How to Search for Science-Based Gardening Advice

Agricola’s search page. In the course of writing our books and this blog we’ve had to deal with a lot of thorny gardening questions such as the effectiveness of double digging, the toxicity of persimmons, compost tea, lasagna gardening and how to mulch to name just a few. While the internet is an amazing tool, the number of conflicting commercial interests, biases and crazy talk in the eGardening world can make it difficult to, as Mark Twain put...

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Happy Cranksgiving

...ent’s new closing guidelines and came to the conclusion that they are just making stuff up on the fly. Some things are open and some closed and it’s obvious that the decisions aren’t based on any research since their probably isn’t any. When you see a multi page list of directions for “model airplane facilities” you know they are winging it. Again, the solution is simple. In a surge like we’re having right now, close everything except what we need...

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Bees will love your Coyote Brush Hedge

...s about coyote brush is that it is sort of ho-hum in appearance but can be used to provide a background to the more showy native plants. I never even thought about how its small, sturdy, bright green, evergreen leaves make it a perfect hedge plant. So, the lesson here is that you can have a more formal/tidy/traditional garden, and still serve the pollinators– as long as you lay off the clippers for a couple of months in the summer and let the hedg...

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Getting started with worms

...to Oregon State Extension Services. Our favorite resources: It would take pages and pages for us to tell you how to make and maintain a worm bin, or explain the general amazingness of worms, and this information is already freely available on the Internet. So for further instruction, we’d point you to the following sources: Oregon State Extension Services, Composting with Worms. Mentioned above, it not only tells you how to make a plastic bin, bu...

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Breadbaking (Level 1) Class at the Ecology Center

...uan Capistrano on Saturday February 8th. To sign up head over to the event page. Here’s the 411: Ditch the preservatives and plastic wrap. Join us and learn how to make homemade, all-natural bread from scratch. Take home fresh and ready-to-bake dough! There was a time in the not-so distant past that the smell of freshly baked bread permeated households everywhere. Let’s revert to those wholesome days and make a difference. In this hands-on worksho...

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