Dear Dianne, I’m new to gardening and don’t know where to start. Can you help?
If a gardener doesn't start with good soil, the gardener will experience a lot of frustration. At some point, the gardener might start thinking about finding another hobby, perhaps beer making. To reduce the number of frustrating gardening problems, it's a good idea to know what kind of soil you have. King County offers soil testing for residents here. King County's soil testing is free for your first five samples. It’s a good idea to take advantage of this service because it saves you time and money. Then, when you visit a nursery, you will have an idea of what to purchase to improve the soil chemistry. If you don't have a legion of garden fairies sprinkling soil amendments in your garden in the wee hours of the night, you're probably going to use some type of fertilizer to encourage plant growth. I've tried several fertilizers, and the one that I found that boosted the plant's growth was Oly Mountain Fish Compost. It's all organic, made from fish, and won't burn the plants. It doesn't have a fish smell that will attract the neighborhood cats either. You can purchase it at the Dirt Exchange in Ballard.
Dear Dianne, What advice do you have for a rusty gardener getting back into the hobby?
If your pruners haven't been sharpened since the last solar eclipse (that was in 2017), you might want to get them sharpened. Northwest Sharpening will be at JoAnn's Fabrics in Ballard on Wednesday, April 17, from 2:00-5:00 PM. The charge is $4.00 per pruner or lopper.
Dear Dianne, How do I get rid of slugs in the garden?
Why don't children consume lettuce as consistently as slugs? Slugs can consume things in the garden faster than you can plant them. There's a lot of information on the internet about how to get rid of these slimy friends. I've tried making circles of sand or eggshells around the lettuce starts. The slugs saw it as a challenge and dug under the circles! The internet suggested a saucer of beer, so I tried that. The idea was that the slugs would drown in the beer...well, it didn't work that way for me. I just had happy slugs. But I wasn't going to be outwitted by a slug. Back to the nursery I went, and I found copper strips. Place the copper strips around the plant starts. If the slugs persist and try to cross the strip, it’ll be a lesson in chemical reactions that the slug won't forget. But the slug won't be around to remember it away.
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