PLANTWISE

get dirty

Five Things to Do In the Garden This Week: Mid-May

Posted by: Kate Bryant on May 14, 2012 at 11:53AM 1 Comments

Every once in a while, it’s nice to have someone tell you what to do. At least I think so.

Here are five important things to do in the garden this week:

WATER It’s been dry and warm, and it’s going to stay that way for a bit. Traditionally, many established (translation: pot-bound) container plants die during the spring’s first warm spell because we are out of the habit of watering daily. So go check on all your pots! Most container plants need water daily when it’s warm and breezy, especially when they’re pushing out lots of new growth. When watering, make two passes – one initial drenching, and a second pass to really give the water an opportunity to soak in. Also, if you have a new tree (planted within the past 2-3 years), it can surely use a good, deep soaking right now. We have received only one to two inches of water this month so far, and that was over a week ago.

WEED It goes without saying but I’ll say it anyway: we all need to weed. If you prevent weeds from going to seed, you can cut down considerably on the weed seed bank in your soil, which means there’s less to weed next year at this time. Throw seedy debris and perennial weeds into your green yard debris bins. Squishy annual weeds that haven’t gone to seed yet can be composted in your compost pile or bin.

LEAVE BULB FOLIAGE I know it’s tempting to cut or rip out the messy spent foliage of spring bulbs, but doing so will prevent the bulbs from storing nutrients they need to produce next spring’s flowers. Be patient: the foliage will turn dry and wither up within a matter of weeks. And if it’s that obvious, perhaps you can resort to a design solution: plant perennial plants like Oriental poppies, peonies or around it that will grow up and over the foliage and obscure it while it’s going through it’s ugly period.

SOW SEEDS Keep lettuce, bok choi, spinach, mustards, and other greens coming by sowing fresh crops regularly. I try for every two weeks. While you’re at it, use your soil thermometer to check if it’s warm enough to sow corn (65F minimum, 70F for Supersweet hybrids), pole and bush beans (65F minimum), and squash and pumpkins (65-70F minimum). Wait a bit longer for melons – they prefer about 80F soil temperatures and nights that are a bit warmer. Or don’t wait – use soil-warming contraptions like cloches, poly tunnels or plastic mulch.

PLANT SUMMER CROPS OUTSIDE Mother’s Day is a marker in our area after which it’s safe to plant tomatoes in the ground. But don’t go by the calendar: instead, use that soil thermometer to make sure the soil is toasty enough. If temperatures are at least 65F, four inches down, you’re good to plant any cold-hardy early tomatoes (Oregon Spring, for instance). My soil is only 60F four inches down, so I’m waiting at least til the end of the week to plant my Brandywine tomatoes. Or, wait til it’s 70F four inches down (especially for heirloom varieties), and your tomatoes will really take off when you plant them!

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Things to do

News Flash: Amy Stewart Does “Wicked Bugs” in Portland!

Come out tonight and listen to her entertaining discussion on how humans and bugs’ lives intersect.

Posted by: Kate Bryant on May 11, 2012 at 07:22AM 0 Comments

Writer Amy Stewart has written playful, well-researched books including The Earth Moved, Flower Confidential, Wicked Plants, and, now, Wicked Bugs. She is currently serving as Tin House’s inaugural Writer-in-Residence at PSU, where she is teaching writing. (Check out her blog, where she shares stories about living and writing in Portland!)

Her upcoming book, The Drunken Botanist, will be a natural history of the endless number of plants humans have managed to turn into alcohol. If you can possibly make it to tonight’s talk, do it!

WHAT: Amy Stewart talk on her last book, Wicked Bugs
WHEN: 6:30 pm Friday, May 11, 2012
WHERE: Eliot Chapel, First Unitarian Church downtown – 1034 SW 13th Ave / 503-985-6746
COST: $10

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things to do

A Sea of Blue: Camassia Natural Area

Posted by: Kate Bryant on May 10, 2012 at 04:54PM 0 Comments

Last weekend, I found myself dreamily standing in the midst of a sea of blue camass flowers at the Camassia Natural Area in West Linn.

