When I was in horticulture school, the old-skool dudes teaching pest control were all about the chemicals – they just didn’t believe organics could be as effective as the lethal stuff. Yet every so often, a hint of doubt would creep into their voices about safety.
I’d hear, “well, this one’s actually pretty bad” or “ya don’t wanna get too close to this” and “this one’s chemically similar to Agent Orange and I’m not really sure why it’s still legal”. What?!!
“Agent Orange on your lawn” has never been the special Genevieve mojo I wanted to share with my gardening clients! [Click here to continue reading…]
If you’ve hung out at North Coast Gardening for a while, you know I have some, ahem, opinions about gardening tools. Felcos? Forget it!
But sometimes my favorite tools are a bit harder to find – they aren’t all on Amazon, nor are many of them at your local garden shop. So I’m really excited to be partnering with OpenSky, a company which is helping me run my own store so that you’ll be able to find all the best tools in one place.
So far I only have a few products for sale in my new store, but I’m working every day to get the rest of my favorites in there so you’ll have a good source for your own tools and gifts for your gardening friends.
For me, the difference between using a sharp, well-made tool and using some crap old thing that’s been hanging out in the garden shed since the 70’s is immense – gardening’s such a joy if your tools make it easy to prune and dig, but for me – a lousy tool can really ruin the magic.
Go ahead, check out my new store, and if you have any tips on products you think I should carry or want to tell me about your experiences with the tools I recommend, drop me a line here!
I think of video games as mostly time-wasters and try to avoid them, but every so often one comes along that is so extremely fun that it’s hard to resist. Plants VS Zombies hits two of my favorite things – the ridiculous charm and kitsch of zombies combined with the over-the-top sunniness of plants.
You start [...]
Many people avoid wearing gloves and knee pads to garden because they see these kinds of protective gear as getting between them and the experience of gardening. Either kneeling pads pinch the backs of your legs uncomfortably, or you can’t feel what you’re doing while wearing gloves.
That’s totally valid, but there are things you [...]
This week, we’re honoring our love of gardening by taking a hard look at our rusty, underperforming hand tools, and seeing if there might be a better way to approach our routine gardening tasks.
All right, so I know pruners are a sensitive topic among us gardeners. We all have our favorites and god help the [...]
This week, we’re honoring our love of gardening by taking a hard look at our rusty, underperforming hand tools, and seeing if there might be a better way to approach our routine gardening tasks.
Gardeners really vary on how we like to deal with the trimmings and weeds we create when doing the rounds in our [...]
Most of the gardening that I do regularly, for clients and for myself, involves repetitive tasks. I spend most of my indoor gardening time thinking about the more artistic side of things – design, choosing plants, and artistic pruning – tasks that are unique to each space and plant. But outdoors, my time falls into [...]
Brrrr!!! In rainy Humboldt County, February’s usually the month my garden assistants turn to me in shock and say – “uh, I think the weeds are stuck!” The first time I tried to pull frozen, crystallized weeds out of the ground, I was pretty surprised, too.
This year, February’s been glorious – a bit wet, yes, [...]
I don’t know about you, but the actual getting-gifts-for-people part of Christmas kind of crept up on me, and I’m scurrying to find or make just the right thing for everyone I love.
Gardeners can be hard to shop for, because so many people give us gifts that look pretty, but aren’t really that useful or [...]
I read an inspiring post by Fern over at Life On The Balcony this week with some tips for how to enjoy container gardening with physical limitations. She covers some great ways of training your plants to suit your needs, reducing watering, and choosing tools to make gardening easier.
Fern makes an excellent point; containers are [...]
