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Raspberries!
I finally dug the raspberry bed and planted about 10 canes, 5 each of Summit and Heritage. The five canes that I have left over eyed me forlornly from their little peat pot, but, alas, I'd miscalculated how much room I'd have in the bed... so they are still sitting there, unplanted and unloved ( Read more... ) -
First outside sowing, spring 2008
The peas finally got tucked in today. I'm trying Cascadia snap peas. Per Territorial Seeds: "60 days. The 32 inch vines yield and abundance of dark green 3 1/2 inch pods that are thick, juicy, and very sweet. Enation resistant ( Read more... ) -
Lime Sulfur and Horticultural Oil
Mixture for organic dormant spray:
1 gallon water
1 cup lime sulfur (Poly-Sul)
5T horticultural oil
Here's the rub: I had bought the canola oil type of horticultural oil (because it is not petroleum based), but when you open up the little sheet of fine print that is sealed against the bottle and which you therefore cannot read before you purchase ( Read more... ) -
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Who says spring is 6 weeks away? It's not. It's here on the sarcococca sweetened air. The buds on the cherry tree are swollen to bursting, and roses and blueberries alike have new branches starting from buds. Only a hard freeze could stop it now, and even that wouldn't prevent much. All the new tender growth would be killed (in my case, that means ( Read more... ) -
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The NYT today published a fascinating article about the catastrophic loss of variety in food crops in Europe, as backyard farms become vanishingly rare. It's especially alarming, as the loss comes just as a diversity of plant variants will be needed to maintain the global food supply in the face of climate change:
Backyard Gardens Shelter Europe’s ( Read more... ) -
More to do, but at least the bulbs are tucked in!
Finally.
The bulbs are in:
Anemone blanda: The Bride and Mr. Fokker (Yikes, what horrible names. It just hit me. One is white and one is blue.)
Allium oreophillium
Allium caeruleum
One half of the planting parking strip is more or less finished. Among other things, I've planted
Albizia summer chocolate (a variety of mimosa tree)
Escallonia Gold Brian
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I ate my first home-grown brandywine tomato today. It ripened in my mudroom, while awaiting pickling. It was delicious ( Read more... ) -
October garlic planting
The garlic went in today. I planted "music," a hardneck variety which I picked more or less at random from Territorial Seeds. The bulbs were pretty spendy, so I'm hoping for a good sized yield to recoup the investment ( Read more... ) -
I think I've torn my right rotator cuff, but only a little bit
Tomato season is officially over in Seattle. Yesterday I ripped out all 4 wildly vining bushes. To show for it, I have a few pounds of ripe or semi-ripe cherry tomatoes, a few pounds of green brandywines, and maybe, oh, 15 pounds of green cherry tomatoes. Thank goodness I have a recipe to pickle them! (Thanks
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It's almost coldframe time.
My winter lettuces have sized up nicely, so I'm invested in protecting them from the winter rains.
To that end, I found a video of an enterprising man (Eric) building a coldframe with his tomato-eating labrador. Eric's result was simple, elegant, and inexpensive. I liked the video for its down-to-earth production values (his wife filmed it, while ( Read more... )