The camass flowering season probably peaked about ten days ago but if you’re lucky, there may still be enough flowers this weekend to give you a similar sense of watery wonder if you visit.

This Nature Conservancy preserve is named after the common camas (Camassia quamash), a beautiful native wildflower which blooms prodigiously in April and into early May and even beyond, in a particularly wet spring such as this has been.

Nestled above the Clackamas and Willamette rivers practically opposite downtown Oregon City, the rocky plateau on which Camassia sits was scraped clean between 12,000 and 19,000 years ago during the Bretz Floods, which deposited glacial erratics – granitic boulders from as far away as Canada – along its path.

This 26-acre protected plot of land in West Linn is mostly dry oak-madrone woodland, with some 300 plant species. Low-lying areas include both ponds and seasonal wet meadows – perfect habitat for camas and many other lovely wildflowers.

Get directions here.

If you should be inspired to plant camas lilies in your own garden, you can find two species of Willamette Valley native camas (common camas, C. quamash and great camas, C. leichtlinii) in pots around now, and sometimes into early July, in the native plant section of your local nursery – and occasionally in the perennials section. But in fall, you can buy dry bulbs, which are cheaper. The drawback? For some reason, it’s harder (though not impossible) to find our native species in bulb form in autumn. But the garden cultivars, including lovely white forms, are beautiful, too.
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get dirty

When to Plant Veggies…

There’s plenty you can plant right now but hold off just a little longer on the warm-weather crops

Posted by: Kate Bryant on May 08, 2012 at 07:39AM 0 Comments

Go ahead – plant lettuce, spinach, Asian greens, mustards, and root crops like carrots, beets and radishes. But hold off on the corn, squash, pumpkin and beans, which need warmer soil temperatures. (Though you can start them indoors now.) And notwithstanding all the lush, greenhouse-grown tomato and pepper plants filling up the racks at local grocery stores and nurseries, it’s still too early to plant them outdoors in the garden.

My tomatoes, peppers and eggplants are all still indoors, under lights, where temperatures are steady and the light is consistent. I won’t be putting them out until this sunny week has warmed the soil up a bit. This weekend, I’ll whip out my handy soil thermometer (available at most retail plant nurseries) and see whether soil temperatures are high enough. But even if they are, I’ll check the forecast for nights in the 40s. Those are hard on tropical plants like tomatoes. Either wait til those nights are behind us, or use a cloche or Wall-O-Water-type product to protect the tops.

If you buy warm-season crops now, just grow them on into larger pots, while keeping them in a bright window, greenhouse or cloche. You may be able to plant them outdoors if you previously set up soil-warming devices. Otherwise, keep them inside until soil temperatures warm up. Because while daytime temperatures are warm, nights are still cool – late this week, they’re predicted to fall again into the 40s. That doesn’t do tomatoes any good!

I noted that my favorite Pacific Northwest weatherman confirms this on this recent blogpost explaining soil temperature. Knowing a little bit about soil temperature goes a long way in helping you know when to plant. A soil thermometer – used in conjunction with a chart listing the minimum soil temperatures required by various types of veggies – will tell you exactly when the soil is warm enough. (His blog post includes a veggie temperature chart.)

That said, most of us are rarin’ to plant! So here are some things you can do to get your veggies started earlier:

Plant in big pots, preferably black or dark-colored and non-reflective. The soil inside the pot will warm more quickly. As a side note, I suggest using no more than 50% sifted compost or 50% garden soil. The remainder should be potting soil, which offers better drainage. Then, buy or make a “tent” over the top of the pot to warm air temperatures during the day-night fluctuations. Just remember to vent it during the coming warm, sunny days and close it up in the early evening. There are some easy-to-use commercial “bags” that slip over the top of the pot and can be secured easily, if you aren’t the handy type.

Planting in the ground? Here are a few ideas:

Try Kozy Kotes, Wall-O-Waters or other brands of tents. Set them up now, and you can plant in a week or so. (Use that soil thermometer to make sure soil temperatures have been sufficiently raised.) These products have water channels that insulate against temperature fluctuations and help protect young plants through their first few weeks. They can be set up alone, but best to have a helper on hand, either to remove the Kozy Kote to plant, and put it back on, or to hold it open while planting your tomato.

