Inland Northwest Gardening

This piece first appeared in the Winter 2009 Issue of Master Gardener Magazine; www.mastergardeneronline.com
Did the bugs do a number on your garden plants this past growing season? Did they chomp up the leaves of a special plant or suck the life out of your roses? Regardless they took some of the joy out of your […]

Geez, Today is April 1 but Mother Nature is still playing winter tricks on us. Monday Spokane broke the all time record for snow set back in the winter of 1949-50 by a tenth of an inch - 93.6 inches. All but 12 of those came in the December and early January dump. And we […]

January 27, 2009
Here is a collection of some of my favorite garden seed catalogs. Some from local Northwest sources and a few from around the country that understand short season growing or offer unusual selections.
Northwest based companies
Ed Hume Seeds
Organic and conventional seed company located in Puyallup, WA that specializes in seeds for cool and […]

January 21, 2009
Where is January going? At least now its getting lighter at 5:00 p.m. I am always surprised how much better I feel when I can see when I am driving home at night.
Back to the topic of the day. The record snows around Christmas melted off by about half the second week of January. […]

December 27
Garden? What garden? If I had one it’s now buried under nearly 3 feet of snow. The most we have seen on the ground at one time in the 30 years we’ve lived on our property. It started on Wednesday morning, December 17 and didn’t stop until 4 pm the following day - 23 inches. […]

Friday, Dec 11, 11:30 am
Remember the Pac Man game of early computer history? I just checked the Weatherbug radar map and Pac Man  disguised as snow and the promised deep freeze is about to gobble up Spokane. We’ve been waiting for this storm all week and the weather folks have been hyping it to the max.
 We are […]

First appeared in the Spokesman-Review Dec. 4, 2008
For those of us who garden that first snow comes with mixed emotions. On one hand we are glad to see the garden go sleep. On the other, we start counting the days until we can be out in the garden again. The latter often leads to human […]

November 21, Spokane WA
The leaves are gone now, scattered all over the place by the winds. The pine needles are pretty much down out of the trees. At our house that means two over 50ish folks have to tag team cleaning out the gutters so they will drain and won’t be around for fire season next year. […]

November 11, 2008
Welcome to the blog of a rabid gardener who enjoys the challenge of gardening in a hot, dry, cold and wet climate - the Inland Northwest.  Those of us who garden in eastern Washington, northern Idaho, western Montana, eastern Oregon and interior British Columbia don’t quite get the mild rainy marine climate of the […]

Give indoor plants TLC they deserve
Pat Munts  /  Correspondent
First published in the Spokesman-Review, December 11, 2007

Houseplants need as much light as you can give them during the winter. (File/The Spokesman-Review)

Online resources
For more information on houseplants go to:
•http://extension.missouri.
edu/explore/agguides/hort
•http://ces.purdue.edu/
extmedia

The bright colors of the growing season have been replaced by the more subtle colors of the sleeping garden. Winter colors […]