“The Ins and Outs of Choosing Trees”, with Brian Schiffer, our resident arborist. April is Arbor Month, when we celebrate the benefits and value trees bring to our community. Join Brian for an in-depth discussion on choosing the right tree for the right place and how to correctly plant your new tree to get it well established.   Call to register for this free class, 503-649-4568.

Landscaping With Edible Ornamentals

Carl Grimm, Metro’s Natural Gardening Specialist, on “Landscaping with Organic Edibles.” Carl combines edible, ornamental and native landscaping tips to help home gardeners kick the chemical habit in style. Learn the essentials to organic gardening, as well as new ideas for bringing beauty to the veggie bed and food to the flower border – what a great concept!   Call to register for this free class, 503-649-4568.

You may not know this, but we put out a monthly Farmington Gardens newsletter for our customers and local gardening community.  The Farmington Gardener is full of gardening tips, ideas, and information, along with details about upcoming events and new products.  The e-mailed version of our newsletter also contains hard-to-come-by coupons that are both timely and valuable!  You can also view past editions of our newsletter in our newsletter archives.  Our archived newsletters are exactly the same as those that we e-mail out, but without the attached coupons.

By now you are hopefully intrigued and want to to find out how to sign up for our monthly mailings.  The answer is simple: we need your email address!  Sending out thousands upon thousands of printed newsletters is simply too cost prohibitive, so a few years back we went all digital and now our monthly newsletter is created in a user friendly PDF format, so that we can simply send our customers a link and let them download and read at their leisure without wasting a lot of paper and resources.  By doing this, we can produce our newsletter monthly (instead of quarterly or yearly) and focus more on useful and informative content than the mind-boggling task and expense of printing, addressing, and mailing hardcopies to everyone.

Our newsletters in our online archives are freely available to anyone and everyone that wants to peruse them, but you need to sign up to receive the emailed version which contains the coupons!  If you are a current customer and not receiving our mailings, please contact our store at 503-649-4568 to make sure that we have your current address in our system.

If you have never been on a local garden tour, I encourage you to take advantage of one this year. It is so interesting to poke around someone’s backyard, seeing how they live and use their garden spaces. You take away tons of inspirational tidbits.

Metro hosts the popular Gardens of Natural Delights tour. This year’s program features four geographically focused mini-tours. Each event will showcase three organic home gardens plus a public demonstration garden with seminars and free resources. You will see incredible edibles, a naturescape and a small four-season blossom bonanza at the first tour, scheduled in the Hillsboro area.

The dates of the tours are:

• March 23 in Hillsboro area, registration opens March 23
• June 13 in Gresham area; registration opens May 4
• June 28 on Oregon City area; registration opens May 18
• July 19 in Lake Oswego area; registration opens June 8

You may register for up to two tours at a time. Call Metro to register or for more information: 503-234-3000. Grab a friend and make a day of it – you’ll be glad you did!

There has been quite a bit of interest in our demonstration vegetable garden here at Farmington Gardens, perhaps because of the explosion of interest in edible gardening that seems to be sweeping the nation.  So, as a way for you to keep tabs on this garden, I will be posting updates about what is going on there. We will follow the plantings, the problems, the harvests, etc. — if you have questions about it, please comment, and I will follow up.

For the past week or so, I have been cleaning up the winter damage and replanting with some early crops. We lost our pineapple guava tree in the December Arctic Blast, so that has been replaced with two columnar apple trees. These interesting trees are shaped so that they each form a single column, with apples growing along the central trunk; there are no large branches. I think this should be a good addition to the raised bed we are creating here, because while I wanted to provide vertical interest and structure, I didn’t want too much width to shade the bed.

We have also recently planted several perennial herbs and a gallon-size Bay laurel, which will also give us some structural height and evergreen appeal during these early days. Today, I planted out a traypack of red Merlot lettuces and arugula — yummy salads in the days ahead! And then there are the root crops: several weeks ago, we started chioggia beets, red chantaney carrots, turnips and parsnips in large used black nursery pots, and stuck them in the little greenhouse for a bit of protection. They shot up nicely, but were horribly crowded. So I’ve been carefully transplanting them out into the raised bed in large blocks.   That is one of the nice things about raised beds: you don’t have to stick with space-wasting rows, you can blanket an area with seeds or starts in a very efficient manner.

