Starting tomatoes, peppers, and annual flowers from seed is sort of like hatching my own chicks at home. It's cheaper so I can do more, and more, and more! (addiction) And... I just like watching the whole process of life starting out new and going full cycle. It's personally satisfying.
-Linda
I like Territorial Seeds in Cottage Grove, Oregon. If you have a maritime climate, their selections will work for you. Lots of variety, too.
http://www.territorialseed.com/
Linda
I can't count on a warm summer, so my favorites include Stupice from Territorial Seeds in Cottage Grove. It's a potato-leafed variety that always gives me some nice little salad toms in August, a week before anything else. I also like Willamette and Siletz, I think they were developed near...
My sis used to teach elementary school at Discovery Bay. I went swimming in the sloughs a few times, but you always got out of the water smelling funny. Mind you, this was 40+ years ago. We had problems with saline intrusion from SF Bay, so much water was going south through the big...
OK, so I can whine to Brenda and the Texans here that 45 degrees and foggy is cold...But at least it's not raining today. We SHOULD have sent some of our rain over the mountains to you in early December, Steve. We had plenty to spare. Are you anywhere near the Hancock Field Station? I have...
Scorched earth technique...reminds me that my DH picked up a propane torch thingie. You can cook weeds with it. Works great. Not effective enough against the quackgrass, though. Any underground creeping stems deeper than 2-3 inches come right back. I have the wild buttercup Ranunculus...
We have about 25 goats, counting this year's kids that are still with us. We have Nubians, Pygoras, and a few pygmies. My daughter has a pair of colored Angoras, too. She's training some of the Nubians as pack goats. I think there are about 50 chickens out there. My son made an incubator...
Hi -- I'm in the PNW, too. Edge of the Mid-Willamette Valley, Cascade foothills. They're right about the rain. We have heavy clay soil, and it is usually WAY past planting time before I can get the tiller onto the garden. Raised beds are the best. However, I always seem to want more garden...
http://www.desert-tropicals.com/Plants/Geraniaceae/Erodium_cicutarium.html
I remember the "red stem filaree" used to grow all over the place where I grew up, on the edge of the Delta, just east of SF Bay Area. We used to make a slit in one of the little green spears and poke a second "spear"...
I grow Borage for the bees. It re-seeds like crazy, grows wild here. I had surgery one summer and a small stand of thistles scattered seed across my place...I have been battling them for 6 years now, trying to get them under control. :barnie They are even too spiny for the goats to eat, and...
:D:D:DHi SilkieChix! Some years I can grow Alaska cantaloupe melons pretty well. Other years we have 3 weeks of cloud cover and cold rain in June and it bogs everything down. I have some garlic and green onions, and beets holding out in the garden now. The goats and chix seem to leave those...
:o We have goats AND chickens, so we accumulate A LOT of poo and soiled bedding...I use a "chicken tractor" in my vegetable garden area during the fall and winter. Besides fertilizing and taking care of weed seeds and old garden debris, this wipes out a few of the slugs, too. We have slugs the...