The bulb shop is now stocked with my carefully curated collection of spring-flowering bulbs you can plant this fall. There is a story of obsession behind almost everything in the East Portland Plant Club shop. The flowering bulbs are the result of my obsession with one question: What blooms first? Late one winter a few years ago, my best friend and I were fretting about how few plants were blooming in our yards, just as queen bumble bees were waking up. I went down a rabbit h

Sheet mulching with cardboard and arborist wood chips for garden paths. "Should I put cardboard over the weeds?" The answer is...it depends. The best method depends entirely on what you want the space to become. First, Decide What You're Going to Grow Before deciding how to kill your lawn, answer this question: What do you want this area to look like in three years? A Pacific Northwest native planting? A vegetable garden? A wildflower meadow? An orchard? A mixed ornamental be

It hit 89 degrees the day I started this post (today it's a perfect 70-something), and while the last thing I was thinking while munching on the first cucumber from the garden is the February hunger gap, I suddenly realized, it's time to start thinking about it. Coming from Maryland, where we grew one enormous garden in the spring and summer, then ate what we canned, froze, and stored all winter, the idea of harvesting fresh vegetables year-round still feels like magic. The a

Spring is always a busy season for gardeners, but my landmate Emily outdid herself this year. If you have had a chance to visit, you no doubt admired Emily's work. She is an artist and a gardener — a garden artist. She can spot shot weed from 15' away, build garden structures with what's on hand, and has decades of experience growing food in Oregon. We are going to have quite the harvest this year thanks to her efforts this spring. Frog Pond Installation One day in Februar

for Portland, Oregon Making a Garden Buzz When I first started growing vegetables, I planted in rows and blocks and added sunflowers and marigolds to attract pollinators and deter pests, and one narrow row of wildflowers. My garden still had pests. Not a lot, but aphids were problematic enough that I stopped growing brassicas in warm months and embraced overwintering broccoli, cabbage, and kale. Eight years ago, I began shifting my focus, adding fruit trees, shrubs, herbs, an

I've put together a sowing planner for 2026 based on the seed catalog at East PDX Plant Club. You can download a copy to modify and save for your use. Spring Sowing and Fall & Overwinter Sowing tabs. Each crop has: what to sow and when, best sow time (spring vs. fall vs. both, and which is primary), sowing rationale, succession interval and notes, weeks to transplant, and date columns where you enter your sow date and the transplant and expected harvest dates calculate aut

The Case for Pacific Rim Vegetables in the PNW When I moved to Portland from Maryland in 1996, I did what any reasonable person does: I planted the vegetables I grew up with. Part of the pantry my grandmother, Anna Bell Doll Musser, put up in circa 1942. Tomatoes. Bell peppers. Broccoli. Green beans. Big fruiting crops meant to ripen all at once, because that's how gardening worked where I came from. My father grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania and he and my mom gardened inten

A practical guide to organic amendments, rooted in 23 years of East Portland gardening. In the winter of 2002–2003, I double-dug ten garden beds by hand in my front yard. I was young and energetic, and would dig for an hour every morning before heading to work. I joked that my garden was my " home gym." Nine beds were 4 by 25 feet, in neat rows separated by paths just wide enough for a wheelbarrow. The tenth ran perpendicular to the rows and was two feet wide and fifty feet

Buried treasure, better flavor, and varieties you can't buy anywhere. There's a moment in late summer when you push a garden fork into the soil next to a dying potato vine, lift, and a cluster of tubers comes tumbling out of the ground. It never gets old. Potatoes are one of the few vegetables where the harvest is genuinely a surprise; you planted something small and unremarkable, and now you're pulling up a pile of gold, or purple, or rose-red, depending on what you grew. It

The Woman Who Looked at Soil and Changed Everything A few weeks ago, I started pulling together notes for this post as a follow-up to my Oregon geology piece and an excuse to revisit the work of a scientist who has shaped how I garden for the better part of three decades. I'd been listening to interviews, rereading old papers and lectures, and learning anew, from the world’s foremost soil biologist, Elaine Ingham. Elaine Ingham with her ever-present microscope. I found my wa

Because Future You Will Thank You My April 25, 2018, harvest If you’ve ever wandered out to your garden in early spring and wished something, anything , was ready to harvest, asparagus is the plant that answers your quiet plea. It’s the first vegetable to rise, ready to eat, when the rest of the garden is still rubbing sleep from its eyes. The best time to plant asparagus? Two years ago. You would be harvesting spears in six weeks. The second-best time? March 2026 . That me

Oregon’s soils were assembled in layers, by collision, lava, and water, and they’re still young by soil standards. Understanding the geologic history of the PNW is as important as knowing your hardiness zone when deciding what grows well here and why. Oregon Was Built in Pieces The Missoula Floods are well known and impacted our soil, but that was the only the most recent major episode in Oregon’s geologic past. Over millions of years, chunks of ocean floor, volcanic islands,

Winter sowing containers need to survive months outdoors through rain, freezing, thawing, sun, and neglect. Below is a practical guide to what works best and why some common suggestions can cause problems. The Best Containers for Winter Sowing Rigid Nursery Pots, Trays, and Flats (Plastic) These are the containers professional growers use, for many good reasons. They: Hold their shape when wet and frozen Drain consistently Allow oxygen to reach roots Can be reused for many ye

Winter sowing is the most reliable method for starting native seeds. At East Portland Plant Club, native meadow seed packs contain the right amount of seed to cover one square foot of meadow when grown in clusters. This system eliminates the guesswork of traditional seed packets, reducing seed cost and waste. It also makes winter sowing incredibly simple: If you want a 10-square-foot meadow , buy 10 seed packs. If your hellstrip is 2' × 20' (40 square feet) , buy 40 packs. T

Winter sowing refers to sowing seeds in pots during the winter, covering the pots with a transparent lid, and leaving them outdoors, unprotected from the cold. It is a technique that gardeners have used for all manner of flower and vegetable seeds, and it is especially well-suited for starting natives from seed. Benefits of winter sowing native seeds The biggest benefit of winter sowing in pots, compared to direct sowing, is how dramatically more successful it is. Habitat re

When I began growing and studying PNW natives, I noticed patterns in the colors of flowers over the seasons. Spring starts out with white, yellow, and blue flowers, with one lone red flower and orange flower. In April, the colors become more intense, with lots of pinks and blues, and still some white flowers. May bloomers are more deeply colored still, purple, orange, and magenta dominate, and no white flowers. In June, even more intense pink, purple, orange, and golden yello

Every fall, gardeners look forward to planting alliums: namely, garlic, shallot, and the many colorful varieties of flowering alliums,...

The practice of planting soil-enriching crops between harvests is ancient and practiced throughout the world. Chinese manuscripts describe intricate crop rotations, intercropping, and the use of green manure. In Greece and Rome, farmers sowed clover and vetch between rows of vines and olives to restore fertility, and by the 1700s, European farmers were using lupines and peas to rejuvenate sandy or exhausted soils. These crops crossed the Atlantic with settlers and became stap

How Much Compost, Mulch, or Chips? It’s that time of year again: time to spread compost on the beds, top off the mulch, and refresh the...

The idea of planting crops to feed the soil is ancient. As early as 6000 B.C., farmers in Greece, Rome, China, and the Middle East grew legumes between harvests to restore fertility. By the 1700s, Northern European farmers were experimenting with lupines to improve poor, sandy soils, and by the mid-1800s, these European cover crops had become a part of farming in the US. Modern gardeners are rediscovering what our ancestors knew: keeping living roots in the soil protects it f