Try black plastic mulch to warm the soil. You can either cut holes in it to plant or remove it once it’s done its work. (I don’t like to keep plastic on the ground in my garden – for aesthetic reasons.) The next sunny week offers the perfect opportunity to make use of the sun for this purpose.

Take advantage of the warmth provided by the side of your home. Anyone whose veggie garden sits up against the south side of their house knows well the power of a building to absorb heat. Notice how daffodils always flower earliest on the south side of a building? If you’re so blessed with a warm, south-facing garden, make use of it for your veggies! Just try not to plant directly under the eave, unless you’re committed to watering. (Side note: a lead test is recommended when planting food crops in the vicinity of older homes.)

RESOURCES: read about the many kinds of soil-warming devices on the Territorial Seed website:

Paper and plastic mulches

Row covers and cloches, including the Kozy Kote

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plant sale

Clackamas County Spring Garden Fair

the last major plant sale of the spring coming up this weekend!

Posted by: Kate Bryant on May 01, 2012 at 07:12AM 1 Comments

The last major plant sale of the year is coming up this weekend – the 28th annual Clackamas County Master Gardener’s Spring Garden Fair. It’s a huge event, with 202 vendors and a slate of activities ranging from classes and workshops to booths where you can have your plants potted up for you and your questions answered by Clackamas County Master Gardeners. What else? There are cute little red wagons for you to pull around (or schoolkids who will do it for you, for tips – how cute is that?) and a plant check area for the enthusiastic plant shopper! Also, soil testing (go to the website for details on how to collect your sample), coffee and snacks, a raffle and more.

WHAT: CLACKAMAS COUNTY SPRING GARDEN FAIR
WHEN: Sat May 5, 2012 from 9 am to 5 pm and Sun May 6, 2012 from 9 am to 4 pm
WHERE: Clackamas County Event Center in Canby
COST: Admission to the Event Center is $3 (free for under 16) and parking is free

There are plenty of everyone’s favorite specialty nurseries, as well as some that rarely make the trek in to other Portland plant sales. There are also soil, pot, gadget and designers’ booths so there will be plenty of folks to talk with and learn from.

I love this feature: the “ten-minute university,” with short classes on various subjects:

Saturday, May 5, 2012

10:00 Pruning Trees and Shrubs 10:30 Growing Tomatoes 11:00 Growing Blueberries 11:30 Starting Your Vegetable Garden 12:00 Starting a Worm Bin 12:30 Raised Bed Gardening 1:00 Planting Tips 1:30 Growing Edibles in Containers 2:00 Growing Tomatoes 2:30 Fruit Tree Pruning

Sunday, May 6, 2012

11:00 Pruning Trees and Shrubs 11:30 Growing Blueberries 12:00 Container Planting 12:30 Starting Your Vegetable Garden 1:00 Growing Tomatoes 1:30 Starting a Worm Bin 2:00 Making a Hanging Basket

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plant of the week

Sweetly-Scented Stock

a contemporary-looking species of a sweet, old-fashioned plant

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Apr 30, 2012 at 01:33PM 0 Comments

If your grandma had any influence over you at all, you’d be familiar with the plant commonly known as stock. It’s a marvelously old-fashioned plant, beloved to cottage gardeners and still grown in England.

Stock fell out of favor some time in the past 20 years. Admittedly, the plants are pretty gawky, and the spent flowers need to be cut off to keep it looking tidy (unlike so many modern annuals that “deadhead” themselves because they’re sterile and cannot be pollinated, so just drop their spent flowers). Somehow, stock was superceded by showier, fancier annual plants over the past 20 years or so. Today, those little trays of pink, purple and white annual stock takes up very little real estate on nursery tables – if you can even find it.

Enter the amazing perennial stock plant: Matthiola fruticulosa, a cold-hardy, white, over-wintering shrubby species that has proven itself pretty cold-hardy over the past decade in Portland gardens. This small, rounded, woody shrub (about 2×2 feet) has delicious blue-gray-tinted foliage and produces masses of flowers in April and May.

