Straw Bale Gardening update

We experiment with straw bale gardening. I continue to love their convenience and the fact that it’s possible to grow a crop while you improve your soil. Here is some of what I’ve recently learned, some is good some not good.
My peas and bean crops continue to be sensational as long as I use Legume [...]

Nichols – Gardener’s Pantry Update

I’m back at the blog with a stockpile of recipes and gardening tips for the coming months. It was a wonderful summer. We’re looking out at several rows of cabbage trials. Some of those fat juicy heads have a future as sauerkraut and kimchee. I’ll be sharing the results with you.

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

MELON TASTING AT NICHOLS GARDEN

I’ve decided that I’m not just an itinerant gardener; I’m an itinerant foodie as well. The other day, I had the pleasure of being at Nichols Garden when Mike Hessel, the “melon man” brought eight crates of different melons. The scent as he came in the door was sweet perfume!!! They set up a [...]

Tomato Tossing Bash

Here’s a link to La Tomatina an annual tomato food fight in Bunol. Spain. Participants really get into it vigorously throwing ripe tomatoes at one another for an hour. When all is done the street and people are hosed down. Here’s the link.
http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/Story?id=5669478&page=1

Heirlooms Disappearing

This year I have never seen so many heirloom varieties disappear from the seed trade. Two apparent casualties worthy of resuscitation are Kyoto Long Cucumber and Touchon Carrot. Carrots and cucumbers require careful isolation so it is hard to produce more than stock seed on our own.
Seed Savers do a fine job of retaining varieties, [...]

Easy Gardening Tips

Composition roof shingles laid between raised beds keeps paths dry and weed free. We began using these last summer and through the winter have come to love them. The shingles are rough and seems to discourage slugs, the surface is never slippery or muddy. When they are no longer needed, shingles are easy to lift [...]

In My Garden

Suddenly the days are longer, the skies are brighter, and it’s a joy to be in the garden. This week I sowed Cascadia Snap Pea seeds in a straw bale. Legume inoculant will provide all the nitrogen they need. Gardeners in the Pacific Northwest once had to plant peas in January to get a crop [...]

Catalog Time

Nichols Garden Nursery, in Albany, Oregon now has a new 88 page, 2008 catalog. Our new narrower format is easy to handle and read. If you visit our website http://www.nicholsgardennursey.com you can download this catalog as a PDF. Be sure to check the “new and unusual” pages 23 & 24 for what’s new in seeds. [...]

Is This Really “Organic”?

Today, I read that “organic” made it onto a list of over used words. This product called “The Batter Blaster” bills itself as organic, certified by the USDA. Packaged in an aerosol can that serves eight, this seems like the over packaging that is exactly opposite to the resource conserving spirit of the organic [...]