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. 

Oregon grape, native Pacific Northwest plant. Photo courtesy of heystax via Creative Commons License.

Green Seattle has always been on the forefront of promoting native plants and encouraging the removal of invasive weeds to support a healthier environment. But now, the city is taking it one step further. It is proposing to write such requirements into the city’s building code. Planning officials are in the process of getting public input on potential green code provisions which they say will address climate change.

Apparently nothing is set in stone yet, and the city is taking public input until Aug. 27, 2012. These proposed code revisions could bring major changes in residential and commercial landscapes across the city. The code deals with a number of construction issues, including encouraging building materials to be salvaged and so on. Several provisions in the draft code attempt to create healthier landscapes and encourage water conservation by mandating certain high-efficient irrigation practices and requiring mostly native Western Washington plants be used for new landscapes or those that are replaced. What are your thoughts on these proposed changes?

Specifically, the draft provisions say when you create new vegetated landscapes (or replace an old one), you must submit a plan showing that you’ll remove existing invasive species and “that 75% of all new plantings will be native to Western Washington.” It’s not clear from the draft documents online whether this provision would apply to very large properties or small single-family homes as well. Plants native to this region are better adapted to the local conditions and require less maintenance, water and fertilizers; the city says it wants to create healthier landscapes by removing invasive species and encouraging native plants.

The draft provisions also call for smart irrigation systems that can sense how much rain has fallen, and after about 1/4 inch, have the ability to stop the sprinkler system. It also would require the systems to use certain technology to conserve water, including low precipitation rotary nozzles, sprinkler heads with internal check valves. Landscapes that are greater than 30,000 also have other restrictions, including having a system labeled WaterSense.

Rain barrel. Photo by Ecoyards.

We’ve been enjoying unusually warm, dry and sunny weather in Seattle lately. The lack of rain means it’s a great time to tap your rain barrels to water your plants. Most of you know that rain barrels are used to catch rain water and store it for later use. We get a lot of questions about rain barrels from customers, so we’ve tackled a couple of them here.

Can I use my rain barrel water for vegetables? Unless you get your water tested, there’s really no way to know for certain whether the water that runs off your rooftop and into gutters and then your rain barrel is completely safe for edible plants. The water could contain heavy metals (depending on what’s in those roof shingles), or fecal coliform and other bacteria from bird or other wildlife droppings. The safest bet is to use the water for non-edible plants only. If you must use the water on vegetables (depending on your personal comfort level), here are some tips: water close to the ground through a drip system; keep the water in the soil and away from fruits, veggies or foliage; avoid watering lettuce or other plants that are grow close to the ground; and always thoroughly wash your produce with drinkable water before eating. The city of Seattle’s Rain Barrel Guide recommends not using rainwater for plants if your roof is made of copper, or if it has wooden shingles treated with any chemical such as chromated copper arsenate to make them resistant to algae, moss or lichen.

How do I prevent overflows during storms? Install an overflow hose adapter, which allows water to flow through a small hose and drain to a nearby lawn or landscape bed. Make sure you direct it away from a basement or your foundation.

How much water can I actually collect from my roof? A general rule of thumb says that you can catch about 600 gallons of water for every 1 inch of rainfall on a 1,000 square foot roof. If you want to do your own math, the city of Seattle has a good formula in its rain barrel guide to help you out.

Annual bluegrass

If you take a close look at your lawn, you’re likely to find one of the most common weeds around: annual bluegrass, or poa annua. Annual bluegrass can cause headaches for golf fairway managers and homeowners who desire a smooth, manicured lawn. There are many types of annual bluegrass, both annual and perennial. This weed starts germinating around late summer, and is extremely difficult to control because it sends out lots and lots of seeds. It forms fibrous roots, dense clumps and can grow pretty tall, over a foot in height.

It’s difficult to control to remove, because it grows in turf, and can often outcompete other warm-season grass seeds. Poa tends to thrive when you mow your lawn too short, when you water lightly and too often and when you overfertilize. So the best way to control annual bluegrass is to keep a healthy turf. Washington State University Extension recommends maintaining a healthy turf area to prevent weed establishment, cultivation (tilling or hoeing to eliminate plants), hand pulling weeds, and careful digging as select non-chemical management options as your first choice.