One year-old plants don’t flower so if you buy it this spring without flowers on it, just hold tight: it will flower next year. And when it does, prepare to have your socks knocked off. The flowers are the most luminous, loveliest white you’ve ever seen, with a tiny hint of green at the center. Even better, they have a rich, powerful scent of cloves which is especially potent at night. The fragrance is so tantalizingly delicious, you might just feel compelled to keep a bouquet of blossoms close to your bedside.

An extra nice touch is that after flowering, the plant sets prolific seed and in fall, you’ll have plenty of seedlings to populate your own and friends’ gardens.

Plants can last from a couple of years to about five years, at which time, they’re often lanky and can be replaced with one of the many progeny that have sprung up.

They look great planted amidst drought-tolerant shrubs like sun roses, rosemary, and even spiky plants like yucca, but they look nice with roses and hardy geraniums, too.

The plants thrive in well-drained soil and require only occasional water in summer. They are bushy in full sun but if you plant them behind another shrub or near a fence, they can sometimes weave their way through it.

Perennial stock (Matthiola fruticulosa)

Where to find it:
Wherevery Xera Plants are sold (check here)

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design ideas

Planning: Daffodils and Tulips

plan your spring 2013 bulbs now, while you can remember what worked and what didn’t

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Apr 25, 2012 at 07:15AM 0 Comments

It’s been a fine season for daffodils, tulips and other spring-flowering bulbs and the later Narcissus species and mid-season tulips are still looking snappy.

So before you forget, head out into your own garden and review the spring flowers. What works? What doesn’t work? Since none of us can remember in fall exactly what our gardens looked like back in spring, here are a few tips to help you create the loveliest possible display next spring:

- First, move (or just remove) what doesn’t work. If you discovered a bulb combination in your garden this spring that didn’t work for you – let’s say you don’t really like the bright yellow daffodils set against a pink flowering apricot tree, for example, or blueish crocus with a red flowering quince – move the bulbs now, while you remember what’s what. Dig them out with roots intact and transplant them where you want them. (Or put them in pots and give them away.) Water them in well (after watering, finish with a good splash of balanced liquid feed) and keep those leaves intact. They’ll flop – that’s okay. Just let them continue to grow as long as possible, as that provides the nutrients for next year’s flowers. Remove foliage only after it turns dry and brown.

- Take pictures of what works. Photos are a fine and often overlooked tool to help you look back at the spring garden when fall rolls around. Because no matter how experienced you are, it’s easier to select spring combinations when you can see exactly what the garden looked like six months earlier. Do use an easy-to-remember key word for the photos (like “bulbs”) so you can access the images readily on the computer come fall.

You might also photograph any gaps of bare earth or greenery in the spring garden that seem to be crying out for something sparkly in springtime. Think of bulbs as the accessories of the garden. Like sparkly jewels can set off a dress, glowing tulips or narcissus can turn a plain, often brown and green spring garden dazzling. And even more so given how gray and rainy it is in springtime here. Photographing bare spaces will help you pick how many bulbs to buy and guide you on where to plant them.

If you aren’t big on photography, just jot yourself some notes in a garden notebook or garden file. For example, “Note to Self: plant two dozen, tall white daffodils around the blue oat grasses in the front garden”. Or whatever.

- Take your planning a few steps further by reviewing catalogs now – and make your choices while it’s all fresh in your memory. Since the bulbs are up and flowering now, or just fading, you can still envision what’s on the pages of the catalog against the existing/fading flowers in your own garden. Make a list of what you’d plant where and slip it into the catalog. Forgetful? Put it in your September calendar.

Spring-Flowering Bulb Catalogs:

Local:
Wooden Shoe Bulbs
Mitsch Novelty Daffodils (specialty narcissus)
Cherry Creek Daffodils (specialty narcissus)

Out of Area:
Brent & Becky’s Bulbs
Van Engelen Bulbs
Old House Gardens Heirloom Flower Bulbs
Telos Rare Bulbs
White Flower Farm

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plant sale

Japanese Garden Plant Sale

you can find both rare and traditional plants suitable for Asian-style gardens, and simply native to Asia

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Apr 24, 2012 at 09:55AM 0 Comments

There are some top-notch nurseries vending at this year’s Portland’s Japanese Garden’s annual plant sale.

