In February, a couple dozen of our friends and relatives made the windy, rainy trek to Humboldt County for the grand reopening of our bookstore. It was yet another winter family gathering. They’ve been here before at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and now, after having made the journey in February, they probably think that Eureka has […]
Amy Stewart
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Mammals of Mass Destruction
I could have put a layer of chicken wire under my straw bales before I set up my clever new straw bale vegetable garden. How easy it would have been. Clear the weeds, lay down the chicken wire, arrange the bales on top. Had I done that, I would have had a no-dig, weed-free, compostable […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Eat Your Trash
For years, people in the gardening industry — seed companies, plant growers, owners of garden centers — have complained that gardening is on the decline. People don’t have time to garden anymore, they said. This younger generation just doesn’t want to spend the weekend in the backyard. Or if they do, they don’t consider the […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
The Cursed Wind
I’ve been getting e-mails from Journal readers all week. Everyone’s freaked out about the blazing heat followed by the rain and the fog followed by the maddening wind. “What’s up with this weather?” people keep asking me. Like I would know. As I write this, it’s the wind that’s making everyone nuts. It’s a forceful, […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Straw Report
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about my new experiment in vegetable gardening. The idea was to build raised beds out of rice straw bales, creating a no-dig bed that would basically turn into one giant compost pile at the end of the season. I heard from several people who were interested in trying the […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Bale Gardens
In the last few years, I have almost given up on vegetable gardening. When I moved to Eureka, I laid out my backyard with the intention of growing almost exclusively fruits and vegetables. Sure, there would be a border of perennial herbs and flowers, but I wanted the main attraction to be neat rows of […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Yes, Coach!
Two weeks ago, I wrote about my meeting with Genevieve Schmidt, an Arcata garden coach. I’m the ultimate low-budget do-it-yourself gardener, and apart from hiring a guy with a truck to haul off uncompostable green waste from time to time, I didn’t really know much about working with horticultural professionals. Apparently I’m not the only […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Meet the Pro
I blog with a group of opinionated gardeners at gardenrant.com; one of my partners in crime on that site makes her living as a garden coach. At first I wasn’t sure why the world needed one more kind of horticultural professional. We already have designers, landscape architects, arborists, engineers, lawn care services and landscape crews […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Chicken-O-Rama!
They’re heeeeere! At the feed stores. Peeping under heat lamps. Little motherless chicks, small enough to nap in the palm of your hand, just waiting for someone to take them home and love them. And oh, the names of the breeds: One feed store is bringing in Danish brown leghorns, Jersey black giants, gold sex […]
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Designing with Natives
On Wednesday, March 12, 2008, native plant designer Alrie Middlebrook will give a talk on designing native gardens. She’s the co-author of Designing California Native Gardens: The Plant Community Approach to Artful, Ecological Gardens, just out from University of California Press. She runs a native plant design business in San Jose called Middlebrook Gardens, and […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Gardening in the Snow
I don’t belong to a garden club, and the reason for that is, I’ll admit, pretty stupid: I can’t stand appointments. The thought of having to add something else to my calendar, of having to be somewhere next Thursday at 7 p.m., just wears on me. So I don’t sign up. But sometimes I get […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
On Safari
I almost got my wish. A few weeks ago, I was jonesing for mojitos at midnight in Miami (even the alliteration is compelling) and suddenly there I was, stumbling down Fort Lauderdale’s seedy Beach Boulevard at 2 p.m. on a Thursday, mildly irritated by the gray sky and wind and prospect of a storm. For […]