Blog
March 26, 2024 Geurrilla gardening is an ancient practice that began centuries ago when property became a commodity, versus a community resource. It is practiced all over the world! These days, you can ask permission to plant on a site or you can just do it and hope that you or your plants don’t go […]
Turn over a new leaf – if you still have one!
August 22, 2021 Our June heat wave hit just after the summer solstice, precisely when the days are the longest of the year. Double whammy! Record high temperatures in June beat our plants to the max. Ouch! We all witnessed the most obvious punishment, sun scald. What’s a plant to do? The stomata pores of […]
Pruning Points
July 25, 2021 Last week Ann saw a T-shirt with printed words, “I’m pretty sure I am not going to figure it out.” Sounds like me and pruning! I have been watching Ingela masterfully craft the orchard fruit trees for 10 years but, this week, it was I who grasped the pole pruner and reverently […]
Tried-and-True Tomato Trellising Technique
June 23, 2021 The Florida weave! Is it a type of shawl? A new hair style? Some kind of line dance? No. The Florida weave is used widely and is well thought of as a tomato-trellising technique. Rutgers has a fine explanation online. Sue’s tomato plants get big and weigh a ton. In the past […]
The Handy Dande
May 19, 2021 Dandelion – Taraxacum officinale – origin from Greek words meaning ‘disorder remedy’ – Asteraceae family. How did we ever come to hate dandelions? Well, who knows. In any case, Europeans thought them valuable enough to tote them to the New World in the 1600’s. In ancient times, the plant was valued as […]
You Need This Kind of Friend
April 25, 2021 An old pal and I were talking about different kinds of friends. We have friends who challenge us, helping us to be the best we can be. Hopefully, we also have a friend who thinks we are wonderful and that everything we do is amazing. Joan Davis. Everyone needs a friend like […]
Pruners Without Borders
March 15, 2021 FECO volunteers, Reid and Jacob, both well over six feet tall, used their height last summer to glean a few figs from a tree in Green Lake Park. They agreed that the tree needed care. This spring, Reid asked me if I might be interested in helping them prune the tree. I […]
Is Anything Happening in the Winter? Don’t yawn yet!
February 16, 2021 “Do ya need any help in the winter?” Visitors stop us from our work and ask this question, with some frequency. My response is, “Yes! But the winter tasks are not very sexy.” How lucky are we. During these winter months, an energetic group of volunteers kept their shoulder to the plow. […]
Find a Stone that Speaks to You: The Magic of Nature in Times of Crisis
January 12, 2021 I thought to blog about Horticulture Therapy, but the topic is sizeable. Instead, I chose to highlight two well-known authors who wrote about the therapeutic benefit of stones. Psychiatrist Harold Searles was troubled by the extent to which technology was interfering with people’s ability to relate to nature. “Over recent decades we […]
The Legacies of Five Pioneer Volunteers
December 1, 2020 One speaker, from a recent soil-related Conference of Hawaii Farmers Union (HFUU), declared that he wanted to leave a legacy. He aspired, during his tenure as a farmer, to create as much great soil as he could. Volunteers are needed! Please see our Calendar Page or email freewayestatescommunityorchard@gmail.com Our early volunteers shaped […]
Retirement Planning – Plants in the Spotlight
November 5, 2020 We are excited to introduce Karin Baer, our new intern. Karin is working toward a Urban Agriculture Production Certificate within the Horticulture Program at Edmonds College. She began helping in September and will be with us until the end of the term. Karin worked many years as a nurse practitioner, until 2019, […]