WHAT: Japanese Garden Plant Sale
WHEN: Saturday, April 28, 2012 from 10 am to 4 pm
WHERE: In the Garden’s upper parking area
COST: Free – no admission necessary to attend plant sale

Regional small nurseries will be offering conifers, peonies, hardy orchids, camellias, hydrangea, bamboo, bonsai, Japanese maples, azaleas, rhododendrons, and more. Many of these plants are perfectly suited to any garden, as well as Asian-themed gardens. But if you garden in a woodland environment, you’ll be delighted to find much that will work for you.

The sale will be held in the upper parking/garden entry area of the Portland Japanese Garden. Members can attend the preview and sale from 9-10 am on Saturday, April 28, and the doors open to the general public at 10 am. A portion of the proceeds benefit the garden.

- Adelman Peony Gardens – peonies, tree peonies and Itoh peonies

- Arbutus Garden Arts – dwarf conifers, Japanese maples, Epimedium and woodland shrubs and perennials

- Bentwood Tree Farm – traditionally pruned shore pines, Japanese black pines, mugo pines

- Black Sheep Nursery – traditionally pruned Japanese pines & conifers from pre-bonsai to garden specimens

- Bloom River Garden – Japanese maples, dwarf conifers, hardy garden ferns and vines

- Brothers Peonies – tree, hybrid herbaceous, and intersectional peonies

- Cascade Bonsai – bonsai trees and bonsai starter plants

- Connor Bamboo – clumping, cold hardy bamboo

- East Fork Nursery – rare and unusual Japanese maples

- Friends of the Garden – plants from the Portland Japanese Garden

- Garden Path Nursery – dwarf & mini hostas, rhododendrons, & grasses

- Gossler Farms Nursery – magnolias and unusual trees, shrubs and perennials

- Hana Farms – rare and unusual perennials, hardy orchids and cool shrubs

- Joy Creek Nursery – hydrangeas, woodland plants, clematis and much more

- King’s Mums – hybrid chrysanthemums

- Native Habitat Nursery – NW natives and traditional Japanese garden plants

-Oregon Small Trees – mature small conifers and maples

- Porterhowse Farms – rare dwarf and miniature conifers and trough plants

- River Rock Nursery – unusual conifers and Japanese maples, material for shady garden, plants for bonsai, rock garden and troughs

- Rhododendron Society – rhododendrons

- Sebright Nursery – shade perennials specializing in hostas,
Japanese iris, Epimedium, and hardy ferns

- Woodland Way Nursery – Asian plants & Northwest natives

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free stuff

Win Eco-Friendly Gardening Books

check out this fabulous Timber Press drawing

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Apr 23, 2012 at 01:33PM 5 Comments

This week, visit the Timber Press website. Timber is holding a drawing to win six superb eco-friendly gardening books. Just click on over and enter a comment on their Timber Press post – here – by 5 pm Pacific Time on April 27, 2012.

One of the books on offer is The Naturescaping Work-Book. I received a copy of this book a few months ago from Timber Press but only just cracked it open to take a look inside. It’s impressive! Written by a Corvallis garden designer who knows her stuff, the book is brimming with practical features that warm my heart as a fellow designer and gardening coach. I appreciate her list of tool must-haves: she recommends particular tools including the beloved hula hoe and the hori hori (if you have never used it, I suggest you run to a local nursery and get one), many of which are tucked in my own tool bucket. She also covers essential gardening basics from planting a tree and caring for an organic lawn to maintaining a birdbath and feeder. She also addresses ecological design, from the philosophical foundations to choosing sustainable materials.

True to its name (“workbook”), there are plenty of worksheets to fill out so that, after going through the book, you have some concrete ideas to work with. Basically, this book can teach someone who has never gardened before how to do many of the techniques that a professional organic gardener has learned over 20 years of dedicated work. I highly recommend this book, for beginners and even for anyone who has dabbled in gardening but hasn’t known how to organize or plan a garden that is environmentally savvy.

