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Monday Miscellany: Fig-a-Palooza, Native Cottage-Style Gardens, and Troubleshooting Tomatoes
Some great articles this week! Kicking things off, garden designer Jenny Peterson is celebrating The Week of the Fig. Apparently out in Texas their figs are actually ripe already (oh yeah, they get real live actual sunshine there – that explains it), so she’s got a round-up of some of her fave fig recipes as…
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Wildlife Garden Design Tip: Choose a Simple Color Palette
Think native plants and wildlife-attracting gardens look messy? It doesn’t have to be that way. In this series, we’ll talk about the techniques involved in designing a beautiful wildlife garden. Today’s tip goes well with my last piece of advice, which was to plant native and wildlife-attracting plants in masses: The tip? Choose a simple…
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Monday Miscellany: Nearly-Free Ebooks, Backyard Chicken Giveaway, and Winter Gardening (It Starts Now)
Kicking things off this week, we have an awesome deal from Algonquin, the publisher behind Wicked Plants and many other faves. They’re practically giving away seven garden and nature-related eBooks, in pretty much any format you prefer. Always wanted to go back and read Amy Stewart’s first book, From the Ground Up? Now’s the time.…
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Wildlife Garden Design Tip: Plant in Masses
Think native plants and wildlife-attracting gardens look messy? It doesn’t have to be that way. In this series, we’ll talk about the techniques involved in designing a beautiful wildlife garden. Many native plant enthusiasts and wildlife gardeners start out by trying to replicate the randomized “design” of nature, by planting a lovingly-curated collection of individual…
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A Designer’s Take on Wildlife Gardening
Though recent polls show that using native plants and attracting wildlife are big priorities for gardeners, these types of landscapes have a terrible reputation for being messy and poorly-designed. It’s gotten to the point that many landscape designers I’ve spoken with shy away from mentioning native plants to their clients, even if they plan on…
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Monday Miscellany: Foodie Edition
First up this week is Theresa Loe from Living Homegrown, with an article about Polyface Farm, a place where they’re changing the face of agriculture one acre at a time. Reading this, I’m struck by how lucky we are here in Humboldt to have access to local grass-fed beef and dairy products. I love the…
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Summertime Cooking: Mustard Butter Pasta with Fresh Garden Vegetables
With summer’s toasty temps, I don’t want to be standing over a hot stove any longer than necessary. That’s why I love simple meals that can be made with a minimum of fuss and can be easily reheated, or even eaten cold. When I went to P. Allen Smith’s Garden2Blog event, one of the sponsors,…
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Grow Your Own Microbrew! How to Grow Hops
As an ornamental gardener, I’m used to growing hops as a summer screen for chicken coops, bare walls and other elements in the garden that can be unsightly. It’s easy to grow, but needs to be sited just right, as it has an eat-your-home style of rapacious growth that can be either exactly what you…
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Doofus-Proof Watering: Adjustable Sprinkler and Timer from Dramm
The initial plan for my home garden was to set up an automated drip irrigation system, but as my garden evolved, I realized how difficult it would be to make that type of setup work for me. Drip systems work best on gardens that have lots of individual shrubs and plants, and I have the…
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Backyard Landscaping Not Looking as Good as You’d Like? Here’s Why
Gen here – today’s article is a guest post from my friend Rachel Mathews of Successful Garden Design. Rachel’s an established landscape designer in the UK, and I’ve been been enjoying her landscape design eBooks and courses for some time. Today she’ll share one of the biggest secrets to success in designing a landscape:
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Got No Pot? Grow Tomatoes Right in the Bag!
Here in Humboldt County, it’s time to plant warm-season vegetables like tomatoes, zucchini and more. But some of us don’t have a plot of land to work, and sometimes, there’s not enough cash to buy a pot. I mean, have you seen the cost of pots these days? Some of them can run pretty steep.…