There are many landscape tools homeowners can use to control stormwater runoff, considered the largest source of pollution in Puget Sound. From planting trees to installing a rain garden or large cisterns, you can help minimize the excess rainwater runoff that washes toxic pollutants into Puget Sound each year. Every time it rains, water falling onto roofs, parking lots, driveways or hard-packed soil washes unfiltered into storm drains and directly into our streams, creeks, rivers and sound. The stormwater carries grease, oils, heavy metals, PCBs, flame retardants and other toxic pollutants into waterways. The excess runoff also causes flooding in streets and sewer systems to backup.

What exactly is a rain garden and how do they help pollution? Rain gardens allow you to redirect rain from your roof into a shallow depression that filters, holds and absorbs water. By holding and infiltrating rainwater, rain gardens help protect our waterways and reduce flooding. These gardens can be shaped and sized to fit your yard. They also can be attractive landscape features, filled with native plants or other shrubs, trees and plantings that fit your soil, sun conditions and surroundings.

Typical rain garden layout in Seattle, Ecoyards LLC.

Ecoyards can help you through the entire process, from designing a rain garden to constructing it to helping you maintain it. Our experienced staff will find the best spot for your garden, suggest the best plants for it and recommend ways to maintain it. Rain gardens are ideal for many properties that are fairly level (up to about 5 percent slope). There should be a way for roof or driveway runoff to flow to the rain garden, whether over the yard or through a pipe or rock-filled ditch. We can help you determine where to install the garden and how big it should be.

Ecoyards is a licensed landscape contractor with the city of Seattle’s Rainwise Rebate program. That innovative program will pay most of the cost of installing rain gardens and cisterns for eligible residents in Ballard, depending on how many square feet of roof runoff is controlled. (Check this map for the qualifying area). Residents can get rebates up to $4 per square foot of area that contributes to retaining runoff. The pilot rain garden rebate program was launched earlier this year in the Ballard neighborhood. You must hire a licensed contractor, such as Ecoyards, to do the work; the city isn’t currently giving rebates if homeowners do the work themselves. A Seattle Public Utilities inspector will do a pre- and post-inspection on site, and you must fill out the rebate form and send it in within 90 days of completion. Don’t worry, contact us and we’ll help you figure it out.

As many of you know, the yard waste you put out every week for curbside collection gets recycled into compost at Cedar Grove, one of the largest composting facilities in the U.S. All those twigs, weeds, tree trimmings — along with food scraps — is converted into nutrient-rich compost that feeds your soil and your plants. By recycling your yard waste (and food scraps), you keep all that stuff out of landfills, help prevent the release of methane gas that comes from the decomposition of organic matter, and support King County’s ambitious goal of zero waste by 2030. (Half of what ends ups at the Cedar Grove landfill is stuff that can be recycled, so there’s still work to do).

At Ecoyards, we recycle all our yard waste at one of several composting locations in Seattle or Burien, such as Pacific Topsoils. We haul all pruning debris, tree trimmings, weeds, sod, soil and other materials to be recycled into compost, wood chips or other goods. Nothing goes to waste. We take our used nursery pots to local nurseries or donate them to local groups that need containers for plants.

You could tell by all the freshly-cut lawns this weekend that people were out doing a lot of yard work. As you’re weeding, planting or pruning and have gardening questions that you don’t have the answer to, you can turn to the King County Master Gardeners, a group of volunteers who will help you find the answer.

If you have a burning question that can’t wait until the weekend, try calling the Master Gardener Phone Clinic. The phone number is 206-543-0943, open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday-Friday. Otherwise, take your questions to one of several dozen Master Gardener Clinics around King County. There are several in West Seattle, Burien and White Center. If you don’t know what’s bugging your azalea, not sure what kind of conifer you have in your backyard or want to know what to do about a most lawn, these experts can help.

1. Plant a tree in honor of National Arbor Day, which is April 30.

2. Give your lawn a face-lift by aerating, overdressing and topdressing about every two years. (Read more about how to do so in this blog post). Otherwise fertilize your lawn with a good organic slow-release fertilizer.