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plant sale

Leach Botanical Garden Sale

Saturday April 21

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Apr 20, 2012 at 04:55PM 0 Comments

Well, as further evidence that the Willamette Valley and surrounds may be the Mecca of Horticulture in the USA, here’s yet another super-great and wonderful plant sale happening this weekend:

WHAT: Leach Botanical Garden Plant Sale
WHERE: Floyd Light Middle School 10800 SE Washington St, Portland, OR 97216 SE Washington St, Portland, OR 97216
WHEN: Saturday April 21, 2012 from 9 am to 3 pm
COST: Free admission and free parking, too

The Leach Botanical Garden annual plant sale is smaller than some of the big sales so you don’t have to fight the crowds. Offerings include a choice selection of trees, shrubs and Pacific Northwest native plants from specialty nurseries and the Leach Garden’s own propagation tables.

Any questions? Call 503-823-9503 or 503-823-1671

Vendors include some wonderful wholesale nurseries, unusual plant/specialty nurseries, a conifer nursery that rarely vends at sales (Porterhowse), and more:
Leach Botanical Garden
Carter’s Greenhouse and Nursery
Cedarglen Floral
Fancy Fronds
Collector’s Nursery
Humble Roots Farm and Nursery LLC
Nothing But Northwest Natives
Out in the Garden Nursery
Porterhowse Nursery
Reynolds Learning Academy
River Rock Nursery, Sebright Gardens
Three Brother’s Nursery
Tide Creek Nursery
Wild Ginger Farm

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plant sale

Friends of Trees Fruit Tree Give-Away (Practically)

- Celebrate Earth Day (April 22) by planting a tree. (But first, you have to buy the tree!)

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Apr 19, 2012 at 02:55PM 0 Comments

Friends of Trees is holding their annual Fruit Tree Giveaway and Large Tree Sale!

The event will be held on Saturday, April 21, at 3117 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd from 10 am to 2 pm. Come by and pick up some young bare-root fruit trees for your yard while supporting one of Portland’s great civic organizations.

Fruit trees are available on a first-come, first-served basis, with a suggested minimum donation of $5 per fruit tree. Trees can’t be reserved or held in advance – you must be present on Saturday to purchase your tree.

The trees are donated by local nurseries so FOT cannot know in advance what kinds of trees will be available. Apparently, there were many apples and pears in previous years, but it all depends of what there is an excess of at local nurseries, so be prepared to wing it. I would suggest having a smartphone available for googling varieties – or, bring a resource like The Western Garden Book or a fruit tree book.

In advance, here is a partial list of what they’ll have on hand. There will be dozens of some, and only one or a few of others. Do come early to increase your chances of getting the types you want, or to scope out others that are not on the list. And read up a bit on root-stocks if your space is small. Half of keeping your tree within bounds is choosing the right dwarfing root stock. (The other half is pruning…):

Apples
Red McIntosh
Cortland
Yellow Delicious
Akane
Chehalis
Fuji
Gala
Granny Smith
Gravenstein
Yellow Newton
Melrose
Winesap
Yellow Delicious
Yellow Transparent

European Pears
Bartlett
Red Bartlett
Comice
Flemish Beauty
Seckel

Japanese Plums
Beauty
Satsuma
Brooks
Burbank
Friar
Peach
Santa Rosa
Satsuma
Shiro
Elephant Heart

They will also have shade trees available, with prices ranging from $25 to $85 per tree.

If you have any questions, contact Andrew Land at 503-467-2518.

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Seed vs Starts: the Great Debate

Posted by: Kate Bryant on Apr 15, 2012 at 04:24PM 0 Comments

Planting a vegetable or cottage flower garden doesn’t have to be expensive. But buying starts in spring can add up, with individual plants costing from $1 to $4 apiece. And it isn’t always clear when to sow seeds and when to plant starts. Herewith, some simple guidelines.

Plant seeds yourself when…:

- the plants you want to grow are easy from seed. (See list, below.)

