Charley's Greenhouse

So a bit over a month ago Wren was born, and my mother came to visit and help out for several weeks (thank goodness!). While she was here she and I went to the Northwest Flower & Garden Show and the convention center downtown. I hadn't been to the show before and while I wasn't totally blown away it was worthwhile. I'd recommend doing the half-day discount ticket. You have to hurry a bit to see everything, but it's quite doable.

At the show they have "show gardens"--displays set up by local landscaping firms and garden supply centers. Some pretty clever presentations. They also have two big rooms of
retailer booths. I bought several books at the University Bookstore booth as the prices were discounted. There's also a section devoted to plant sales and I finally found the type of blueberry plants I'd been looking for: Vaccinium 'Sunshine Blue'. It's a compact semi-evergreen with bluish-foliage that changes to red in the fall. It's also got a long fruiting season. I found it on the Great Plant Picks list, the topic of a later post (for those who don't follow the link to learn more). I bought the plants from the Raintree Nursery booth. These folks are in SW Washington and specialize in fruits. While I was delighted to find the plants I couldn't help but be a bit disappointed to find larger plants a few weeks later at Sky Nursery when I went there for the first time. Admittedly they did cost a bit more there.

One of the benefits of going to the garden show is that any local establishment in the gardening business is likely to have a booth (as well as many that aren't local). It's a good opportunity to pick up literature and learn what's available in the area. I happened to pick up a catalog for Charley's Greenhouse, a place about an hour or so north of Seattle. I had been researching seed starting and the supplies I would need and it turned out they had the best prices on most of the things I was looking for. In addition they had a number of items on sale and a free shipping special for those who got their catalog at the garden show and had the little sticker with the discount code.

So a few days later I called Charley's up and asked a bunch of questions (since I'm a rank newbie who had been reading just enough to be dangerous). The lady on the line was tremendously helpful. A few items were on backorder but they were sent later without additional shipping cost. It was only 2 days, I believe until the bulk of my order arrived--via FedEx! In my book when free shipping equals FedEx that's generous. So here's a good word for Charley's. I got great customer service on the phone, the best prices I could find and fast, free shipping. Couldn't ask for more...

Some Background

We moved into our house in November of 2005. With a new baby and a kitchen remodel to do we really didn't have time or money to do much with the garden. After a busy winter and spring of work we took the summer off to picnic. As you can see, the yard was quite bare:

The next winter I began to get a hankering to do something with the yard. It really started when the city of Seattle (our fair city) had a tree give-away in the fall. We went to the lot at Magnuson Park hoping to get a tree for our planting strip (that's the little green swath between the sidewalk and the street). Somehow we came away with an Asian Magnolia, Magnolia sieboldii. It's a big enough tree that it needed to go in our back yard but none of the beds were really big enough to accommodate it, so I made a new bed by carving out a bit of the lawn. Well, that got my mind running and with spring coming I began to yearn to turn the yard into something beautiful.

I planted some bulbs in the fall, but I did so somewhat haphazardly and I'm afraid I may have planted some of them too late to give them time to properly sleep (I also made the mistake of storing them indoors). So they're beginning to come up now, but they're tardy and small. No matter--I'm sure they'll be out eventually and after they bloom I'll attempt to relocate them to fit the new plan I'm working up.

Last year we also planted a window box and a friend gave us a lovely hanging basket. They both did pretty well, but a couple of missed waterings and they never quite looked as good as they started. The plants for the window box alone cost $40 at Swanson's, which is a nice place but probably not the cheapest around. So there were two lessons there for us--watering is really important, especially for container plants, and it's expensive to buy plants.

This last story is really important, because it's the primary impetus for this blog. I decided that if I was going to try to do a garden I was going to automate the watering because I'm not good at keeping such a rigorous schedule (what with summer vacations, drought-like conditions in Seattle (honest--that's our summer climate), etc.), and I was going to grow as much as I could from seed. These both require a bit of up-front investment, but my hope is that within a year or two we'll have saved enough money on plants to have made it worthwhile.

So there's a bit of introduction to the project. Look for more details on my experiences with seed starting and drip watering as this blog progresses...

Vengan a ver mi chacra

I grew up in Peru. Although my schooling was in English I took Spanish classes from second grade on. One of the songs we learned as children was the Spanish version of Old McDonald. It goes like this:

Vengan a ver mi chacra que es hermosa,
Vengan a ver mi chacra que es hermosa,
El pollito hace así: peep, peep!
El pollito hace así: peep, peep!
O va camarad', O va camarad',
O va, O va, O va!
O va camarad', O va camarad',
O va, O va, O va!

Translation:

Come and see my farm which is beautiful,
Come and see my farm which is beautiful,
The little chicken goes like this: peep, peep!
The little chicken goes like this: peep, peep!
O come my friend, O come my friend,
O come, O come, O come!
O come my friend, O come my friend,
O come, O come, O come!

Of course all the animals and their respective sounds are sung in turn...

A chacra is a small farm or garden. Last year my wife Cris and I bought a house in Seattle and now we've got our own little chacra. I've long been interested in gardening but never really had the opportunity until now. As I've begun to research gardening I've discovered there's a lot I need to learn. Sadly, I have a tendency to read things and then forget where I read them. I'm starting this blog so I can capture information as I learn it and perhaps to serve as a useful resource for others. Additionally, I hope to hear from readers what their experiences might be. I imagine there's a lot you could teach me!