3. Mow weekly, removing no more than 1/3 of the blade.

4. Add compost to your vegetables, trees, landscape beds.

5. In the vegetable garden, continue to plant cool season crops, such as lettuce, beets, snap peas, chard, radish, spinach and parsnip.

6. Plant seeds for annuals such as cosmos, asters, marigolds and zinnias.

It goes without saying that trees provide a lot of benefits to the homeowner, but now there’s a way to actually calculate the actual savings in terms of real dollars.

A two-inch thick vine maple (a ubiquitous feature in the Seattle area) provides about $50 in overall benefits, with the bulk of it coming in gains in property value, according to this cool National Tree Benefit Calculator developed by Casey Trees. OK, it’s not meant to be a scientific assessment of the tree’s value, but it’s a simple way to get you to start thinking about the value of a tree planted in the parking strip, in your front yard, or along the street.

What I like about this calculator is it takes into account all the benefits of a tree. There’s the gain in property value from having trees in your front yard — a spectacular specimen tree like a Japanese maple, for example, can help you create curb appeal . Then there’s the tree’s role in curbing stormwater runoff; this calculator notes that a two-inch vine maple intercepts 52 gallons of runoff a year. How? It holds rain on leaves, branches and bark and reducing soil erosion by slowing rainfall before it hits the soil; all that means a little bit less oils, chemicals and other bad stuff washing into the local waterways.

The calculator also takes into account the benefits of air quality (trees absorb pollutants) and energy conservation (planted in the right spot around the house, it can help warm or cool your house during certain times of the year).

As you’re getting ready to plant your garden this summer, consider planting an extra row of lettuce, snap peas, broccoli, spinach or other vegetables for hungry families. The White Center Food Bank welcomes all donations of fruits and vegetables.

The food bank’s Donna Pierce says that produce can be extremely expensive for families trying to get by on very little. She says there’s no such thing as too much produce at the food bank.

The White Center Food Bank accepts food donations Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.. But it’s best to bring fresh produce in either the afternoon before or the morning of distribution days (Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and the third Saturday of each month.

The West Seattle Food Bank also takes donations of fresh produce. You can donate from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday; until 7 p.m. on Wednesdays; and by appointment.

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.

The West Seattle Lions Club is holding its 16th Annual Garden Sale on Friday, April 9 from 5 to 8 p.m. and Saturday, April 10 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

You’ll find more than 100 dahlia tubers, fuchsias, unique rhododendron, tomato plants and more. The event is at the West Seattle Senior Center, 4217 SW Oregon St, Seattle, WA 98116.

Planting camas attracts the native Western bumblebee

The tiny insects that do the bulk of the work to pollinate trees, shrubs and other plants have been in steady decline across the country. But one Seattle project is trying to change that by creating a continuous pathway for native pollinators, including Western bumblebees, orchard mason bees and butterflies.

The Pollinator Pathway project envisions a mile-long stretch along Columbia Street near downtown Seattle where plants friendly to these insects are planted in the strip between the street and sidewalk. On the bookends of the path are two existing green spaces, one at Seattle University and another at a small park called Nora’s Woods. The organization will provide homeowners along the pathway with simple designs and plant lists to create a garden that invites these native pollinators. The gardens would ultimately be maintained by the homeowners or groups that volunteer to take care of them.

We love the idea behind this project. Ecoyards uses native plants whenever possible to provide habitats for native bees, butterflies and birds. Native plants not only attract these pollinating workhorses, but they often require less maintenance, water, and fertilizer. Over time they’ve adapted to our climate and growing conditions, and native insects have come to rely on them for food, shelter and other needs.

The Polllinator Pathway Web site has a wonderful plant list with photographs of both native and non-native plants that attract bees, birds and butterflies. The native plant list includes trillium, deer fern, sword fern and Oregon grape for shade gardens, and nodding onion, lupine, yarrow and tiger lily for sunny gardens.