Online Resources

Have piles of garden debris after harvest? You can compost it right in your garden beds with these simple methods. Composting in the garden helps recycle nutrients in the soil and it keeps useful organic matter on site, rather than relying on fossil fuels to haul it away to... Learn More

After a nice long summer, it’s time to prepare the garden for shorter days and cooler temperatures. Now gardeners can decide whether to put the garden to bed, or perhaps try growing some crops that perform well from the fall into the spring. You can choose  any number of... Learn More

So you’re a gardener curious about how to grow mushrooms at home? It’s not as difficult or complicated as you might think and you don’t need any special equipment, so why not give it a try?  A few years ago, the Puget Sound Mycological Society tasked me with developing... Learn More

We recently started growing Wine Caps (Stropharia rugoso-annulata) outdoors at our community garden, the Picardo Farm P-Patch. Also called Garden Giants or King Stropharias, they are medium- to-large sized “meaty” mushrooms with attractive deep burgundy caps, violet-gray gills, and white stems.  They’re easy to grow and come up in... Learn More

If you’ve ever been frustrated by having to go buy garlic to ward off the creatures of Halloween, this year, take a different approach. Get some good seed garlic and devote a bit of your garden space to it. Plant it now for a mid-summer harvest, and you’ll have... Learn More

Legumes (peas, vetches, clovers, beans and others) grow in a symbiotic relationship with soil-dwelling bacteria. The bacteria take gaseous nitrogen from the air in the soil and feed this nitrogen to the legumes; in exchange the plant provides carbohydrates to the bacteria. This is why legume cover crops are... Learn More