Design trends

Earth Day 2025

My friend Grace learning about horses and our environment with Lucy.

The theme for Earth Day 2025 is Our Power, Our Planet. Emphasizing the importance of renewable energy and aiming to triple global electricity generation from renewable sources by 2030.

Earth day is a day of education about environmental issues. Celebrate it in your own backyard by being outside. It’s your own personal outdoor living room – a safe place for pets and kids to play. Just get outside, maybe trim some shrubs, plant something for the birds and pollinators. When you become a steward of your own yard, you are helping to preserve your own corner of the ecosystem. Our connection to the earth is one of the most valuable lessons we can share with our children.

For Earth Day 2025, kids can improve renewable resources by reducing waste, conserving energy and water and enjoying nature by planting trees or participating in cleanups, all while learning about the environment and inspiring others.

We can reduce waste by avoiding single-use plastics, bringing reusable containers for lunch and choosing products with less packaging. You can find creative ways to repurpose old materials like Turning old magazines into art.

This sounds simple, but recycle properly, ensuring that all your recyclable materials are sorted and placed in the correct bins. Save energy and water where ever you can.

Engage in nature-based activities like planting trees in your yard. Clean up littler where ever you find it. Go for walks in parks or nature trails and learn about the plants and animals that live there. Make a nature-based craft like a bird feeder or bee hotel.

Finding things to do in the garden is easy. You probably already have some edible flowers in your garden. Flowers like tuberous begonias, calendulas, carnations and marigolds are all edible. Last year Grace & I planted zinnias for the Swallowtail butterflies. This year will be cosmos to attract more butterflies. Fragrant flowers and herbs are fun for us to smell. She noticed that some of the yellow primroses were fragrant and I have lemon verbena, peppermint, spearmint to enjoy also.

And make sure you take photos of everything you discover in nature and share them with others to show the beauty of our planet.

To share one’s excitement and knowledge of the outdoor world with a child is fun and rewarding. The wonder on a young person’s face as they discover a swallowtail butterfly, a flower just starting to open or a bird feeding in the garden is priceless. And be sure to leave some time after a busy day out in the garden for kids to draw what they’ve enjoyed outside.

Get a kid into gardening and nature and they’ll be good stewards of the land for a lifetime. Plus you’ll have a lot of fun in the process.

So plant a tree, clean up litter, do something in the garden, hike in the woods, enjoy a walk among the wildflowers and just be in contact with the soil, breathe fresh air and think about ways to promote our renewable resources.

Design trends

Vegetables in the Shade

Hopefully my Tasmanian Chocolate tomatoes will look like this by mid -summer and ripen by dummer’s end.

Being the type who doesn’t take no for an answer, I’m going to try growing veggies on my shady deck again. I wasn’t very successful a couple years ago. I thought that 3 hours hot midday sun would be enough for green beans but alas, it was not. That is unless you consider 12 delicious green beans over the course of the growing season a success. So maybe green beans is not the answer. This year I’m going to stick with those I know will deliver for me. No sense wasting valuable space on my deck for edibles when I could grow perennials that the hummingbirds would love. Now that I think about it, I’ll grow both.

Early season veggie starts have arrived at the nurseries plus I see lots of good choices from Renee’s Garden Seeds.

Shade tolerant vegetables for your brightest spots – the partial shade areas – include beans, peas, potatoes, pumpkin, summer squash and early maturing tomatoes like Early Girl, Stupice, San Francisco Fog, Isis Candy as well as other cherry tomatoes. Corn and peppers will be lankier and bear later and only modesty in partial shade.

Root crops and leafy plants can tolerate more shade than fruiting crops. Beets, carrots, potatoes, celery and turnip will grow quite happily in partial shade. So will shallots and bunching onions, cilantro, garlic, chives, kale, leeks, parsley, oregano, cilantro and thyme. Leafy plants can tolerate partial to light shade because their leaves grow larger to absorb the sunlight the plants need. In very light shade areas concentrate on leafy green like Swiss chard, lettuce, spinach, arugula, radishes and tarragon.

