Blog
December 12, 2024 Our Medlar tree exploded with plump fruit this year, enough to share and also cook up a delectable paste. Squish out the seeds (roll them around in your mouth for a tasty bonus) and cook the fruit with a little water and a tiny bit of brown sugar. The fruit is about […]
Your Hori-Hori Could be Harboring Clubroot
November 26, 2019 © 2020 I meet weekly with the DirtLife group at Sound Bio Lab. Other members are scientists who are also interested in soil. We are designing a community-based science project so we surveyed the Seattle P-Patch gardeners, via their listserve. Fifty responded. Gardeners are interested in microbial diversity, effective composting and […]
How to Guard Against Leaf Miners
November 16, 2019 Joan here. I have been volunteering at FECO since the beginning of time. Recently, in my writing class, the instructor charged us to write a set of instructions for how to do something. Here goes! Leaf miner larvae were infesting the Swiss chard I was trying to grow in the FECO raised […]
Are Those Freckles?
October 18, 2019 Not Freckles. Dimples? Not dimples. Bitter pit. It’s a bothersome disorder, common in Honeycrisp apples. In the cells of this apple, there is more air space and more pores than in normal apples. The pits are manifestations of clumps of dead cells. The scanned photo of an apple shows fewer veins in […]
Fall Means Festival!
September 28, 2019 Fall is here! On Saturday, October 12th we will be hosting our 9th annual Cider Fest from 2:00-5:00pm. We invite everyone to visit the orchard and enjoy a free cup of freshly pressed hot apple cider. You’ll have the opportunity to watch the cider making process and even take a turn at […]
The Perfect Fruit Tree Owner
August 29, 2019 McIntosh. My favorite. Most will say you can’t grow a Mac here. Well, there is at least one tree in the Seattle area. Lori Brakken, apple sleuth, drives around and slams on the brakes when she spots any apple tree. She saw a Mac in the Seattle area and called me up. […]
Offerings
July 26, 2019 Whatever we offer to the community, a larger offering comes back, in one way or another. Yesterday morning a teen was sitting cross-legged on the bench, reading a book. She stayed quite awhile. The bench is a small offering to those passing by. But a much more significant offering this year was […]
Pollen in the Wind
mobile phone users-you have to scroll to the very bottom to see the right sidebar information July 2, 2019 I am riding my bike around Wallingford, looking for a couple of big Chestnut (Castanea) trees. I know they are here somewhere. Our lonely Prococe tree needs pollen. I have her male catkins stuck on the […]
Welcome to our Demonstration Garden!
May 14, 2019 DONATIONS PAGE LINK The fruit trees in the orchard this year would amaze anyone. They are striking and flush … with pests. It’s true. Come and allow us to demonstrate all manner of pest infestation plus other unsightly disorders. Last year was a record bounty but, this year, we are counting on […]
Talkin’ Tomatoes
April 16, 2019 I am a tomato addict. One of my favorite memories is arriving in rural southwest Ohio at 6 am after driving straight through from the west coast. We stopped for breakfast at a coffee shop and were served a plate of eggs and fresh picked tomatoes, grown by the owner in his […]
Plant Pathogens – Pasteurize? Sterilize? Sanitize? Boil Everything!
March 26, 2019 Recently, I was watching someone rinse a plastic polyethylene plant-potting container in a bleach solution for reuse. I was pretty sure that pot needed to be thoroughly rinsed of organic matter prior to the bleach rinse. The observation made me think of several reasons why a gardener needs to know how kill […]