Palatino Garden Adventures

The fall equinox in Seattle arrives Tuesday, September 22, just after 5 p.m. Here is what the equinox actually is, why I celebrate it, and the kitchen garden jobs that belong to this week, from the last basil to saving seed, sowing winter greens, and why garlic can still wait.

Cover crops in Seattle come down to two decisions, which seed and how late you can get away with sowing it. Here is the window, the amount per raised bed, and how to cut it down without losing April.

When to fertilize vegetables in Seattle is really two questions, and almost nobody asks the second one. This is the feeding plan I promised: soil temperature, stop signals, and the September window.

I read every booking form from my last two garden tours, and the same Seattle garden problems kept coming back. Tired soil in raised beds, watering once the rain stops, what to do with a bed when the summer crop is finished, growing enough without a yard, what is eating everything, and whether a small city garden returns enough to be worth the trouble. Here is what I tell people about each one.

Accessible raised bed gardening in Seattle starts with one number, how high the bed sits. Here is the waist-high bed I stood in front of in Germany this summer, why my own eight-inch beds are the reason my back complains most evenings, and the heights, reach distances, and path widths I use when a garden has to fit the body using it.

The Seattle drought tolerant plants in my beds got through a summer with no rain since May, and everything else only survived because I watered it daily. Here is the whole walk through my Phinney Ridge garden this week: bed A2 cleared and replanted on a grid for the first time, the kale that grew three feet and starved the beans behind it, an artichoke blooming for the very first time, nasturtiums buried under aphids, and the apples going to waste on sidewalks all over the ne

Your Seattle August garden tasks come down to four things happening at once. There is still time for the fast fall crops if you direct sow this week. There is a basket of cucumbers, peppers, garlic and onions that needs dealing with today, not on some free weekend that never comes. There are mini bouquets hiding in the bolted lettuce and the kale flowers. And there is a compost pile that has been quietly asking for a turn for about three weeks. Here is how all of it looks in

August is the month the kitchen garden asks you to do two things at once, finish the summer and start the Seattle fall garden. Here is what that looked like in my Phinney Ridge beds this week: the brassicas and beets going in for October and November, nine seed companies' worth of packets on the potting bench, the flower bed that is done but not empty, and a three-year elderberry mystery I finally solved by going outside and actually looking. Also the rats, who got every last

It is late June in Phinney Ridge, and the garden has done two things at once. Everything that can climb is climbing, and everything that likes to eat a garden has shown up to do exactly that.

Mid-summer in my Phinney Ridge beds. Here is what I am doing in the Seattle kitchen garden in late June, from starting the fall garden to picking blueberries that actually crop.

Summer walked into Phinney Ridge after a dry, warm spring. Here is what is actually thriving in my Seattle kitchen garden right now, bed by bed, from the berry beds to the heat lovers.