I wish I could say that organizing my seeds yesterday was an annual, or semi-annual, or at least a planned, regular activity. Lolz. Nope. Up against a deadline to have all our cabinets cleared out for remodeling, I finally tackled the seed collection. Mind you, bad as it looks, it wasn't a totally dysfunctional disaster. I've been using this "system" to successfully start all our vegetables (and lots of perennials too!) from seed for years. There was just, also, a "system-behind-the-system",...
14 days ago â˘Â 4 min read
Out for a walk in the woods near my house, settling my nerves after a polite-but-not-exactly-friendly meeting with neighbors about tree pruning, privacy, rights to views, and "hypothetical" legal action, I came across a man walking the other way. As I rounded the corner, I was wiping my nose, which drips incessantly outdoors in any sort of cool weather. The man coming the other way was better dressed than expected for that muddy trail: He was 70 ish, with white hair, nice khaki pants, a...
23 days ago â˘Â 3 min read
It's been a tough last few weeks, weather-wise. With the Eastern half of the country freezing, snowing, icing, and the Western half . . . just . . . warm. Weirdly warm. Lots of people I talked to said things like, "well I'd rather have the sunshine!" I don't know for sure, but I expect that a lot of those folks didn't grow up in the west, don't have the bone-deep experiences of long droughts where each day without rain is another small disappointment added to the stack that eventually becomes...
30 days ago â˘Â 3 min read
Free webinar next week: Start Your Garden From Seed In this one-hour webinar, you'll learn everything you need to grow your garden from seed this year. We'll cover: How to decide which seeds are best for you: Hybrid or heirloom? What should you look for in a seed company? How to plan your timing: What seeds to start when? How to set up indoor seed-starting, affordably: Best sources for inexpensive and effective grow lights. Trouble shooting, and how to avoid common beginner mistakes. Start...
about 1 month ago â˘Â 3 min read
The rain held off last night as we burned our solstice affirmations in my friends' backyard fire pit. As we said goodbye to the sun on the longest night of the year, we each tossed in a slip of paper where we had written something from this past year that we'd like to let go. It was a wonderful ritual, that in different circumstances might have been solemn. Our group, however, was about 1/2 kids, and as soon as the affirmations were burned, all sorts of experimental items from the garden...
3 months ago â˘Â 1 min read
Before I wrote to you on Seedurdays, back when I was first starting this newsletter, I wrote to you on #Caturdays. Over the years, I shared lots of garden pictures of this guy, perhaps the world's best garden model: Though it has to be mentioned, even as a youngster he was never much for catching gophers. This picture was pretty typical, giving me a look that says, "Well? Aren't you going to get those gophers?" As of today, our beloved Nani, who turned 16 in November and whose full name is...
3 months ago â˘Â 2 min read
Working late and packing Sixies last night, I took this picture for you: When you receive a finished product in it's cute little package, you can't really know all the waste that happened along the way. These little pop-outs are a good example. They make the box way cuter! And you can see the glaze color of the pot inside without having to open it. Of course, little bits of extra stuff add up. This is just a quick shot from a few minutes of packing. Because we only use paper packaging with...
3 months ago â˘Â 3 min read
I waited two full years with our young pluot trees before doing what everyone* said we would need to do: Apply a copper-based fungicide. *âEveryoneâ in this case includes the tree nursery where we bought the trees and our local master gardeners, both of whom advocate organic growing and are better at growing fruit than I am. (Copper-based treatments are safe for organic growing, BTW. When a product has the OMRI label, it means that it can be used on organic produce. That doesn't necessarily...
3 months ago â˘Â 4 min read
Do I need to go out and cover the citrus / avocado / other frost-tender plant tonight?! Have you ever asked yourself that question? Itâs one thing to check the weather forecast for your area, but the actual microclimate around the specific plant youâre worried about is a whole other question. Here is a detailed discussion about measuring weather and microclimates in home gardens (available as both a podcast and a written article) between two of my favorite online people: Farmer Fred Hoffman,...
3 months ago â˘Â 1 min read