Category: Gardening

  • Save Your Own Seeds

    Save Your Own Seeds

    Do friends rave about your vegetables? I don’t have to ask if you rave about them to your friends, because I know you do. Most committed edible gardeners are more than just a little crazy about their produce. It’s closer to a love affair. I can still hear myself waxing poetic about the amazing Jimmy Nardello…

  • Sharp Idea: Tend to Your Tools

    Sharp Idea: Tend to Your Tools

    Heather from a Southern California beach town contacted me recently about using sand for cleaning garden tools. She had come across my Seattle Times article on tool maintenance. This seemed like a good time to revisit this task, which I do every winter. Hi Bill, Someone from my local gardening group keeps her garden tools in…

  • Autumn Garden Blazes

    Autumn in my edible garden is a growing and even blooming season. With a backdrop of blazing fall tree color, cool season vegetables inch upwards like a roomful of nieces and nephews whose growth is notable at a holiday dinner visit. If family visits our place for a winter feast, some of it will come…

  • Saving Rainbow Chard Seeds

    Saving seeds can be as easy as beating a bag with a stick. Well, almost. I try to save seeds of one crop each summer. Since good seed-saving generally requires a large quantity of seeds, I don’t have room in my garden to do very many crops. For instance, you need a huge quantity of…

  • Garlic Harvest: A Bulbous Bounty of Spice

    I knocked my head against a hanging braid of garlic the other day, and instead of the predictable response, I had to smile. That ceiling rack in the garage holds the spice of many meals. And the harvest is the result of nearly effortless planting. Please grow garlic. It’s so easy, and it’s so good.…

  • Celebrating the Black Spanish Radish

    Today we are celebrating the radish. Not just any radish. Oh, sure, there are round globes of red white, and the elongated French breakfast variety with both red and white. Lately we’ve been seeing designer colors ranging from cream to yellow, pink to purple. There are long white tapers of Japanese daikon radishes, which are…

  • A Cloche for All Reasons: Season Extension Works for Summer Crops

    If you think that your cloche is only for fall and winter gardening, you’re missing out. It is great for your summer crops too. A cloche is versatile. You can set it up over your heat-loving crops and get them growing more robustly. Sure, tomatoes will survive in our weather, but they are at heart…

  • Favas & Garlic: Savory Spring Recipe

    The garlic has just begun its sun salutations. Bouquets of fava bean leaves are catching the spring rains as they emerge on sturdy stems. The promise of these two early summer delicacies is just coming into leaf, but already it’s blooming in my mind. What awaits is a rich, savory saute of succulent beans and…

  • Honoring Soil, a Gardener’s Greatest Resource

    This morning, on the first day of spring, I took a walk through my garden, considering how to celebrate the occasion. One look at the planting bed I prepared yesterday gave me the answer: spring starts with the soil. Thsi time of year, much of my garden activity is amending, monitoring and making soil. When…

  • Protecting Seedlings From Frost

    Early this morning, I saw frost on my neighbors’ roofs, and a light smattering of it on my lawn. And my birdbath water had a very thin layer of ice. Should I be worried? If I have planted any vegetable seeds outdoors that are now breaking through the soil, yes, I should be concerned. A…