Shade can be decidedly helpful to some crops. Leafy greens will be more tender and succulent, without the bitterness they tend to acquire when conditions are too hot. A combination of a bit of afternoon shade and an abundance of moisture will help cut-and-come-again crops like broccoli, lettuce, cabbage and celery stay in good condition longer in hot weather.

I’ve always wanted to enjoy carrots from my own garden. From Renee’s Garden Seeds, I think I”ll try growing some Babette French Baby Carrots. They germinate quickly and grow quickly. I plan to harvest while they’re still small- 3-4 inches long. I eat a lot of spinach so I’m going to grow Little Hero, Container Baby Leaf Spinach. The catalog says it has a mild, nutty flavor, is fast growing and highly ornamental in containers. And I might try my hand at an heirloom tomato for containers like Tasmanian Chocolate. They sound delicious and would be worth fighting the squirrels for.

Whatever plants you grow in your shady garden, be sure not to crowd them. Plants tend to sprawl there and if placed too close together they will compete for available light. Place your vegetables plants wherever they will get the most light even if it means putting different crops in separate places. A small harvest is still better than no harvest at all. Your vegetables may take a bit longer to mature without full sun so be patient.

Design trends

All About Soil

With happy soil your perennials will look like this

The calendar shows it’s spring. The longer days definitely say “spring.” And the weather couldn’t be more “spring-like”. But Im concerned about the soil in my small garden. Besides battling the gophers (what could they be finding to munch on down there?) my soil is dense and I need to make it more fertile. Here’s what I’m going to do to solve that problem.

Soil is an ecosystem made up of the living or that which was once alive and the abiotic which is made up of minerals, air and water. Soil texture is determined by the percentage of sand, silt and clay in the soil. Sandy soils are usually low nutrient, drain well, warm quickly and allow early cultivation and planting in the spring. Clay soils are the opposite.
Some soils are more beautiful than others but any soil can be radically improved with the addition of organic matter.

We live on ancient sea cliffs. Soils in Bonny Doon and Scotts Valley consist of shallow, excessively drained weathered sandstone and shale. Felton soils were formed from shale, sandstone or mica schist. Those in Ben Lomond and Boulder Creek had their beginnings from weathered sandstone or granite. Although these provide the necessary mineral component of our soil, organic matter or humus from decayed plant and animal material are necessary for fertility.

Here’s why improving your soil will make a difference to the health of your plants.

Good soil-with both organic matter and minerals-helps plants grow by forming the food supply for soil bacteria that help make food available for plant growth. Most of a plants energy goes to producing substances that drip out through the roots to attract bacteria and fungi. These in turn attract good nematodes and protozoa to the root zone. The protozoa eat bacteria and the nematodes eat not only the bacteria but also fungi and other nematodes to get carbon. What they don’t need they expel and this feeds the roots much like earthworm castings.

Down in the soil, if a plant needs different foods it can change what it secretes. Different substances will attract different bacteria, fungi, nematodes and protozoa. This huge diversity of soil biota helps the good guys keep the bad guys in check.

A common way to destroy the microbiology of the soil is to add salts in the form or non-organic fertilizers. The salts kill the bacteria and fungi by dehydrating them. Then the plant can’t feed itself and becomes dependent on its fertilizer fix. Without the good bacteria and fungi in the soil other parts of the food chain start dying off as well.

The soil food web is also responsible for soil structure. Bacteria create slime that glue soil particles together. Fungi weave threads to create larger soil particles. Worms and insects distribute bacteria and fungal spores throughout the soil and create pathways for air and water.

What can you do to bring your soil back to life?
• Mulch around perennials, shrubs and trees with1/4“ of compost and 2-3” wood chips or other organic mulch.
• • Apply mycorrhizal fungi, especially in a new garden that’s been rototilled or chemically fertilized. You can find this in most organic fertilizers and some organic potting soils.
• Use aerated compost tea
• Try to avoid walking on the root zone of plants. This kills fungi in the soil. Install stepping stones to preserve soil structure.

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