by Elizabeth Schneider (William Morrow, $60.00) has “500 recipes and 275 photographs” focusing on the history of vegetables and how to use them in the kitchen. It has no growing information, however.
- The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping by Rosalind Creasy (Sierra Club Books, $25.00) introduces the idea of planting fruits and vegetables all around the garden.
- Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally by Robert Kourik (Metamorphic Press, available used online and at the Miller Library) is a classic resource thick with practical details on everything from energy-conserving landscaping and soil preparation to drip irrigation for fruit trees.
- How to Grow More Vegetables: And Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains and Other Crops Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine by John Jeavons (Ten Speed Press, $17.95) is an old classic which has just been revised and reissued.
- The Cook and the Gardener: a Year of Recipes and Writings from the French Country-side by Amanda Hesser (W.W. Norton, $32.50) is a delightful book divided into seasons with diary-like entries about living, gardening and cooking on a French farm.
Garden Tip #108
Keep harvesting all those beans, zucchini, cucumbers and other summer vegetables to keep the production going. Any fruit left to mature on the plant will cause flowering to slow and reduce the harvest. If you can’t keep up with your bean plants why not try pickling? Here are some Web resources that give explicit safety instructions and recipes:
Garden Tip #17
Ready to trade in that thirsty boring lawn for a wildflower meadow? Do a bit of research first with British gardener Christopher Lloyd’s book called Meadows (Timber Press, $29.95). Lloyd dispels the myth of a maintenance-free meadow without dampening the reader’s enthusiasm for creating a flowery, drought-tolerant lawn alternative.
Additional wildflower information is available online:
Garden Tip #50
A book by Jekka McVicar called Seeds: the ultimate guide to growing successfully from seed (Lyons Press, 2003, $22.95) will help you turn your seedy hopes into plant reality. Thirteen chapters are divided by types of plant including ferns, grasses, shrubs, perennials and herbs. The practical information that applies to all kinds of seeds, such as what type of soil to use, and how to break seed dormancy, is included in the last chapter. Color photos illustrate throughout.
For online tips for seed starting go to:
http://cru.cahe.wsu.edu/CEPublications/pnw0170/pnw0170.pdf from Oregon State University.
Garden Tip #139
Eradicating blackberry vines may seem hopeless, especially if you don’t want
to use chemicals, but don’t give up just yet. The Northwest Center for
Alternatives to Pesticides advises gardeners to cut off the top growth, dig
out the main root-ball, and then follow-up by mowing all new growth.
Planting desirable plants to shade out the sun loving blackberries is also
critical. Read the NCAP’s blackberry management plan (pdf).