Plants, Plants, Plants

Spent the day packing plants for my Bountiful Container Gardening talk at the New York Botanical Garden on June 27th. Preparing for a cross country trip with more than a hundred vegetables and herbs in various stages of growth is a challenge. Fortunately, Helen, our nursery shipping expert has it all down. Last summer she [...]

Bountiful Container Talk@New York Botanical Garden

The New York Botanical Garden, in the Bronx, has scheduled a summer long series on food gardening. See special admission offer below. The weekend of June 27/28th 2009 is the kickoff event. I’m very excited to do a talk and demonstration on how to grow the foods you like in containers. I’ll show how to [...]

Arugula & Rigatoni with Tomato Sauce

If you have arugula or “garden rocket” growing in your June garden, it’s probably become a little spicy and is ready to bolt. Try this delicious pasta recipe. You will easily use up a couple fistfuls of arugula and have yourself a salad and side dish in one. The arugula flavor mellows when combined with [...]

Plant A Row For the Hungry “PAR”

Plant A Row For the Hungry is a program we like to mention this time of year. When those delicious fresh vegetables start producing faster than your household can use then think about donating to your local food bank or soup kitchen. The economic downturn has caused hardship for many. Gardeners everywhere are helping provide [...]

GMO Beet Roots Busted

The presence of viable GMO sugarbeet roots in recycled potting soil is the lead article  in today’s Corvallis Gazette Times/Albany Democrat Herald. The beets were identified because they bore numbered tags. I’m not going to repeat or paraphrase this article which is an excellent example of hometown journalism and why we need our newspapers. When [...]

Salad of Swiss Chard, Beets and Fruit

Cooked greens make a delicious salad base. This was an evening to find a purpose for accumulated ingredients. We had leftover multi-colored Swiss Chard which was braised in a little olive oil and garlic. The stems and garlic were cooked for three minutes before coarsely chopped leaves were added.
Our other ingredients were also ready:
2 medium [...]

Nichols Plant Day 2009

Nichols annual Plant Day is Saturday, May 16, 2009. I will demonstrate straw bale gardening. Our newest demonstration garden is a living example of food gardens from The Bountiful Container-a complete guide to growing veegtabels, herbs, fruits and edible flower in containers. It is still a work in progress but the basics are installed with [...]

Straw Bale Gardening

Straw bale gardening is easy, fun and  you to improve the soil while you decide what you what to do with a patch of ground. I’ll be planting a few bales at our annual Nichols Garden Nursery “Plant Day” this coming Saturday, May 16th. Varied crops will be growing for months since I plant greens, [...]

Garden Greens of Many Colors

Green leafy vegetables are packed with nutrients and flavor. Grown for salads or cooking, there’s no easier faster crop for the home gardener. This spring I’ve been stir frying Kale, Swiss Chard, Bok Choy, Purple Broccoli, Raab, and Beet Greens in a little olive oil and minced garlic. I trim my pickings, chop and rinse. [...]

Miner’s Lettuce Salad

Miners Lettuce, Claytonia perfoliata grows wild up and down the west coast. It’s a lovely little plant for spring salads and is easy to grow. Rich in vitamins A and C, it was an important food for Native Americans, early settlers and gold rush miners. A few seeds sown in bare spots will show up [...]

Garden Talks

Keane and I are leaving for Central Oregon today where I will give talks on Successful Food Gardening in Central Oregon and a demonstration talk on Edible Container Gardening. Of course I’ll be signing copies of McGee & Stuckey’s The Bountiful Container. A few more talks are coming up, May 9th I’ll speak in Anchorage [...]

Tomatoes-Blossom-end Rot in Straw Bales

Most tomato gardeners have seen or experienced blossom-end rot on tomatoes. It appears at the base of the tomato…the portion that is fastest growing and forms an unattractive black decayed appearance. Also a fruit so affected generally ceases to grow or grows slowly.The following information applies to all tomato gardeners, whether growing in ground, containers, [...]

