Having a piece of greenhouse plastic or a gauzy sheet of what’s called Reemay ( aka floating row cover) around may make the difference between vibrant, green plants that survive a frost and blackened, sickly things that don’t. If you’re working the edges of the season, pushing the limits of cool-season crops, trying to hasten […]
Author Archives: Marc Boucher-Colbert
Garden Pantry Stock Up #2: Pea and Bean Innoculant
I get a package or two of this “magic fairy dust” as I like to call it, and keep it stored in a cool, dark place for the season. When you plant peas or beans, simply wet the seed prior to planting (if you’re like me, you will soak your seed overnight prior to planting […]
Garden Pantry Stock Up #1: Sluggo
I use this organic slug control like I use salt and pepper. In the spring and fall especially (both wet but still eminently plantable seasons in the Pacific Northwest), I’ll sprinkle these curious little white granules over freshly-planted beds of lettuce and other greens then rest easy knowing the slimy marauders will have been kept […]
Garden as Pantry: Stock Up on the Essentials
You know the feeling of getting hit with inspiration in the kitchen, only to find out you’re lacking a key ingredient which you thought was in the pantry? I mean you wouldn’t have even gotten a bit excited about cooking Indian if you knew you were out of Basmati rice, and that Greek salad wouldn’t […]
7 Late-Winter, Indoor, Garden To-Dos
In the Pacific Northwest where I garden, January and February used to be predictably rainy months where temps would hover in the 30s and 40s and generally it was miserable to be outside, so there was much incentive to do one’s indoor garden work. While it is still a great month to attend to many […]
Tool Drool – A Revolutionary Twist on Composting
Though I am known to enthuse from time to time about a useful or well-designed garden tool, rare would be my application of the word “revolutionary” to any garden utensil. It would require both an unlikely synthesis of simplicity and functionality with the potential to mentally reconfigure an otherwise tedious garden labor. There might even […]
Show Some Fall Hustle
Where once there was a cat’s-ear-infested lawn, now there are three new beds. It’s fall, you’ve been working hard all summer, and it feels like it’s time to kick back and take a break. That works for us here in the Pacific NW because usually by early October, we’ve gotten some rain, things have […]
Book Recommendation: Seeds by Thor Hanson
Summer’s almost here and that means reading time (if you’re not too busy gardening). Let me suggest to you, if you haven’t already gotten your hands on it, the recently-published, simply-titled Seeds by ecologist Thor Hanson. I spend a lot of time thinking about and handling seeds, and yet after reading this book I realized […]
How to Best Use Yesterday’s News
Like so many things in gardening and in life, I have come late to many wonderful ideas. And yet I give thanks for having stumbled upon them, realizing, in the words of the Chinese proverb, that although the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the next best time is now. The […]
Herb-Powered Salads
No one said that salads had to be mostly lettuce, but that ‘s the message I somehow absorbed during my life as a culinary being….received wisdom that I’ve never really much challenged. Oh, I’ve wandered a bit into cabbage salads and endive salads, but the idea is pretty much the same: something large and leafy […]