Companion Planting
It’s said that vegetables are like people, they thrive on companionship. It is believed that vegetables will yield up to twice as much when they are surrounded with companion plants.
Cool Climate Gardening
Wide Row Vegetable Gardening
Is space limited for a vegetable garden at your house? If so, wide-row gardening may be a practical solution. It is a way to produce an abundant quantity of vegetables in limited space.
Organic Gardening 101
By using natural minerals and materials, by taking advantage of natural predators, and by recycling garden waste, the home gardener can maintain an organic garden quite successfully.
Cover Crops
Once you have harvested your vegetables you can re-prepare the soil and seed a cover crop which helps build compost humus and a natural fertilizer to revitalize the soil for next years crops. Cover crops are relatively inexpensive, easy to seed, and provide a great source of ‘green manure’ for vegetable garden soils. It’s the natural way to revitalize the soil and suppress weed growth at the same time!
Starting Seeds Indoors
Starting seeds is easy, fun and can be very rewarding. All one needs is a little soil, sand, vermiculite, a container, egg or cottage cheese carton, a warm, bright spot, and the seed. Then follow-up watering to keep the seed moist until it germinates.
How to Prune Roses
March in the Pacific Northwest means it is time to prune roses. If you want large flowers with long stems and attractive rose bushes, now is the time to get out your pruning shears. Rose pruning is really quite simple. You will need a pair of gloves to protect your hands from the thorns and …
Winter Pruning
Winter is the time to think about pruning many plants in the garden. However, never prune for the sake of pruning, prune only the plants that need pruning. Roses are a good example of plants that need pruning, as do raspberries, clematis and sometimes hydrangeas, lilacs and others.
Early Flowering Rhododendrons
In the Pacific Northwest, one of the most popular garden shrubs is the rhododendron. One of the greatest advantages of this shrub is that it is evergreen and many varieties flower at varying times of the year. In fact, by proper selection of varieties it’s possible to have continual flowering for up to six months or more. In this article we’ll discuss a few of the early flowering varieties.
Dividing And Transplanting Perennials
August and early September is the time for dividing many garden plants, The spring-flowering perennials, including aubrietia, candytuft and snow-on-the-mountain, plus primroses, hellebores, peonies and iris may be divided and transplanted at this time of the year.
Ground Covers That Help Retain Hillsides
Many sloping areas and hillsides have experienced various degrees of erosion due to the heavy fall, winter and early spring rains. In some cases these problems could have been greatly reduced had deep-rooted ground covers been used to help secure the soil on these sloping areas. So here are a few ideas of plants one can use to beautify a hillside and possibly help stabilize the soil too.