Compost pile. Photo by Bryn Pinzgauer, Creative Commons License.

The city of Seattle and other partners are offering discounts on compost and kitchen scrap bins during Compost Days, a promotion that runs through April 15, 2013. The city is celebrating its success in diverting 125,000 tons of food scraps and yard waste from landfills last year, and that means coupons and discounts for you!

All that waste was turned into compost that can be used in gardens. During Compost Days, you can buy 2 bags of compost and can get the 3rd bag free. The promotion also offers deep discounts on bulk compost and kitchen scrap kits.  Contact Ecoyards if you need help with mulching your landscape beds with compost.

What is compost, and why do gardeners love it so much? Compost is decomposed organic matter (grass clippings, newspaper, egg shells, food waste, etc.) that can be added to garden beds and landscapes to improve soil. That rich organic material adds nutrients and beneficial microbes. It helps soil hold on to nutrients and water better, reduces water runoff, promotes healthier roots and prevents oil erosion.

You can find a variety of compost products at local garden and hardware stores in the area, or you can make your own compost in your backyard. The city of Seattle is a great resource on backyard composting; it also sells compost bins through Seattle Conservation Corps, Parks & Recreation Department.

If you haven’t had a chance to read it, the New York Times’ Mark Bittman has a good piece on the benefits of converting lawns into gardens. Bittman calls attention to a situation in Orlando, where a couple was threatened with a $500 a day fine for planting vegetables in their front yard. A neighbor had complained about the yard being an eyesore, or rather for looking “like a farm.”

According to the NYT, when faced with a violation from the city, the homeowner “stood outside his polling site during the last election circulating a petition to change the current code, and then appeared on a local TV news station, telling the reporter and any city officials who happened to be watching, ‘You’ll take my house before you take my vegetable garden’.”

“The battle has been raging for months, and the city’s latest proposal is to allow no more than 25 percent of a homeowner’s front yard to be planted in fruits and vegetables,” Bittman writes.

Fortunately, the city of Seattle has been encouraging residents to plant urban gardens for a number of years as the urban farm movement has taken hold. The mayor and others even recently expanded the number of P-patches in the community where residents can garden if they don’t have their own plots. Still, it wasn’t long ago when homeowners were chastised for not obtaining a $225 street use permit to plant vegetables or flowers in the city-owned property known as parking trips (located between the sidewalk in front of your home and the street). We wrote about the city revising the rules in 2009 after much citizen uproar. The new guidelines are here, and homeowners are free to plant fruits and vegetables in that city-owned parking strip, with some exceptions; for example, the city says don’t plant fruiting cherry, apple or pear trees that may drop fruit and can pose a safety risk to oblivious pedestrians.

Not every homeowner will want to tear up their front lawns or even devote the time to keep an urban vegetable plot. Let’s face it, vegetable plots can be very time consuming, and not too pleasing to look at during the winter months (the city suggests planting a winter cover crop to keep soil from running off the property and into the storm drains). We think there are certainly benefits to having lawns (think young kids and pets), as long as they’re maintained and grown responsibly. Read more about how we maintain lawns in a ecologically responsible way, including leaving grass clippings on the lawn, using organic fertilizers sparingly, avoiding pesticides (weed and feed products), planting grass seeds that thrive in the Northwest, and going easy on the watering hose.

We’d like to hear from those who are tending vegetable gardens in parking strips. What are you growing in winter months? What are you planning to grow this season? Are there vegetables or fruits that work better than others?

Contact Ecoyards to setup a consultation if you’d like to convert your lawn area into a new garden.

Photo by jpockele via Creative Commons License.

They’re squishy. They’re slimy. They have weird spiky things coming out of their heads. Bugs are unsightly creatures, and creepy to boot. But many of them are fairly benign in the vegetable garden; some such as ladybugs, damsel bugs and lacewings are beneficial. The good bugs eat the bad bugs that chew holes through your plants, so take time to figure out which ones you can keep around. The Southwest Community Land Trust has an excellent Bug Book that describes both good and bad bugs, has photographs of the damage they can do to plants and details how you can encourage the good ones and discourage the bad ones. The book also offers recipes for natural homemade sprays (garlic and chili pepper, for example) that can be used as an alternative to insecticides.

The Bug Book lists quite a few good bugs, including lady beetles (or ladybugs), praying mantids, soldier beetles, lacewings and damsel bugs. To attract these beneficial bugs, add nectar- or pollen-producing plants to your garden: daisies, dill, marigold, fennel, calendula, alfalfa, sunflowers, parsley, lemon balm, anise, zinnia, angelica, yarrow and coriander.

According to the Bug Book, here are a few bad bugs and what to do about them in your garden:

Aphids suck the juices off leaves, and sometimes spread plant diseases. As adults, they’re pear-shaped. Solution: control by spraying aphids off plants with a stream of water from the garden hose. Also plant dill, nasturtiums or calendula to attract aphids to those plants and away from other plants.

