-
Lookin’ Sharp – How to Keep Your Garden Tools Clean and Sharpened (Video)
Wrapping up our series on the hand tools we use most in gardening, I want to show you my favorite sharpening tool, the Speedy Sharp, and how to use it to sharpen your pruning shears and your soil knife or hori-hori: Now, if you prefer to use a file to sharpen your shears, Fine Gardening…
-
What to Brandish at Your Weeds: Hori-Horis, Soil Knives, and Trowels (With a Video Review of my Top Two!)
(Note – given how many people have emailed me in response to this post, I wrote an updated version which can be found here!) Weeding is one of those perennial garden tasks – we all do it, all year long, and while there are sprays and tools we can use from a standing position, most…
-
Dr Leda Horticulture: Match Made in Heaven, or Match Made in Hell? The Darker Side of Companion Plants
I’m honored and pleased to be able to share with you the writing of my favorite garden humorist, Dr Leda Horticulture. Regan Nursery, the finest place to buy bare root roses online, and a gorgeous full-service garden center serving the San Francisco Bay Area, has given us permission to reprint Dr Leda’s articles from their…
-
Protective Gear That Won’t Slow You Down: Review of Gardening Knee Pads and Gloves
Many people avoid wearing gloves and knee pads to garden because they see these kinds of protective gear as getting between them and the experience of gardening. Either kneeling pads pinch the backs of your legs uncomfortably, or you can’t feel what you’re doing while wearing gloves. That’s totally valid, but there are things you…
-
Hand Pruner Showdown: Felco VS Corona VS Bahco
Pruners are a sensitive topic among us gardeners. We all have our favorites and god help the person who champions a competing brand. But that’s what this pruner showdown is about, so please don’t throw tomatoes at me. (I’m only discussing bypass pruners here. Anvil pruners often crush the stems when they make a cut, so they…
-
Where to Toss the Weeds? Buckets and Bags to Hold Garden Waste
This week, we’re honoring our love of gardening by taking a hard look at our rusty, underperforming hand tools, and seeing if there might be a better way to approach our routine gardening tasks. Gardeners really vary on how we like to deal with the trimmings and weeds we create when doing the rounds in…
-
The Professional Gardener’s Tool Box – Basic Hand Tools
Most of the gardening that I do regularly, for clients and for myself, involves repetitive tasks. I spend most of my indoor gardening time thinking about the more artistic side of things – design, choosing plants, and artistic pruning – tasks that are unique to each space and plant. But outdoors, my time falls into…
-
Organic Weed Control – How to Kill Weeds Without Harmful Chemicals
As a garden coach, I’m often asked if there are any organic ways of getting rid of weeds that actually work. Nobody wants to spray harmful chemicals in their garden. The good news is that there are a lot of organic alternatives. The bad news is, some organic techniques can require an up-front time investment,…
-
Container Plants that Birds Love
Finishing off our series on planting to attract birds, here’s my love poem to container gardeners – some of my favorite plants to attract birds and hummingbirds to your urban or patio garden. Fuchsia thymifolia or Fairy Fuchsia This is the fuchsia that makes me go starry-eyed with love. Blooming all year long on the…
-
Radius GroundHog Rake: A Review in Photos
A client recently gifted me with this fantastic new tool, and I wanted to share it with you all, because I could tell within a few minutes of use that it was going to replace my old-school iron bow rake. She had both the GroundHog and the Garden Shark rakes, and offered me my choice.…
-
Best of the Web: New Shade Perennials, Gardener’s Hide-a-Key, Veggie Gardening, and More!
Brrrr!!! In rainy Humboldt County, February’s usually the month my garden assistants turn to me in shock and say – “uh, I think the weeds are stuck!” The first time I tried to pull frozen, crystallized weeds out of the ground, I was pretty surprised, too. This year, February’s been glorious – a bit wet,…