Speaking Engagements 2016: We’re speaking at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show this year on Friday, February 19, at 5:45 pm in the Ranier Room. Click photo for more…
Read more →Have you ever served broccoli at the dinner table only to find green worms cooked in your food? Yuk! A client of ours says she’ll never grow broccoli again. Too many worms. And she refuses to dump poison on her food to kill the worms. We’re showing her how to grow organic food that does not have caterpillars. The cabbage worm eats holes in the
Read more →It’s August and everybody’s vegetable gardens crank out delicious organic food. Yum-oh! But sometimes gardeners find holes in the middle of the leaves of their vegetable crops. Large holes. Many of them. Who’s the culprit? Caterpillars? Grasshoppers? Beetles? Or maybe snails! Snails and slugs both glide through your garden on a ribbon of slime, the shiny, sparkly stuff the snail in the photo above is
Read more →True bugs. Forewings cover half of the abdomen (aka backs) of true bugs. They are in the order Hemiptera, which means half wing. Many other insects are often called bugs, the lady bug for example, which is actually a beetle (a lady beetle). But the only actual bugs are insects in the order Hemiptera. All of the true bugs have piercing-sucking mouthparts like hypodermic needles.
Read more →Most of these “bugs” have mouthparts like a hypodermic needle. They stick their needle-like mouth parts into the veins of plants and suck out the nutrient rich sap. As their populations build they can seriously impact the energy budget of your vegetable plants and limit your crops. Also, just like a mosquito sucking the blood from your arm to give you malaria, these insects can
Read more →It’s officially summertime. The solstice came and went. We’re tending our gardens, nurturing our vegetables and flowers. We all look forward to an abundant harvest of fantastic, home-grown, organic vegetables. Along the way we might run into beetles. Some beetles, like ladybugs (aka lady beetles), are good partners. Beneficial insects such as these help you achieve your goals by eating insects that damage to your
Read more →On a tour of secret gardens in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Kathryn and I peek behind adobe walls for tantalizing glimpses of hidden treasures. Organized by the Santa Fe Botanical Gardens, the tour provides access to several small urban gardens not normally visible to passersby. A beautifully sophisticated yet rustic fence made of reddish twigs defines the boundary between the garden and the natural environment
Read more →Today we pay tribute to David’s father, Lawrence Edwin Deardorff, who passed away on May 11 at the age of 97. Larry first took David into the garden when he was 6 years old, and he learned about the world of plants at his father’s side. Larry was an avid gardener his entire life, and became our partner when David and I owned Island Biotropix,
Read more →Garden Art means different things to different people. In the vegetable garden it can take the form of a screen to mask the compost bin, or a painting on the side of the tool shed. Some of us – and by us I mean gardeners – take care to lay out our herb gardens to create patterns that please the eye. Then we add decorative
Read more →As many of you may realize by now, while David and I are avid gardeners, our passion is the gateway to nature that the garden provides. As we arrive in New Mexico, so does spring, with all its chaotic and unpredictable weather. Red buds bloom along with plums, lilacs, and cottonwood. And then it snows, and gardeners and farmers worry about their incipient apricots, cherries,
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