Independent gardening advice for real gardens, balconies and windowsills.
Practical guides on soil, composting, watering, seeds, pests and the everyday skills that make a garden thrive.
There was a further reason for, mentioning that strip of onion ground. It is a very practical illustration of what last year's handling of the soil means to this year's garden. If you can pick out a s...
This weed-like, drought-tolerant salad green is little known and underappreciated. In summer the leaves get tough and strong flavored; if other greens are available, sorrel will probably be unpicked....
Many a home gardener who has succeeded well with vegetables is, for some reason or other, still fearsome about trying his hand at growing his own fruit. This is all a mistake; the initial expense is v...
The food of plants consists of chemical elements, or rather, of numerous substances which contain these elements in greater or less degrees. There is not room here to go into the interesting science o...
Having considered, as thoroughly as the limited space available permitted, the matter of plant foods, we must proceed to the equally important one of how properly to set the table, on or rather in, wh...
The chances are that you will not find a spot of ideal garden soil ready for use anywhere upon your place. But all except the very worst of soils can be brought up to a very high degree of productiven...
Crops demanding the most water are grown on the raised bed. These include a succession of lettuce plantings designed to fill the summer salad bowl, summer spinach, spring kohlrabi, my celery patch, sc...
Half the row grows early bush peas. Without overhead irrigation to bother them, unpicked pods form seed that sprouts excellently the next year. This half of the row is rotary tilled and fertilized aga...
In our region, gardens lose far more water than they get from rainfall during the summer growing season. At first glance, it seems impossible to garden without irrigation west of the Cascades. But the...