This is certainly the coldest winter I can remember since I’ve been in Humboldt County — so chilly that even plants I think of as being hardy are showing serious damage from frost. Though we have all of January’s usual tasks (pruning, pruning and — oh yeah, pruning!), we should give our plants a little […]
Down and Dirty
Posted inLife + Outdoors
A Gardener’s Resolutions
After a holiday season of excess, most of us are looking forward to a pleasantly Spartan start to the new year — spending less, exercising more and aiming for a slightly less wicked cookie to vegetable ratio. I love cookies too much to give them up, so I’m differing from the norm by keeping my […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
December Gardening
December usually alternates between stretches of cold, clear weather and weeklong downpours, so there’s usually plenty of time for both indoor planning and crafts as well as some of the normal outdoor garden care. Here’s what to do in the December garden. Protect tender plants. This December has shown us some of the coldest weather […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
To Leave or Not to Leave?
Fall leaf raking seems like such a straightforward task — rake the leaves, stuff a few down the back of someone’s shirt, get chased around the garden and end up dirty and sweating with a large pile to take to the green waste or the compost bin. Fun and done, right? But every year I […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
November Gardening
Though that primal urge to get out in the garden isn’t as strong now as it was in spring, November is one of the most active months in the garden, just because there’s so much to prepare before the winter weather arrives. Pruning and cleanup, some judicious fertilizing and the start of bare-root season are […]
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The Great Deer Roundup
The hunger of deer is no greater than the fury of gardeners who seek to thwart the peaceful vegetarians. Just ask the Humboldt Botanical Garden’s deer wranglers, sturdy volunteers who scrambled up steep ravines, picked off bloodsucking ticks and nursed pokes and scratches from blackberry brambles in the great deer round up of 2005. While […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Providing Water for Wildlife
There’s little that irritates me more than going to the garden center and seeing an array of gorgeous, well-made bird baths that are all completely and utterly useless. It seems that the manufacturers of such things have never really researched or even given the most cursory amount of thought to what qualities a bird might […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Why I Hate Landscape Fabric
The black death — aka landscape fabric — stifles your soil and looks lousy when it inevitably peeks through. Sometimes I try to be fair and balanced on an issue so I don’t sound like some kind of gardening zealot. Today isn’t one of those times. I think landscape fabric sucks. There, I said it. […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Gen X and Y Gardeners
Genevieve Schmidt weeds her vegetable patch. The chickens aren’t boomers, either. Every year or two, some horticultural marketing team gets a buzzing insect in its collective shorts about Gen X and Y and how we aren’t gardening enough. The subtext is that gardening is a boomer activity and that at some scary date in the […]