Winter is almost over, and aren’t we all thinking about what grew really well last year and whether we want to repeat some of these all-star flowers again this year? 2019 was a great year in our garden. We made a huge, new flowerbed across half of our front yard (the other half is coming…
Just last week, it was late November, and we were still able to harvest tomatoes and make fresh tomato sauce from our garden! That’s one of the joys of gardening in a mild climate, especially when I see my friends back in Utah covered in snow lately. ;) Garden cleanup and tomato fatigue After some…
It’s the first weekend of November (well, it was when I started writing this!), and it’s time to clean up some of the summer annuals and veggies and plant some winter veggies and flowers. It feels good to be planting something again! And it’s great to live in a place where winter plantings are even…
This year, we got bold with our newish-to-us house and went for a major transformation of the front yard by replacing some of the lawn with a huge flowerbed. We considered taking out all the grass (which honestly, includes its fair share of weeds, clover, bermuda grass, and who-knows-what!) and making that half of the…
See the update at the end! Did you know you can compost your shredded paper? It’s great with used coffee grounds! You probably already know that coffee grounds are a valuable addition to your compost bin, but learning about using shredded paper was like an epiphany for me! It feeds my garden, helps avoid adding…
Rather than just letting your flowerbed go dormant in the winter, consider this — here in northern California, we can grow some fantastic winter flowers. It just takes a little planning ahead and sowing while it’s still warm. And hey, I get the fact that you may having some of that end-of-summer garden fatigue (too…
I’ve wanted to build raised beds for some time, and we decided this was the year to go big for our veggie garden! I came up with my own design idea, but I’ll tell you what I’d do differently in a minute. We had to make some decisions on lumber, placement, hardware, and irrigation, which…
We’ve been starting seeds for the past couple of weeks. Isn’t is exciting to watch them sprout and develop? I find myself checking on them five times a day or more, waiting for the surprise arrival when those first seedlings pop out of the soil. The paper towel-baggie trick One of the tricks I’ve used…