Blog
June 26, 2025 Mulch Madness It’s my goal to cover bare soil at FECO, both in the garden beds and in the tree guilds. You can see a variety of living and non-living mulches at FECO. See photos of of various plants and other materials: Hazelnut shells, early-flowering borage (Trachystemon orientalis), straw, leaves, prunings and […]
Path Project Complete
August 27, 2015 Building our crushed rock path was a sizeable effort with a sizeable payback: an improvement in both the appearance and functionality of the orchard. Path construction was the biggest volunteer effort for FECO to date. Seventeen hard-working volunteers donated a total of 117 hours moving 40 cubic yards of gravel last Saturday […]
State Of The Onion Address
July 18, 2015 On June 15, after four years of lugging water, we turned on a spigot. Wow! The sound of water rushing into a bucket; it actually took some getting used to! What a wonderful resource, especially with this record hot and dry summer. Our cisterns were installed just after the big February storms […]
Control Freaks Wanted
June 14, 2015 Choose your battles. Focus on the invasive plants that damage the environment! That was the advice given us by Karen Peterson, King County Noxious Weed Specialist, who awed us with her excellent presentation on invasive plants last Saturday. Karen explained that some plants are a problem statewide but others are a problem […]
Cisterns Are Doin’ It For Themselves
April 18, 2015 Our two new Premier 1,535 gallon cisterns are installed and ready for a rain dance. The 200 square foot shed roof will channel enough water into those tanks to sustain three times the vegetation that we currently water. Once we chose the cistern size, the design of the shed rebuild followed. The […]
Too Busy To Blog
February 21, 2015 The shed remodel, designed and built by FECO volunteers, is 99 percent finished. This is the first of four infrastructure projects slated to be completed in 2105. We will tell the shed story with a few photos. Suffice it to say, it took more hours than we expected. However, we learned a […]
A Nail For All Seasons
December 18, 2014 “NUMBER 73!” That’s me. I plop down on a swivel stool at , across the counter from Byron, one of Dunn’s helpful project managers. This is the third time we meet to make changes to the material’s quote for the shed remodel. How patient he is. We are nearing the end of […]
Ready To Plow Ahead
November 14, 2014 Jump on the sled and slide down an exciting path of learning, sharing, building and beautifying. We have entered our construction phase! (View the final project design on the Library Page to see what’s coming your way.) We now have everything we need: A lease from WSDOT, giving us a lot of […]
CIDER FEST – Celebrate the Harvest Season
October 15, 2014 We accomplished so much but let’s focus on the harvest! Apples, pears, honeyberries, raspberries, strawberries and blueberries took center stage. By the end of April all fruit trees, but for the William’s Pride, had flowered nicely. The Willam’s Pride was the only tree to offer fruit last year and it has slight […]
Space To GROW
September 17, 2014 We have plenty of space to grow more plants in the orchard! We could spend a lot of money purchasing all the berry bushes and companion plants we need to fill the tree guilds and planting beds. Instead, we are propagating our own plants, mostly from cuttings and division. New plants, new […]
The Next Generation of Gardeners
August 12, 2014 Once a week, about 22 kids march down NE 60th to help out at the orchard. They are second and third-graders from Kids Co. at McDonald Elementary. Vanessa is one of five adults accompanying them and these counselors control the swarm with impressive skills. “Clap once if you can hear me!” Vanessa […]