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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yogurt cups, toilet paper rolls, egg cartons. You’re probably already throwing away the best seed starting containers you could use. Here’s what actually works and what has let me down.
Haven’t started your garden yet and feeling behind? You’re not. Here’s a quick, cheap plan for Pacific Northwest beginners to get growing in April with seeds and transplants you can grab this weekend.