It pains me to see customers spending hundreds of dollars on new plants and simultaneously refusing to spend a few more on a bag or two of compost and a box of starter fertilizer. These two items are not unnecessary “add-ons” that the retailer is just trying to add to the sale, they are critical components of a successful transplanting process - or as I like to refer to them as “plant insurance”. Unless you have phenomenal soil, you should always add compost and starter fertilizers when you are planting new plants. Here is why…
First off, let me apologize for using the word “winter” in the title as I sincerely hope that our actual “winter” is still many weeks away. Having said that, as we head towards the holiday season, it is an ideal time for gardeners to look forward just a bit. Frost will be coming soon, and Mother Nature will require...
If you don’t like looking at sticks over the winter and loath having to rake leaves, then you might as well stop reading this and find something else to do. Plants that lose their leaves in the fall are the backbone of an interesting late season garden, and if your entire landscape consists of nothing but Conifers and Broadleaf Evergreens (like Rhodies and Azaleas), chances are this time of year is going to be pretty ho-hum. Using deciduous plants in our landscapes is an easy way to up our gardening game and move us ever closer to that elusive goal of “year ‘round interest”…
Most gardeners are familiar with florist Cyclamen. They are popular during the cooler times of the year and are usually sold as a table decoration to be enjoyed indoors for a few weeks and then discarded…. However, there is a hardy relative to the florist Cyclamen that is perfect for our climate and every gardener should make some space for a small drift of them…
I would never have dreamt that I would be talking about such a “dry” subject (pun intended of course) as watering in the middle of October, but here we are, dealing with one of the longest stretches of no rain that I can remember in the 30 plus years that I have lived in the Pacific Northwest. Not only is it dry, but it is also…
I just had the opportunity to sit through a class on plants for fall and winter interest… and it brought back home to me that there is no excuse for a drab garden in the fall, or even the winter, considering that there is a multitude of plants to choose from that will brighten our gardens over the next 5 to 6 months…
The Golfing Gardener
Trevor Cameron
I often tell gardeners in our region to rediscover their “Evergreen State”, which (in a play on words) simply means to show some gardening style with the structure, texture and color of conifers. Around here nature has the many shades of green covered, but how about some bold blues and bright yellows? When all of the deciduous shrubs and trees have…