Pull First, Ask Questions Never
May is the best month to get ahead of weeds in the Pacific Northwest, and you don’t need to buy a single product to do it. Pull early, mulch for free, and stop composting weeds with seeds on them.
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Turn Your Kitchen Scraps Into Summer Gold
I threw away vegetable scraps for two full years before I started composting. Two years of coffee grounds and carrot peels going in the trash while I bought bags of compost at the garden center. May is the right time to fix that.
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Lettuce Succession Plant (Or Eat Salad for a Week and Nothing for Two Months)
Planting all your lettuce at once gets you eleven days of salad and two months of nothing. Here’s how to stagger your sowings in May so you’re actually eating from the garden all summer long.
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Stop Buying Bags of Soil: Build a Hugelkultur Bed
Forty dollars on bags of soil last spring was the last time I did that. This year I’m filling a new raised bed with branches, leaves, and yard debris that’s been piling up since November. A hugelkultur bed costs almost nothing and improves every year.
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Hugelkultur Raised Beds: How Much Soil You Actually Save
Filling a raised bed with bags of soil gets expensive fast. Hugelkultur lets you pack the bottom with wood and yard debris, which means you need way fewer bags on top. Here’s how the numbers actually shake out.
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Cheap Grow Lights for Seedlings: What You Actually Need
Most grow light advice is aimed at people growing things indoors permanently, not folks just trying to get tomato seedlings to April without falling over. Here’s the cheap LED setup that actually works for starting seeds in a PNW winter, and what I wasted money on first.
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Seed Snails: Perfect Spacing Every Time
Pre-spacing seeds on bubble wrap or paper strips before you head outside sounds fussy until you realize it completely eliminates thinning. Here’s how the seed snail method works and why April is the perfect time to try it with carrots, beets, and lettuce.
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Seed Starting Mix vs Potting Soil: Why It Matters
Seed starting mix and potting soil aren’t the same thing, and using the wrong one will cost you weeks of progress. Here’s why the difference matters and how to make a cheap DIY seed starting mix with two ingredients.
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Planting Raspberries: Where to Put Them and Why It Matters
First-time raspberry planting comes down to three things: sun, drainage, and not crowding them. Here’s what I got wrong the first time and how to set yourself up right from the start.
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When to Start Seeds Indoors: PNW Zone 8b Guide
If you’re in zone 8b around the PNW, knowing when to start seeds indoors makes the difference between a great transplant and a leggy mess. Here’s the full countdown from last frost, what to start when, and what you can still do right now in April.
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Seed Tape for Carrots (No More Thinning Regret)
Making seed tape for carrots takes about 20 minutes, costs almost nothing, and saves you from crouching over a row thinning seedlings you never wanted to thin in the first place. All you need is toilet paper, flour, and a toothpick.
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Seed Snails: Start Seeds Without Any Pots
No pots, no cells, no squeezing seedlings out of tiny plastic trays. The seed snails method rolls your seeds up in bubble wrap or paper so you can unroll them straight into the garden at transplant time. It sounds weird. It works great.
