Garden Links

Nothing But Northwest Natives is offering a seminar this Saturday February 28th on Native Plants for Wet Areas and Butterfly Gardens at the Hoyt Arboretum.

March Gardening tips from Rod Smith. I used to work with Rod a number of years ago and he is an endless source of knowledge on plants and planting.

Bare root blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries have arrived at the nursery. We get all of our berries from Weeks Berry Nursery in Keizer, Oregon and their website has excellent descriptions of the fruit and how to plant and care for your new plantings!

Spring is almost here and it's time to start thinking about fertilizing your lawn, shrubs, and flower beds! If you've been thinking about using organic fertilizers this year but don't know exactly how they work, check out Dr. Earth. We use it in our display gardens at Bethany Nursery and it works wonderfully!

Have a great weekend! Hope to see you soon!

Questions and Answers

I've got the idea to do a weekly Q and A with our customers. We get so many questions on a daily basis here at the nursery. From "When should I get my seeds started?" to "How do I prune my Japanese Maple?" to "What is the best fertilizer to use on my roses?". The thought is to have an open forum here on the blog. If you have any garden related questions, feel free to post them in the comments and we will try our best to answer all of them. Eric, our landscape designer, has volunteered to answer questions pertaining to design and I would love to hear all of your gardening questions on soils, plants, etc. We look forward to hearing from you...

Urban Farming in Havana, Cuba

A while back I watched a documentary called 'The Power of Community',
which told the story of Cuba's Special Period of the 1990's. It was during this time that Cuba converted (mostly) to organic methods of food production. The following video is a brief and interesting featurette on the subject.

Worm Tower

This seems like a pretty fun idea and a way to get more nutrients to your plants' roots. I imagine that you could treat it like any other type of worm bin and fill it with your kitchen scraps. This is something that we are going to try in our vegetable garden this year at Bethany Nursery!

Farming with Nature - Sepp Holzer

Seeding flowers and vegetables

Exciting times ahead! Last week we began preparations to seed flowers and vegetables for the upcoming spring season. After sanitizing our greenhouses, we have begun to fill trays with our potting mix and tomorrow will be our first day of actually seeding. The focus this year will be on unique and unusual vegetables like carnival carrots!, indigenous staple crops such as Tarahumara Chia, and many, many, many more beautiful and useful plants for your garden! Feel free to stop by the nursery and peruse our houses. If there is anything you would like to see us grow, we're open to suggestions...

New!!! Classes offered at PCC

For anyone interested (and the topics being discussed are super interesting!) I will be teaching five non credit courses through PCC this spring term. All of the courses have to do with creating a healthy home garden. All classes will be held on site at Bethany Nursery but must be paid through PCC. Here are links to the class descriptions on the PCC website...

Soils and the Soils Food Web Series which includes...
Classic Soil Science
What is the Soil Food Web?
Applying Food Web Science to Your Garden

In addition to these classes I will be teaching...

Pest Management for the Home Gardener
How to Build a Compost Pile

Pruning Fruit Trees

If you haven't done it yet, then now is the time to take a look at the structure of your fruit trees.
Annual pruning and dormant sprays ensure a healthier tree and a better harvest.
Oregon State University's Extension Service is an excellent source of information for tips and guidelines to pruning your trees. Click here to view their site.

Planting Trees

This week we delivered over 200 trees to the Reserve Vineyards and Golf Club in Aloha, Oregon. The plan is to add colorful flowering trees and additional structure to the south course at the Reserve. In addition to the flowering trees such as cherries, plums, and redbuds we also delivered a wide variety of unique conifers such as weeping Colorado blue spruce, Japanese larches, Dawn redwoods, and variegated Alaskan cedars.

Enhancing the appearance and play of an 18 hole golf course with 200 new trees turned out to be a whole lot of fun! I'm really excited to visit over the next few years to watch the progress of the trees through the seasons. The golfers and members of the Reserve will be in for a treat this spring with all of the blooming trees planted throughout the course and again in the fall when the leaves begin to change! Many thanks to the staff of the Reserve for making this happen.

Winter Sale

Get a head start on your planting projects! This month, Bethany Nursery will be offering a special discount to all of our customers during our Winter Sale. All of our perennials (both 4" and 1 gallon size containers) will be 20% off the marked price! We have a huge selction of perennials in stock including fuschia, heuchera, shasta daisies, candy tuft, ornamental grasses, and many more to choose from.

In addition to our entire stock of perennials, we are also offering a 20% discount on all of our pottery and our roses. This special pricing is good through the entire month of February, 2009.