Gardening

Half of the activity that happens here at Seattle Homestead is gardening related. Below you’ll find all of the posts in the gardening category of the site. Keep in mind that we are located in West Seattle, which has a very specific climate compared to the rest of the country. We have moderate winters with overcasts skies and plenty of moisture, and our summers are dry and short. Therefore we tend to focus on varieties of plants that can handle those conditions. That said, most of our gardening practices can be applied anywhere.

Douglas Bullock’s Fruit Tree Recommendations for Seattle

Best Fruit Trees For Seattle

At my permaculture design course last weekend the guest speaker was Douglas Bullock, of the well-known Bullock Brothers Permaculture Homestead on Orcas Island. Douglas was lecturing on the overall topic of soil, and specifically spoke about nitrogen-fixing plants, sheet mulching, microclimates, and last but not least, orchard design and his personal fruit tree recommendations for [...]

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6 Reasons Why I Chose Clover as a Living Mulch

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I mentioned in my post about building raised beds that I chose to add New Zealand white clover to the edges of the raised bed to act as a living mulch.First off, I should explain what a living mulch is, and how it differs from a cover crop: “A living mulch is a cover crop [...]

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How to Build a Raised Bed with Grass Sod Walls

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Pictured Above: Here are our finished raised beds before planting. All together there are 7 beds, all roughly 5′ x 9′, totalling about 450 sq feet. It’s May, and I need to overhaul a large section of the yard to make way for this year’s vegetables.  I have big plans in store for replacing the [...]

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Our Year 1 Fruit Tree Order

Golden Sentinel Columnar Apple Tree

One of my goals for year one was to have some basic fruit in place.  Most will not bear fruit this year, but giving them a full season to set roots and grow will mean a decent crop in 2012.  So, I just put in a last minute fruit order at Raintree Nursery, thinking I [...]

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