Straw Bale Gardening Question

Today, a customer writes: “I’m interested in creating straw bale gardens this year.  Many web sites instruct one to use ammonium nitrate to prepare the bale but
yours does not.  Does your method prepare the bale for planting
tomatoes and eggplant or just mainly salad greens?  I prefer not to
use ammonium nitrate but at the same time [...]

Chowhound Indoor Herb Gardening

Recently our daughter Katie, who lives in a San Francisco apartment with good western exposure asked for tips and plants to start an indoor herb garden. She has no outdoor growing space but lives close to Golden Gate Park where a nature is never far away.
I began looking at the new style fluorescent bulbs, some [...]

Garden Palooza 2009

Keane and I will be at Garden Palooza this Saturday, April 4th. We will have a good selection of some of our top selling seeds and other products. This is always a terrific garden shopping show. I can never resist a few new plants or gardening items.
Garden Palooza is at Fir Point Farms in Aurora, [...]

White House Food Garden

This week, First Lady, Michelle Obama, and a group of local school children broke ground on the first White House Lawn Food Garden since Eleanor Roosevelt’s Victory Garden during WWII. This organic garden will feed the Obama family, be used for White House events.
The children from Bancroft Elementary School will continue their involvement with this [...]

Portland Yard, Garden Patio Show

I’m in Portland at the annual YGP show at the Oregon Convention Center this weekend. If you’re looking for a jumpstart on spring and summer this is the place to be. What first caught my eye was  a fence of espaliered apple trees surrounding a flourishing potager garden. In the corner is a cozy chicken [...]

Survivor Parsley & Swallowtails In the Garden

Hope you have had a good winter holiday. Like most of the country, we’ve been having the usual hard cold weather. We’re harvesting beautiful beets, kale, cabbages, a few carrots and the amazingly sweet Survivor Parsley.  Winter hardy plants typically produce extra sugars during cold weather. This acts as a natural anti-freeze and explains why [...]

The Des Moines Gardener at Rose Marie’s

In case you’ve been wondering what happened to the Des Moines Garden…it’s a tale to tell! Long story short, I am a renter, and despite the fact that my front-yard garden had been on local TV three times, featured in Des Moines Register twice, and photos of the garden had been included in several of [...]

Barbequed Pinquito Bean Recipes

Pinquito Bean Recipes from Nichols Garden Nursery

These two recipes were sent to my parents by a Mrs. C.L. Brown of Santa Maria, CA. She thought this outstanding and unusual bean should be offered by our nursery. We have offered seeds of thse flattened pick bean variety to home gardeners for more than thirty years and [...]

Basil-Summer Sowing

Basil seeds can be sown directly into the ground though all of July and on into early August. Warm soils lead to quick germination and you should be seeing small starts within a week. Prepare a smooth seedbed and sow seeds few inches apart. Don’t plant deeply, these are small seeds and need to be [...]

Laurus nobilis “the true bay”

Laurus nobilis plants are the source of culinary bay, a handsome tree that grows throughout the Mediterranean. This herb has a flavor and aroma that is mildly spicy and warm, and seems to pull other savory flavors together in soups, stews and sauces. Usually, the tough leaf is left whole and should be removed before [...]

Nichols Plant Day 2008

Our annual Nichols Plant Day is Saturday, May 17th 2008 this year. It has been a busy week preparing for our annual event, readying the gardens and planting our annual garden. We are just north of Albany, OR and an easy exit off I5. I’ve planted new straw bales, we’ve built a new bed using [...]

The Bountiful Container

I’m happy to announce the fourth printing of McGee & Stuckey’s, The Bountiful Container is now available. This 432 page book is a complete guide growing container gardens of vegetables, herbs, fruits and edible flowers. We’ve included recipes for using your home grown goods. Maggie and I researched soils, containers, fertilizing and every aspect [...]

Easy Gardening Tip – Water

Plan now for summer water conservation. Choices include drip tape, porous leaky pipe, and drip emitter kits. Combine any of these with timers and you are delivering proper amounts of water to each area of the garden. Avoiding overhead watering reduces disease and increases yields. Less time spent on weeding is a significant advantage. Obviously, [...]