We have six large swords ferns available for free.  These ferns were salvaged from a landscaping project on Mercer Island.  If you are interested in picking up the ferns, please send us an email though our contact page.  We will update/remove this post when the ferns are gone.

Update on 2/23/10 – the ferns have found a new home and are no longer available.

sword fern

If you’re looking for some ideas on how to transform your yard into a spectacular garden, mark July 19 on your calendar. This is the date of the 15th West Seattle Garden Tour. Eight residential homes will be open to the public for viewing. Tickets are on sale for $15.

You can preview some of the homes online, including “Chez Hugh the Yew” which makes fabulous use of low-maintenance, drough-tolerant plants for year-round interest.

Ciscoe Morris will be lecturing from noon to 1 p.m. at the Kenney Retirement Home. Cost is $10, though children 12 and under are free.

One of the most common questions we get from clients is how to get rid of weeds without using pesticides. If only there was a magic wand that allows you to sweep it over weeds and make them disappear. Too bad there’s not. But there are many ways to keep up with weeding so it doesn’t take the joy out of gardening.

1. Hand pull weeds when they’re young and don’t allow them to go to seed. Pull them in the winter and spring time and keep at them throughout the summer.

2. Where possible, mulch your landscape beds to keep weeds down. A thick layer of bark mulch, applied once a year, will work miracles.

3. Build good soil underneath lawns to help crowd out weeds. If you spend time properly establishing your lawn, the grass will grow thickly and help prevent seeds from germinating. Weeds, however, are inevitable, but you can prevent many of them in your lawn by properly watering your lawn, mowing it frequently (and high) and keeping it fertilized. Avoid weed and feed products that simply broadcast herbicides over the entire lawn. It’s overkill. Rather than directly targeting a specific weed, it “sprays” the entire lawn with the stuff. All of this washes into our drains and into the Puget Sound. If you hand-pull large weeds, be sure to fill in the gaps with a mixture of compost and grass seed. This prevents weeds from filling in the space.

4. Use cover crops (crimson clover is one of our favorites) to fill empty spaces during the winter where you’re not growing anything. Cover crops, also called green manure, build healthy soil.

5. Fertilize and water plants directly and avoid areas where you’re not growing plants.

It’s tempting for many of us to pull out the heavy-duty bottle of pesticide when we find insects, diseases or weeds in our landscape. We want the problem to go away, and go away fast, whether it’s powdery mildew on our squash or aphids on our roses. But before you bust out the sprays, consider that pesticides are toxic to pets, birds, bees, and fish, and end up in our waters. (Check out the Washington Toxics Coalition site to read more about it).

You can adopt a more gradual approach to dealing with pests and plant diseases by identifying the problem and then trying less-toxic methods of getting rid of it. You’ll often hear people call this process IPM, or Integrated Pest Management, but really it’s about using common sense to tackle the problem.

First, identify the problem. It’s possible that it’s not a nasty disease attacking your plant, but symptoms that you’re watering too little or too much. Or you may find out that the bugs in your garden are actually good, beneficial insects such as lady bugs and lacewings that eat bad bugs.

Once you’ve identified what’s wrong, find the least toxic way to get rid of it. Aphids, for example, can be controlled by hosing the plant down with water. Other pests and weeds can be removed simply by hand-plucking them from the plant.

Prevention is also a good way of keeping these problems at bay. Pick plants that are disease resistant, thrive in your climate, and grow well in the site you chose for it. Reduce plant stress by watering, pruning and fertilizing properly. Use barriers like mulch to suppress weeds or floating row covers to keep bugs away. Check out these fact sheets on less toxic ways to deal with snails & slugs, spider mites, roses, and more.

Want to know what’s killing your dogwood or how to properly prune your roses? Looking for a less toxic way to get rid of slugs, aphids and other pests? Got a tree or shrub that you need help identifying?

Starting this month and through early September, you’ll find gardening experts who can help answer your questions at dozen of Master Gardener clinics throughout King County. Master Gardeners are volunteers who go through a rigorous training program by Washington State University. They provide research-based information on home gardening and pest control.

In West Seattle this summer, Andy will periodically be staffing the Master Gardener booth at the West Seattle Farmers Market, and I can be found at McLendon Hardware in White Center. Here are the hours & location:

West Seattle Farmers Market, 44th Avenue SW and Alaska Street, April 27-September 14, Sundays, 10 a-.m.-2 p.m. (No clinic May 4).

