General Gardening
Ben Smith
Compost and Fertilizer - A Boring But Necessary ...

It pains me to see customers spending hundreds of dollars on new plants and simultaneously refusing to spend a few more on a bag or two of compost and a box of starter fertilizer.  These two items are not unnecessary “add-ons” that the retailer is just trying to add to the sale, they are critical components of a successful transplanting process - or as I like to refer to them as “plant insurance”.  Unless you have phenomenal soil, you should always add compost and starter fertilizers when you are planting new plants.  Here is why…

Compost and Fertilizer - A Boring But Necessary Topic
Summer Gardening
Ben Smith
The Secrets Of Proper Summer Watering

Summer watering is inevitable in the northwest if we want to keep our landscapes green and healthy…

The Secrets Of Proper Summer Watering

helianthus

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Snippin' And Clippin'

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Snippin' And Clippin'

If your garden is anything like mine, then you are probably busy watering, staking, checking for bugs and diseases, harvesting veggies and fruits and bouquets of flowers, and planting - at least those are the things that we all should be doing in August if we want to call ourselves gardeners.  I don’t think anyone ever manages to accomplish all the gardening chores they set out to do, but we should at least give it the old college try.  Just for fun, here are some of the things I have been doing in my garden…

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Make Your Garden Look “Hellaciously Good” With Heleniums, Helianthus, AND Heliopsis

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Make Your Garden Look “Hellaciously Good” With Heleniums, Helianthus, AND Heliopsis

We are moving into the later part of summer when all of the spring and early summer perennials have finished up and it is time for those mid to late summer bloomers to take front stage.  Keeping the show going in our gardens can be tricky, especially if we are prone to only do our shopping in the spring months and focus on what is in color at that time…

Latest post from Trevor Cameron,  “The Golfing Gardener”:

Featured
Explore the World of Itoh Peonies

During the months of May and June one of the all-time favorite plants of local gardeners, the peony, is bursting into bloom.  There are many excellent peonies available to utilize in our landscapes; including herbaceous cottage types in all sorts of colors (and varying fragrances) and larger growing tree peonies too.  I would never scold anyone for growing either of these types (since I do as well), but I want to bring attention to another fabulous peony option… what is known as the intersectional or Itoh Peony.

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