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Monday Miscellany: Read This Now Edition
This week, it’s all about books. And, um, giveaways. Of books! First off, Timber Press, publishers of so many of my favorite gardening books, is holding a giveaway for the deer-resistant gardening book I profiled recently for the Christian Science Monitor. Not only can you win a copy of the book 50 Beautiful Deer-Resistant Plants,…
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Monday Miscellany: Sustainability Freaks
Kicking things off, Ginny Stibolt takes P. Allen Smith and others to task for taking the old-skool pesticide philosophy (kill! Kill them all!) and trying to make it eco by using organic pesticides. And sure, if you’ve gotta spray, go organic. But as she points out, poison is poison, people. If you care about supporting…
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Monday Miscellany: Drunken Shenanigans Edition
Local author Amy Stewart has become my very favorite non-fiction writer, not only because she’s so fun to read, but because her writing is so very practical in everyday life. Case in point: the other day, a mildly tipsy houseguest was about to tell me a story about banana slugs for the third time. I…
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Monday Miscellany: Miracle-Gro Rant, Containers for Wildlife, Small Vines, and A Defense of Yellow
Trey Pitsenberger, owner of Golden Gecko Nursery, is a constant agitator in favor of independent nurseries, common-sense gardening, and truthfulness in marketing. His latest target? Miracle-Gro’s idiotic desire to stuff their bullshit blue fertilizer where it’s not desired. He says: Why are you mixing fertilizer with a product designed for drainage? In my mind this…
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Monday Miscellany: New Books, Lamb’s Ears, Succulents and Adorable Chickens
Jumping right into this week’s Cool Stuff, there have been some wonderful new books published recently that I’ve reviewed over on Amazon. Mark Diacono’s The Food Lover’s Garden was a hit with me – fuchsia fruit leather? Daylily fritters? Yes, please! Then, I got an early copy of Ruth Rogers Clausen’s new book 50 Beautiful…
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Monday Miscellany: Biennials, DIY Liquid Fertilizer, and Garden Tunes
It’s that time of the week again, where I find the awesome online and bring it to you. First off, the ever-brilliant Michael King from Perennial Meadows advises that this is the time of year to scatter seeds of all those old-fashioned biennial cottage garden favorites. Biennials, of course, grow foliage one year and flowers…
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Wish You Were Here (a Guest Post by The Garden Rockstar)
A guest post by author Michael Nolan When Gen offered to let me take the helm here at North Coast Gardening for the day, I couldn’t resist. I mean really; I live in the Southeastern US, I was never professionally trained as a gardener and to top it off, I love patchouli. What could possibly…
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Monday Miscellany: Woot! Last Frost! Plus Ballsy Locations for Mulch, etc.
We are doing the happy dance here at North Coast Gardening, because we have just passed our official last frost date here on the coast in Humboldt County. This means I’m planting all the frost-sensitive Fuchsias, lemon trees, sages, etc that I’ve held off on planting all winter. Most of these plants will make it…
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Why Yes, I Do Talk About Non-Native Plants
Just, um, not lately. I’ve been on a bit of a native plant kick in recent days, given that so many of my loveliest natives have been putting on a crazy spring show lately. Anyway, if you’re not sick of hearing me bang on about regional character in landscape design, and supporting wildlife, and how…
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Monday Miscellany: Christian Science Monitor Edition
Yep, it’s that time of the week again. Cool stuff! From around the internet! So, I’m one of the new garden bloggers for the Christian Science Monitor’s garden blog Diggin’ It. My first post went live last week, and since I’ve been paying attention, I’ve noticed a wide variety of seasonally-interesting posts from the other…
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Monday Miscellany: Book Excerpt Week!
So many books are being published every day that it’s a little hard to sort through them all and decide which to read. While Book Review Week earlier this month was fun, I figured I’d follow it up with a week of book excerpts to help you get a feel for the style and content…