August is a good month to review ways to conserve water in the Seattle landscape. Despite our reputation for rain, summers in Seattle can be extremely dry. During summer months, the city of Seattle (and others in growing populations) tiers its water rates, which means the more you use, the more it costs. So there’s incentive to save money by saving water. Here are some ways to conserve water in your landscape:

Evergreen huckleberry. Photo by Ecoyards.

Pick drought-tolerant or low-maintenance plants. Rosemary, oregano, lavender, sage and other herbs are some obvious choices, but they’re certainly not the only ones. Consider beautiful woody shrubs such as viburnum or the strawberry tree, which has glossy green foliage, white flowers and red berries; flowering perennials such as astilbe and penstemon; or edible fruiting plants like the native evergreen huckleberry. Take a tour of the Waterwise Garden at the Bellevue Botanical Garden to check out more ideas. You’ll be amazed at how lush and beautiful a garden can be while still conserving water and reducing the need for fertilizers and chemicals. Now is a good time to start thinking about what you might want to plant in the fall.

Install an efficient sprinkler system. We’ve written before about how a smart sprinkler system can save you time and money. It can prevent sprinkler overspray and other water problems, such watering too much or too little. Ecoyards has been working with customers get water rebates from the city of Seattle by installing smart, water-saving sprinkler systems. Read more about how we helped one customer get $480 in irrigation rebates earlier this year. If you’re not ready for a sprinkler system, or you have a much smaller area that needs watering, consider a drip irrigation system. A drip system saves water because by slowly applying it directly to a plant roots. If you do water by traditional garden hose, try to do so early in the morning or later in the evening to avoid water evaporation. The city of Seattle has a lot of great resources to help you save water.

Brown snail introduced from France in 1850s as food.  Photos by Ecoyards.

I had the unpleasant task this morning of hand-picking about a dozen snails from my garden in Seattle. It seems like these little hungry creatures multiplied overnight, but in reality I’ve ignored my garden during these busy summer weeks and allowed the perfect conditions for the mollusks to grow. I left plenty of damp, hiding spots for them, and plenty of overhanging weeds; for example, I left a tarp in one corner of the garden, which provided perfect cover for the snails to grow and I’m growing plants they particularly love.

Common brown garden snails, otherwise known as Cornu aspersum or Helix aspersa) are a menace because they feast on both living and decaying plants, and they grow rapidly. Plus they’re kind of slimy and gross. Brown snails were brought to California in the 1850s by the French as food (yum, escargots). They love young tender shoots and seedlings, and herbaceous plants that grow close to the ground (strawberries, artichokes, tomatoes). They also like to eat lettuce, marigolds, dahlia, beans, basil, and other veggies. They don’t like woody ornamental plants, such as lavender, rosemary, sage, geraniums, begonias and nasturtiums.

Snail’s mucus.

OK, so what can you do when you’re overrun by snails? Hand-pick them off your plants, fences and walls, and crush them. (This morning I threw them into a garbage bag, and tossed a few into the street for the birds). Hand-picking isn’t the most appealing method for those pest-adverse gardeners, but it really is the easiest and weirdly satisfying. In the past I’ve also tried trapping snails and slugs by putting out a little container of beer at ground level; I’ve never found beer-trapping to be that effective, but others report otherwise. You could also use a little sugar water and yeast to get the same effect. Your container should be deep enough so that snails don’t just crawl out of the sides. (There are plenty of YouTube videos describing how to make one of these beer traps). The experts at the University of California say such traps aren’t very effective for the amount of time it requires; you have to constantly replenish the beer (or other trapping liquid) and they only draw the pests within a few feet of the container.

If hand-picking and beer-trapping aren’t for you, studies have shown that copper barriers can work in repelling snails from containers and raised beds. Supposedly the copper works because the copper reacts with a snail’s slime and effectively “shocks” it and messes up its nervous system. You can wrap copper foil around a tree trunk or planting boxes to keep the mollusks away. If you use these barriers on planting boxes or raised beds, make sure you don’t have any snails or snail eggs inside the container before installing the barrier; one friend discovered that her copper barrier had trapped snails inside her raised bed.

Plenty of garden stores also sell snail baits that are toxic to snails, but the ones containing metaldehyde are also poisonous to cats and dogs. There are some baits containing iron phosphate (i.e. Sluggo) that are safe around children and wildlife. Read the directions carefully and time the use properly (they’re usually not as effective during very hot, very cold or very dry times of the year).

