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Hose Couture with Dramm’s ColorStorm Line
Why are most garden hoses so ugly? It’s as though twenty years ago, hose manufacturers decided to pick the most glaringly obvious shade of minty green for all their hoses, and never revisited that decision despite having ample reason to do so. I mean, that hose color is pale enough to show algae stains and…
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Bogs Gardening Shoes: Waterproof and Stink-Free
I don’t do many clothing reviews here on North Coast Gardening because most clothes made specifically for gardening are either not my style (I only like floral when it’s thorny and goth), or the manufacturers are so busy thinking about the stereotype of a Lady Gardener that they completely miss out on creating a product…
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Monday Miscellany: Cool Tools, OMG-Tasty Pie Recipe, Beach’n Terrarium, Designers’ Home Gardens
Quick note – Wednesday’s the last day to enter to win one of three of those elegant black hanging baskets from Discoveries in Gardening. Enter here! Kicking things off this Monday, Erin over at The Impatient Gardener gets into some tool geekery! She reviews tools that I’ve mentioned here and in my reviews in Fine…
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How to Plant a Hanging Basket With an Angel Moss Liner
Years ago, when I worked at a local independent garden center, one of my favorite winter activities was creating moss baskets to sell. We used loose sphagnum moss to line the baskets, and stuffed the sides and tops with lettuces, annuals and herbs. It was a blast! So when Discoveries in Gardening asked if I’d…
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Planting the Triolife Triangular Planter (Kitty “Helped”)
I’ll admit it: I’m bad with containers. I love planting them, placing them and admiring them. What I’m not so great at is watering them. So when Eartheasy offered to send me one of these stylish triangular Triolife planters to test out, I wasn’t feeling too confident that I’d be able to create an effect…
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P. Allen Smith’s Garden2Blog Event: Sunshine, Southern Punch and Plant Geekery
I’m a humble landscaper in a small college town, so when I got the email inviting me on an all-expenses-paid trip to Little Rock, Arkansas to meet P. Allen Smith and hang with some garden writer peeps at the 2012 Garden2Blog event, I was thrilled to say the least. I’ve never been anywhere besides the…
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The Sunset Edible Garden Cookbook
A month ago when I visited San Francisco, Sunset Publishing invited me (and a number of other garden writers) over to breakfast. Never one to turn down either free food or a garden tour, I accepted with glee, and ate as much of their fresh, delicious food as I could fit in. (The plate shown…
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New 2013 Proven Winners Varieties
One of the things I love best about being a garden writer, besides all of the gardening and the writing, is the loot. Getting to try free plants before they’re even out in the nurseries? Yes please! My idea of heaven.
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Gen X and Y Gardeners – Can We Quit Worrying About This, Please?
Every year or two, some horticultural marketing team gets a buzzing insect in its collective shorts about Gen X and Y and how we aren’t gardening enough. The subtext is that gardening is a boomer activity and that at some scary date in the future, we will be left with no gardeners at all because…
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The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener by Niki Jabbour
While I’ve been a professional gardener for, gosh, 16 years, one area of gardening that I have never felt very confident is in vegetable gardening. When I bought my own home a few years back, I finally began growing vegetables on my own plot of land. Though growing a few lettuce, zucchini or kale plants…
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Fiskars UpRoot Weeder: Armed and Dangerous (to Dandelions)
Tools have all kinds of personalities. There are the delightfully snooty British ones which make me feel like I ought to bring my good china out into the garden and wear a floral hat while digging. And the sturdy Japanese ones which transport me to ancient times and make me feel like a noble samurai-type…