Beginners

February Garden Maintenance for the Pacific Northwest

February 4, 2009 9 comments

February feels like the eye of the storm for us gardeners – there’s just enough time between the winter pruning rush and the flurry of spring to take a deep breath, and begin thinking back on what worked especially well last year and what projects we might like to tackle this year. Most of my [...]

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In Other Words: Winter Pruning Guides from Around the Web

January 27, 2009 11 comments

I’ve found some wonderful tutorials on pruning in the last few weeks, with easy-to-understand photos and step by step advice. Pruning can be intimidating for beginners, but these guides break it down and have an encouraging tone – they don’t make things more complicated than they have to be. Here are the articles I’ve liked [...]

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Braving the Thorns Part 2: Pruning Your Dormant Rose

January 19, 2009 13 comments

Rose pruning is such a satisfying task – you go from a tangled icky mass with thorns everywhere to a lovely clean set of sturdy stems – yet too many people are intimidated by their roses. There’s no need to be shy! The worst thing you can do is not tackle them at all, since [...]

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Full Sun, Part Shade; Some Basic Insights On Light

November 17, 2008 2 comments

Have you ever read a plant tag and wondered just how much sun “part sun” is? Or tried to figure out if a plant wanting “full sun” would make it in the spot that you have? Plant tags and gardening gurus spit out these terms and assume that we’ll get it right – but in [...]

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How Far Apart Do I Plant? Planting for the Future

November 6, 2008 1 comment

If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you’ve probably had the experience more than once of buying a plant that the nursery tag said would grow to the perfect size for your garden – but within a few years, it was pushing against its neighbors and becoming unruly. Why aren’t the plant tags accurate? Well, [...]

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‘Tis The Season To – Wait, What? Plant?

October 19, 2008 5 comments

I know it may seem counter-intuitive to get moving in the garden just as the weather starts becoming dreary, but for the northwest, this is an ideal time to get new shrubs and trees established in the garden. You can skip the watering for the most part, and no need to worry about transplant shock [...]

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