My take-away from this morning’s snail hand-picking session is to do a better job of keeping my garden clean. I’ll try to remove  boards, weedy areas, stones, branches close to the ground where snails thrive. Unfortunately, my vegetable garden is located close to our fence and garbage cans, when boxes and such tend to pile up. Inevitably, snails will come even if you keep a clean garden, so hand-picking will be just another routine.

The Ecoyards grandparents were in town recently from Michigan, so we decided to take them for a visit to The Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island. There are a lot of wonderful gardens in the Puget Sound area, but this is an impressive 150 acres of beautifully, meticulously landscaped grounds. There’s also a lot of see, so give yourself several hours to wander around and explore the Japanese garden, the moss garden, the French country-style estate home and the reflection pool.

Our toddler had a blast, touching moss-covered rocks, running along wooded paths, checking out the waterfalls and trying to find ducks and geese in the pond. We were impressed by the magnificent and massive rhododendrons that were in bloom, by the woodlands filled with native Northwest plants such as oxalis, viburnum and western azaleas.

Here are a few photos we took on our tour:

A lush carpet of native oxalis.

Rhododendrons in full bloom.

The former Bloedel estate home, now the visitor center. .

Photo by Ecoyards

It’s a sure sign of spring when you can spot the explosion of white and pale pink blossoms on cherry trees throughout the Northwest. There are no shortage of places to view cherry blossoms, which are in their prime from about late March into early April. The University of Washington’s Quad is one of the many places where you can walk under a canopy of pink and white blossoms. The 31 Yoshino cherry trees that line the campus quad start blooming in late March and go for about three weeks. According to the UW, the Washington Park Arboretum bought and planted these Yoshino cherry trees around 1939. In the early 1960s, they were brought to the UW campus when State Route 520 was built.

If you’re looking to plant ornamental cherry trees at your home,  Yoshino cherry is one of the best bets for the Seattle area. Yoshino cherry, or prunus yedeoensis, is a Great Plant Pick, which means it is well-suited for growing in the Seattle area. Once established, the plant is drought tolerant. It’s also disease resistant and loves our cool, wet weather. The tree develops golden yellow and orange colors in the fall. It is originally from Japan and has been widely planted in the U.S., including in Washington, D.C. Great Plant Picks also recommends three other ornamental cherry tree varieties that do well in the Seattle area, including Akebono, Japanese Flowering Cherry and Cornelian Cherry.

The exchange of cherry trees between Japan and Washington, D.C., has a long and interesting history _ with a Seattle connection. In 1909, First Lady Helen Taft backed the idea of planting cherry trees in the nation’s capital, according to this National Park Service timeline. That year, Japan donated 2,000 trees to Washington to be planted along the Potomac River. The trees were shipped from Japan through Seattle on Dec. 10, 1909. When they arrived in D.C., agricultural inspectors discovered that they were infested with insects and nematodes, and President Taft agreed to have them burned to protect American growers. The NPS timeline shows that in 1912, Japan donated another 3,020 trees to D.C.; again they were shipped through Seattle and included about 1,800 Yoshino cherry trees, as well as other varieties. Those 1912 Yoshino cherry and trees propagated from that stock still draw thousands of visitors to D.C. each spring. Over the years, cuttings were taken from those 1912 trees to help preserve the tree’s genetic lineage; some were even sent back to Japan to help maintain the tree’s lineage in that country. Yoshino cherry trees are the predominant cherry blossom tree found in D.C., mainly along the tidal basin.

Spring is here, and that means it’s time to give your lawn a healthy, natural boost by aerating, over-seeding, and top-dressing. This triple-combination lawn practice is a key way to maintain a natural, organic lawn. Doing this once every couple years will help you maintain a green healthy lawn without the use of pesticides.