Cabbage loopers love to chew holes in lettuce, cabbage, celery, collard greens and tomato plants. They’re most damaging in the larvae stage, as green caterpillars. Solution: hand pick the bugs off the underside of leaves and throw them away; use row covers to prevent adult cabbage loopers from laying eggs on your plants.

Cucumber beetles as adults are very damaging to squash, melons, eggplants, tomatoes and peas. The adults are striped or spotted, and are yellow with black stripes or spots down its back. Solution: Hand pick the bugs off plants, spray with a garlic and pepper spray mixture; remove all weeds and plants from the garden at the end of season.

For more information (and photos) of good and bad bugs, here’s another good  detailed guide. 

hummingbird; photo by lambatofa via Creative Commons License

Each morning, my son runs to the window to see what little creatures are feasting on seeds, nectar and berries in our front yard. Last week, we spotted a couple squirrels, a raccoon traipsing across our neighbor’s front yard, and several birds on the branches of our bare Japanese bloodgood maple). This week, we watched a couple hummingbirds flitter from branch to branch on the white-flowering currant that is getting ready to explode with its clusters of white flowers. Ribes sanguineum is one of our favorite plants in the Seattle landscape because of its spectacular white and red blooms are magnets for birds and butterflies.

Over the years as we have added to and edited our landscape in Seattle, we’ve added more shrubs and plants that can support wildlife. A typical neighborhood can hold more than 25 species of birds and mammals, such as hawks, raccoons, robins, chickadees, and even an occasional coyote, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. You can design your Seattle landscape with wildlife in mind by providing creatures with four basic needs: food, water, shelter, and space. Bees, birds and butterflies feed on flower nectar; squirrels feast on nuts and berries. Have a variety of plants that flower at different times of the year so wildlife have a steady pick of food throughout the seasons. Insects are also an important food source for birds, so develop a high tolerance for bugs and avoid insecticides.

Trees and shrubs, brush piles, groundcovers and plants that grow at different heights provide creatures with various safe places to hide and rest. A good wildlife habitat has many levels of habitat, from the ground on up to the tallest evergreen. Plant groundcovers for bugs and taller trees like western hemlocks for woodpeckers and hawks.

Consider adding a water source for animals, such as a birdbath, stream or other fountain. The Humane Society recommends studying your yard from the viewpoint of an animal seeking shelter and food when you start gardening for wildlife. Learn the habits and tastes of the species you hope to attract, and identify any potential conflicts early enough to head them off before unacceptable damage has been done to your garden.

The National Wildlife Federation also offers tips on how to garden for wildlife and how to certify your landscape as a wildlife habitat. The Audubon Society has a website on Healthy Yards.

Contact Ecoyards if you’d like to redesign your landscape to attract more wildlife.

Here are a few photos from projects recently completed by Ecoyards in West Seattle —

This is the weekend to end all weekend plant sales. There are two incredible plants sales in Seattle: the King County Master Gardener plant sale at the University of Washington and the Seattle Titlh edible plant sale in Wallingford.

We’ve volunteered at the Master Gardener plant sale in previous years, but will be out of town this weekend. The sale runs from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday, May 1 and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, May 2. You’ll find a wide selection of perennials, ornamentals, shrubs, trees, vines and edibles, including famous tomato starts, from Master Gardeners and local growers. 

The second plant sale is one that vegetable gardeners can’t miss. Seattle Tilth’s annual plant sale is one of the best in town. You can choose from over 50 varieties of tomatoes and 20 different kinds of peppers. I always leave this sale with a handful of edibles, including rare pumpkin, eggplant, cucumber and other starts that you just can’t find anywhere else.

potato plant

Potatoes are one of the easiest plants to grow in the Northwest. Home-grown potatoes also taste so much better than what you buy at the grocery store. You can plant potatoes as early as March (to harvest in the summer and early fall) and typically as late as June (for harvest in late fall). You should be able find seed potatoes at most nurseries, or you can order them through Territorial Seed Co. I’ve had good success with Russian banana fingerlings, blue potatoes, French fingerlings and Yukon gold. I like seed potatoes that are small and can be planted whole; but cutting larger seed potatoes is just as easy (if you do cut, make sure each piece has at least one eye).

Plant potatoes in well-drained soil in a sunny spot in your garden. Avoid planting them in the same spot from year to year to prevent soil-borne diseases. Also try not to plant them in areas where you had planted tomatoes, strawberries or legumes such as peas and beans. When you’re ready to get your potatoes into the ground, dig the soil well. Dig a deep trench and mound the soil on either side. Put the potatoes in cut-size down (if you’ve cut the seed potatoes into pieces). Cover the potatoes with about four inches of soil.