- you aim to grow more than two or three of a particular plant (like, a row of beans versus a few plants in a pot)

- organic starts are not available in your area

- you crave unusual varieties that wholesale growers don’t carry

- you just want the experience of growing plants from seed. (Planting and tending seeds will teach you a great deal about plants!)

On the other hand, there’s a time and a place for buying starts. You may as well buy starts when…

- you don’t want to mess around with seeds, soil and labels (no brainer on that one)

- your garden is small, or for some other reason only want one plant (say, a single tomato plant, a single pepper etc)

- you’re running late in the season and forgot to sow your tomato seeds in March, or you were out of town when the corn should have been planted. In that case, rather than not growing tomatoes or corn this year, invest in some tomatoes or scads of little 2-inch corn starts. (Note: the financial return is better with plants that produce lots of fruit over a season, such as tomatoes or peppers, versus a vegetable like corn that just produces one ear or maybe two at best and is finished.

- you spot some cool variety that you want. Even if it’s not perfectly economical to do so, it can be delightful to have just what you want. Why not, go ahead and splurge out on a plant that will make you happy – especially if it is a good self-seeder and you get more plants next year from it.

- you run into a great deal on six-packs or starts. (Big sale at your favorite garden center? Go for it!)

- you want to support a local, organic grower who is doing a great job. I often buy plants I don’t even need at the farmers market because they are just so frigging gorgeous and the proprietors are so kind and generous with information…

- you have visitors coming and you want to pretty up the vegetable garden or you just want an early season boost for yourself. (I’ve been known to buy a six-pack of lettuce just to give myself visual encouragement while waiting for my own little slow-poke seedlings to grow.)

- Your seed crop failed

Personally, I do a mix of both, and often, it will vary a bit year by year. Here are some more thoughts…

You won’t see carrots, beets, parsnips, or other root vegetables sold as starts. Why? Because root crops just don’t transplant well. They are best sown directly in the garden where they will grow. On the other hand, if you want to try to grow one of those naughty-looking carrots that show up on Facebook sometimes, go ahead and sow them in pots and then transplant them!

You do see plants like bok choi, arugula and cilantro offered as starts. But these plants are prone to bolting when stressed (and it’s stressful to experience temperature and watering fluctuations on a nursery bench so they’re sometimes doomed before you even take them home). For the price of one or two starts, you can buy a seed packet and sow 50-100 plants. Besides, what are you going to do with just one or two bok choi?

Some seeds should be started indoors; others can be scattered on prepared soil beds outside.

(Here’s a list of the top ten easiest common vegetables and flowers to grow from seed, according to the Home Garden Seed Association.)

Vegetables: (lettuce, peas, and radish now outside, the rest outside in the coming weeks, or inside now)
- beans
- cucumbers
- lettuce
- peas
- pumpkins
- squash (I assume they mean summer and winter)
- radish

Flowers: (start inside now, or outside in a couple weeks, unless you’re a risk-taker or have a nice, extra-warm spot – then do it now!)
- cosmos
- sunflowers
- zinnias

To this list, I would add a few personal suggestions:

Vegetables: (bok choi and mustard are cool-weather crops and can be started outside anytime; beans, wait a couple more weeks unless you have a super-cozy warm spot for them)
- bok choi (spring is best)
- leaf mustard (late summer and spring are the two best times to sow it)
- beans

Flowers: (best sown directly outdoors – poppies can be started in early spring; nasturtium best after last frost, which is about now)
- annual poppies, including California poppies as well as shirley and breadseed/“opium” poppies
- love-in-a-mist (Nigella)
- nasturtium

Annual Vines: (start inside now, or outside the coming weeks)
- morning glory (I love the dark purple Grandpa Ott variety)
- lablab (Dolichos lablab)

Go ahead, try it!

Resources:
The Home Gardeners Seed Association has lots of good info about starting plants from seed
Renee’s Garden Seeds offers many useful articles related to starting seeds: check out this list – including this info on starting seeds indoors.
The Portland Nursery has a good, downloadable pdf seed-starting chart
OSU’s sheet on How To Start Seeds Indoors
OSU’s info on making your own potting mix at home

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