Some companies may only aerate your lawn, but we feel your lawn benefits most when you also over-seed (spread grass seed) and top-dress (spread a thin layer of compost over your lawn). Here’s how and why we do it:

First, we aerate your lawn. Why aerate? Over time, lawns become compacted from heavy use; each time your pets, kids and others walk across or play on the lawn, all that foot traffic presses down on the soil, making it harder for the grass roots to take up water and other nutrients. That greatly reduces air pockets in your soil. Grass (and other roots) require oxygen to grow and absorb nutrients and water. When we aerate your lawn, we use a mechanical aerator that pulls out small plugs of soil from the lawn about one to two inches in length. This creates little air pockets that allow water, fertilizers and other nutrients to move to the root zone more easily. These air pockets improve the lawn’s ability to absorb rain and prevents fertilizers from running off the lawn surface. The soil plugs are left on the lawn, because they’ll eventually break down and work back into the soil.

Second, we over-seed your lawn, which means we’ll spread a Northwest blend of grass seed over your lawn to help fill in bare patches. Spring is a good time to aerate, over-seed and top-dress because weather is important. Grass seed needs roughly 60F temps to germinate. Put it down too early in the winter and it just rots or gets eaten by birds. Put it down too late in the summer and you’ll have to baby-sit it with a sprinkler to keep it from drying out.

Finally, we top-dress the lawn, which involves spreading a thin layer of compost on top of your lawn. Compost is great for building healthy soil in landscape and garden beds; the same is true for your lawn. Healthy lawns require healthy soil. We’ll rake a thin layer of compost over your lawn (with some filling the aeration holes), where it will gradually move to the soil below the grass. Top-dressing with compost helps soils use fertilizer more efficiently and adds nutrients. It’s a good idea to top-dress your lawn once a year to restore soil humus.

Contact us today to setup a consultation if you’d like help with lawn renovation services.

Looking for ways to cut down on our heating costs, we recently took advantage of a Seattle City Light home energy audit program for our 1952 West Seattle home. For $95 (the utility pays about $305), you can hire a home-energy auditor to come to your home, assess your energy performance, and give you tips on how to weatherize your home, make the building more energy efficient and reduce your carbon footprint. The program is open to all Seattle City Light customers living in single-family homes. 

Revolution Green Power energy auditor

When City Light first started doing energy audits, the audits were only available in certain neighborhoods at certain times, and the process seemed a bit more complicated than it is today. Now, the audits are available to anyone who wants one, and signing up couldn’t be simpler. Here’s how to do it.

1. Sign up by filling out the form on the city’s website. You’ll get an account and, if you qualify, a coupon code number. [TIP: If you live within Seattle city limits and think you’ll likely do some major energy updating, a program called Community Power Works offers rebates and low-interest community loans to pay for those upgrades. You can sign up with CPW and then get your energy audit completed; we went through the City Light website first and discovered, it’s OK, too, to sign up for the energy audit through the city’s website and then get into the CPW program later].

2. Once you have your coupon number, call up one of the city’s pre-qualified home energy auditors and arrange to get your audit done. We hired Revolution Green Power after reading Lisa Stiffler’s post on Sightline. All the contractors have to meet city requirements.

Revolution Green Power auditor conduction blower door test

3. Schedule an audit. Two workers from Revolution Green Power came to our house, and began finding areas in the house where heat leaked out. We knew there would be plenty of places where heat could escape: through the insulated floors, chimney, even the quaint but seriously outdated mailbox slot. The crew closed all the doors to the house and installed a door blower that pulls the air out of the house, allowing them to find all the areas where air leaks out. They also gave us free compact fluorescent bulbs, courtesy of Seattle City Light, and changed out all bulbs where we hadn’t already done so. They told us that we should consider sealing our ducts, or consider switching from our grossly outdated oil furnace and get a ductless heat pump.

4. Get energy performance scorecard. Several days after the home visit, our detailed energy analysis was available for viewing online. The scorecard gives you an energy score, as well as what that means in terms energy costs. For us, that meant energy costs of $1,350/year. We fell well below the Seattle average in energy score and carbon score, mostly because the house is so small. The most important detail: with the recommended upgrades we could cut our energy score and costs by more than half.

5. Read energy analysis and decide on energy upgrades. More useful than the report card was the energy analysis that told us, in great detail, what was working and what wasn’t in terms of energy efficiency. It prioritized what we needed to do first that would get us the most bang for our buck and what it would cost. Armed with the report, we are now in the process of getting contractor bids on a couple of services, including insulating our floors/crawl space and installing a ductless heat pump. Some of the smaller stuff, like plugging holes, we’ll be adding to our weekend to-do lists.