Category: Garden

Summer progress on the straw bale garden

Part Two: Summer In May, Tractor Man and I lugged four bales of hay down our slope and set them up as a garden! At the same time, we constructed a ‘Ranch Gate Garden’, by stringing three old ranch gates together that we found on our place, fencing in the 16′ x16′ garden. The fourth…

Tim and Barbara's garden update-featured

Tim and Barbara’s ‘ideal’ Foothill garden: One year later

Tim and Barbara’s garden, one year later If you remember, Tim and Barbara Fruehe of Oakhurst, CA, renovated their entire front and back gardens, installing drip irrigation, gravel paths, garden benches and iron arbors.  It was a huge undertaking, but Tim had it all thought out and he and Barbara knew what they wanted, an…

Garden history: Gardens by the Season

I learned Latin names of plants from my mother at an early age and become a logophile, a lover of words, especially gardening terms and names of plants. I love the richness of all the local and ancient names of flowers and plants. In this charming essay, you’ll find a schedule of bloom that, if…

Trying out a straw bale garden

A Straw Bale Garden?  Sure, I love experiments! Recently I decided to try the technique called straw bale gardening, after an online chat with the author, Joel Karsten, who wrote the book, Straw Bale Gardens. My garden is on a mountainside in Central California. See the steps I took in this experiment! My Ranch Gate…

Our good Sierra foothill soil

Our ‘bad’ soil…? I get comments all the time from discouraged local gardeners about ‘our bad soil’ in the Oakhurst, Coarsegold and North Fork areas.  Giving this some thought, I’m wondering if gardeners are making use of the natural ‘mulch’ we have in pine needles and oak leaves?  Using the resources we have here was…

Plants are closely planted

Secrets for a weed free garden

One year of seeds brings seven years of weeds! Three things will make your life easier when it comes to weeds in your garden… #1 Mulch I use mulch around the plants in my garden as a lazy way to manage weeds. After three years of mulching your garden, you’ll see that your weeding chores have lessened…

When every leaf is a flower

One evening near dark, I lost myself as I wandered, looking for turning leaves around the place. “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”  Albert Camus French “the quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and…

Spicy mints in the foothill garden

Spicy mints? “Much Virtue in Herbs, little in Men.” – Benjamin Franklin The rich, spiciness of these plants makes them useful in cooking, and nearly half the spices in your kitchen come from this one family, including basil, rosemary, lavender, marjoram, germander, thyme, savory, plus culinary sage and of course mint, peppermint, and spearmint. It’s…

The back slope now, lime green Artemisia, Rosemary, Rockrose, yellow Jerusalem sage, Iris, Lavender and Butterfly bush

Gardening around new construction in the Sierra foothills

Starting from scratch – Then and now Laying out garden beds in clay and decomposed granite is the way you start when faced with new construction in the Sierra Foothills.  How do you possibly begin a garden? Many house pads are scraped clear of topsoil and planting is not easy without replacing all the soil.…

What to plant under Native Oaks and Pines?

or …Why I remember a Sunset Magazine article from 1999. A few months before we bought our place here in the shadow of Peckinpah Mountain, I read an article called ‘What to plant under native oaks and pines?’  Do you still have the September 1999 issue of Sunset magazine?  No?  Well, if you live in…

Weed and more native plants will come

The natural meadow in the second year By that, I mean, this is the second year that I have weeded but not planted here. I’ve planted my 5 year old garden in irrigation zones.  The area around the house gets the most water and has the most ‘non-native, but Mediterranean plants.’ We’re on a slope…

Melding gardens and gravel in the Sierra foothills

Many of us here in the California Sierra foothills have gravel driveways, paths and roads.  This can be a help or a hindrance to gardeners searching for more space in which to garden. Gravel gardens could have their origin in formal Japanese ‘dry landscape’ gardens located on the grounds of Zen Buddhist temples.  The raked…

Butterfly Gardening: Living leaves in your garden

Butterfly gardeners begin this way….they see a colorful butterfly in their garden and start paying attention.  They want to see more so they wait and observe during the spring and summer. How can they see more kinds, they wonder.  That’s how I began, I’m sure. Once you begin observing, you notice more and more about…