McLendon Hardware, 10210 16th Avenue SW, April 5-September 13, Saturdays, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

But don’t limit yourself to West Seattle. There are clinics in Ballard, Rainier Valley, Renton, North Seattle, Vashon Island, Lake City, Federal Way, Burien and more. Find the full list of locations and times here.

King County has one of the largest Master Gardener programs in the world. It started here, before spreading to all 50 states and many other countries. To find out more about becoming a master gardener, click here.

At Ecoyards, we pride ourselves on excellent customer service. We’re happy to report that the users think so, too. We recently won the top award for quality service from a popular online company Web site. We mentioned the name here once before, but have been advised that we’re legally not allowed to mention it unless we buy the rights to do so. (Without giving it away, it rhymes with Flanjie’s Wrist). We don’t agree with that policy, so it remains the company-that-shall-not-be-named. 

To be eligible for that award, we’ve had 100 percent positive customer reviews. Users of that site can login and search for “Ecoyards” to view our positive customer reviews and read about our award.

We work hard to help our clients figure out their lawn and landscaping needs, whether they’re looking for a complete makeover, a small paver patio, or to renovate a tired Seattle lawn.

You wouldn’t know it’s April, given the snow and cold weather we’ve been having lately. Despite that, daffodils and forsythia are strutting their stuff, tulips are poking through the cold ground, cherry blossoms are in full bloom, and we just noticed some blooming trillium deep in the woods of Schmitz Park in West Seattle.

Now is a good time to walk around your yard and give your landscape a good once-over: What plants are going well and where? What plants should be moved so they thrive better? Could you add a paver patio or walkway to your landscape to make it easier for people to move through it, or add interest to your landscape?

Here’s what else you can do in the garden this month:

1. Finish cleaning your garden by pulling weeds while they’re still young.

2. Plant annual seeds of asters, cosmos, marigolds, zinnias.

3. Plant cool season crops such as peas, lettuce, radish, and broccoli through seeds or transplants.

4. Fertilize raspberries with ammonium sulfate to lower the soil pH, just as bud swell begins. Apply about 3/4 to 1 pound of ammonium sulfate per 100 feet of row. Give blueberries a spring application of a balanced fertilizer such as 5-10-10.

5. April is Arbor Month so it’s a good time to plant trees. The second Wednesday of the month, or April 8 this year, is the official Arbor Day in Washington state.

6. Plant strawberries, which you should be able to find bare-rooted in most nurseries this time of year. Give strawberries a sunny spot and good drainage and they’ll produce for you for three to five years. Weed the bed, work in a good amount of compost or manure and about 4 pounds of 5-10-10 fertilizer per 100 square feet.

7. Shear winter flowering heather after it blooms.

8. Prune forsythia once it is done flowering.

Greg Rabourn

Greg Rabourn of the King County Community Stewardship Specialist/Project Program is providing a free talk today on avoiding the high-maintenance landscape trap of placing shrubs in improper places.  The talk will be at the Lewis Creek Visitor Center in Bellevue from 7:00-9:00pm.

More information is available here – http://www.ci.bellevue.wa.us/cobcalendar/Default.aspx?EventID=2295

While the weather is still fickle in March, the days are starting to feel longer and the temperatures are starting to warm up. There’s lots yet to do in the garden.

1. If you haven’t completed pruning your roses, this is is the month to do it.

Tulips are coming!

2. It’s also a good time to divide overgrown perennials and rearrange and move existing plants.

3. Thatch, aerate, top dress and over seed your lawn from late March to early April.

4. Plant native trees, shrubs and ferns as temperatures warm and rains are consistent.

5. Overgrown forsythia can be cut to the ground.

6. Cut back dead fern fronds.

There’s bad news for gardeners this spring, especially those who look forward to Zoo Doo compost.

The Woodland Park Zoo has canceled the sale of Zoo Doo compost because of it contains high levels of an herbicide called clopyralid in the manure.

Dan Corum, of the Zoo, told the Seattle P-I: “We deeply regret that Zoo Doo will not be available for many loyal users.”

As the P-I explains: “Zoo Doo is a composted blend of manures mixed with straw bedding, grass, leaves and wood chips. The manure comes from nonprimate herbivores, such as elephants, hippos, giraffes, zebras and elk.”

The zoo sells about 1 million pounds of this stuff a year.

Zoo officials traced the source of the herbicide to hay, and says it plans to switch to organic hay. It expects to sell the stuff this fall.

Read more from the Seattle PI: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/402355_zoodoo06.html