Gardening

Pruning – Part 2
Gardening, March 2024

Pruning – Part 2

By Kim Cantrell, Little Bird Gardens I just spent the last few weeks talking with you all at the nursery. We agreed we were in the clear weather-wise, and then some of us had snow! And as I write this today, we are expecting a bit of a freeze again. We’re gardeners; we talk about…

Pruning, Part 1
February 2024, Gardening

Pruning, Part 1

By Kim Cantrell and Little Bird Gardens It’s been hard not to notice that this winter has been unseasonably warm, minus our little cold snap in mid-January. Many plants came out of the freeze as if nothing had happened, and then there are those that showed signs that the extreme drop in temperature was not…

Gardening with Children – Late-Season Carrots
Gardening

Gardening with Children – Late-Season Carrots

By Caitlin Rothermel It can be challenging to garden when you have young children, but you also want to get them excited about growing things. It’s a dilemma.  It is totally possible to introduce small, focused projects that can be fun for everyone. Like carrots. They can fit into small or otherwise hard-to-use spaces, and…

Spring Gardening
Gardening

Spring Gardening

The delight of watching our Island bloom. Ah, Spring. I delight in the small things that, in time, will turn into something big. Spring invokes that feeling in so many ways, with greenery tips from the bulbs planted last fall, the new buds on shrubs and trees that make the woods bright with their chartreuse…

A Field of Plastic
Gardening, Island Resilience

A Field of Plastic

Photos accompanying this article are by Julian Dahl. Used with permission. It’s the beginning of February, and winter storms have passed, blowing a tarp into one of our pastures. I jump the fence to retrieve it. As I walk across the field, with small green sprouts of fresh grass coming up, I notice a color…

Winter Gardening
Gardening

Winter Gardening

Rain or shine, Vashon is an island of garden enthusiasts passionate about our plants!I love gazing out on my winter garden, especially when little birds flit around in search of seeds and insects, available in abundance, as so much of what I do in my garden accommodates these precious pollinators. My perennials are cut back…