Once your potato plant has emerged about six inches tall, hill soil up around the plants using the soil on the sides of the trench that you dug. Potatoes grow along the stem of the plant. To avoid sunburn (which greens your potatoes and makes them bitter) as well as maximize your yield, keep hilling the plant as it grows taller. Mound the soil up around the plant every two or three weeks. The higher the mound, the more potatoes you’ll likely have. Hilling also helps suppress weeds. To avoid potato scab or cracks or knobs, keep the soil moist and evenly watered throughout the growing season.

Harvest new potatoes when the plant begins to flower. Otherwise, dig up the potatoes about two weeks after the vines die. There’s nothing better than digging your hand into the ground in search of these little treasures.

One of the most frequent questions we get at Ecoyards is how to control weeds organically. The truth is, there’s no easy way to get rid of dandelions, shotweed, knotweed, and other nasties, especially if you don’t want to use herbicides. Our favorite tools are our hands and standard garden tools, like a hori hori, trowel or hoe. You also need a lot of persistence and a little knowledge about the type of weed you’re dealing with.

There are annual weeds that grow, flower, set and die each year, and perennial weeds that live and return for many years. Annual weeds spread only by seed, so the best way to kill them is to pull them before they produce even more seeds – and to continue pulling them several times. The reality is that you’re never going to completely eliminate them, but if you’re persistent you can stay on top of it. Pull them early, when they’re young and before they set seed: tackle winter annual weeds such as common chickweed when they germinate in late summer, and get spring annual weeds such as common lambsquarters when they germinate in the spring. Annual weeds tend to have short roots, so they’re easy to pull or hoe. The downside is that annual weeds produce thousands of seeds, and the seeds tend to persist for a very very long time in soil. Avoid deep hoeing or rototilling, as that can bring up seeds buried in the ground.

Canada thistle

Perennial weeds can spread by seed (dandelion) or through a creeping rooting system (such as Canada thistle or quackgrass). The best way to get rid of perennial weeds is to pull them early, typically in the first several weeks of germination. Get them before they’ve developed an extensive root system that can store energy. When you miss this window, it’s an uphill battle. In this case, you can try to exhaust them to death by depleting their energy; frequent mowing, for example, to cut the tops of dandelions can help exhaust the amount of energy stored below ground. For perennial weeds, you have to dig up the entire root system so rototilling only breaks up the plant and spread the weed; Canada thistle can produce a new plant with a root section as small as a quarter of an inch.

The best way to control weeds is to prevent them in the first place. Get them early, get them often. Try to weed, if possible, on a sunny dry day so that the weeds you pull will dry out and die. We also can’t stress enough the importance of having a good thick layer of mulch, whether bark, compost or a mixture of both, to suppress weeds. Mulches also conserve soil moisture and reduces soil erosion. A good mulch applied annually is about the easiest thing you can do to keep weeds at bay. Mulching and regular monthly maintenance are two ways we control weeds organically for our clients. Contact us to find out more about our maintenance services.

For years, gardeners had to wait until late spring to get their hands on some of the most prized vegetables starts in Seattle. Now eager gardeners can get a jumpstart on an amazing selection of vegetable starts, perennials and herbs at Seattle Tilth’s Early Spring Edible Plant Sale on March 20. The sale features plants that are proven performers in the Northwest, including ‘green globe’ artichoke, pac choi, fennel, lettuce, beets, cabbage, cauliflower, chard, and eight kinds of broccoli such as the very funky-looking Romanesco (pictured below). I’ve had great success with many of the vegetable plants I’ve bought from Tilth, and count on the wide selection of Tilth tomatoes, melons and other veggies to add variety to my garden.

‘Romanesco’

The event takes place Saturday, March 20 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Magnuson Park, Hangar 30, 6310 NE 74th Street (off Sandpoint Way NW).

Seattle Tilth is also looking for volunteers to help with the sale. I’ve helped out in the previous two years. If you’re interested in volunteering, sign up online. The organization will also hold its annual May sale on May 1-2 as well as an additional summer veggies sale on May 22. All proceeds go to support the group’s educational programs.

1. This is a good month to prune your roses to remove diseased canes, stimulate growth and encourage the best blooms. Make sure you have good clippers and gloves. A small pruning saw is helpful to cut out old canes.

2. March is also a great time to move trees and shrubs — when the plants are dormant and haven’t leafed. You want to minimize the amount of stress to the trees. Read more from WSU expert Mary Robson on how to transplant trees and shrubs successfully.

3. Consider getting your soil tested for heavy metals, pH, soil texture and organic matter. It’s a good way to help determine and prevent growing problems in your garden. By knowing what’s in your soil, you not only improve the nutritional balance but help reduce fertilizer use. You should get your soil tested every two or three years. Many local Master Gardeners like to send their soil samples to the University of Massachusetts to get them tested. A simple pH test cost about $5, while a general soil test runs about $9.

4. Plant cool-season crops, such as peas and lettuce.

5. Consider how you’ll improve your lawn through an organic care program that reduces the use of water, pesticides and fertilizers. Ecoyards can help you thatch, aerate, top dress or overseed your lawn. Give us a call at 206-770-7879 for a consultation.