And the final icing on the cake:  a pretty blue glazed birdbath plopped in the middle of the bed!  Don’t overlook the benefits of inviting beneficial birds and insects into your garden space as a means of creating a natural balance.  Birds will eat slugs for you, but appreciate a little drink of water to wash them down.  Besides that, the birdbath looks amazing there!

These sales are now out of date and the offers are no longer valid.

It is time to thin the herd, as they say, to make room for cool stuff soon to arrive.  These prices won’t last long, so shop early, because when they’re gone, they’re gone!

• Lonicera nitida 5 gallon – 25% off
• Buxus sempervirens variegated 5 gallon – 25% off
• Juniper tam 1 gallon – 3.99, reg 5.99
• Cotinus Grace 7 gallon – 25% off
• Bamboo 20% off
• Camellias 20% off
• Daphne odora Marginata 1 gallon – 20%
• Acer palmatum Goshiki Kotahime 5 gallon 49.99. reg 79.99

We all have the best of intentions to get spring-blooming bulbs planted in the fall, like we are told…..  However, sometimes the best laid plans just don’t work out.  If that happened to you this year, we’ve got you covered!   We’ve got a great variety of spring bulbs blooming right now – quite a festive sight out there!  There are several types of tulips and narcissus (daffodils), as well as fragrant hyacinths; muscari (grape hyacinth); cute little dwarf iris; checkerboard fritillaria; bright crocus; and a variety of colors of anemone and ranunculus.  Nothing says “Spring!” like these little beauties, so resolve two things:  tuck a few of these into spots in your garden now, and mark your September calendar for bulb planting! 

There is nothing healthier, more local, or more delicious than your own home-grown strawberries!   It seems like every list I’ve seen lately, listings with the “Top Ten Healthiest Foods You Should Be Eating” - every single one includes strawberries. They are packed with nutrients, especially Vitamin C! So it only makes sense to eat all we can while they are in season.  (At least that is what I tell myself…)
Fortuitously, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better selection here at Farmington Gardens for bare-root strawberries – I counted twelve different types out there today. At $4.99 for 12 plants that will rapidly multiply into many more, that is a very sweet deal. We’ve got Albion, Diamante, Eversweet, Hecker, Hood (THE BEST, if I say so), Puget Reliance, Quinault, Rainier, Seascape, Shuksan, Tri Star, and Tribute. If you’ve never grown strawberries before, you should know they are quite easy to grow. The one competitor you will have for your crop of little beauties (other than your children!) will be slugs, but they can be easily and safely dealt with with regular doses of Sluggo (the slugs, not the children). You might want to read our hand-out for all the details on strawberries. (There are info sheets on many topics at our website to give you a helping hand.) http://www.farmingtongardens.com/pdf/infostation/47_strawberries.pdf   And if you’d like my favorite recipe for shortcake to go with those berries, let me know – I have a winner!

We’re on the verge of the “big show”, and we’re really starting to see some plant growth.  Buds are swelling, and we’ll be experiencing the full magnificence of spring really soon!  In the meantime, here are a few things that we caught blooming around the nursery today…

Appleblossom Bergenia

Salix caprea 'Pendula'

Anemone

Golden Glory Cornelian Cherry Dogwood

Valley Valentine Pieris

Dwarf Iris

Pansies

Burgundy Belle Red Maple

Evergreen Clematis

The Oregon Food Bank has asked us to thank all of our customers who so generously donated canned food during our annual Canned Food Drive. Together we collected 3000 pounds of food to help fight hunger in our community.  Fantastic!  There is certainly a more urgent need this year than ever before, and so it is a great feeling to see us all pulling together.

 
This is a good opportunity to also remind you of the Plant a Row for the Hungry (PAR) program. Farmington Gardens is a collection center for PAR – last year we collected over 3000 pounds of beautiful, homegrown produce, which was distributed to the Sunshine Pantry.  You cannot imagine the excitement at the Pantry when we arrive with our boxes of beautiful, colorful veggies — they are snatched up by grateful families in no time.

We like to reward our PAR donors for planting a little bit extra and contributing to PAR – so we provide them with punch cards which, when completed, entitle bearer to a $10 gift card at Farmington Gardens.  At the end of the season, we provide donors with a receipt of total pounds contributed, so that they can claim the donations as a tax deduction, if they so choose.  Also new this year:  donations will count toward Garden Rewards points as well!   Be sure to pick up a PAR brochure here at FG the next time you are in for all the program details.

Here are a few friendly reminders of good things to do in the garden during the month of March.   The more we can stay ahead of things now, the easier time we will have later when everything is growing like crazy!

• time to finish pruning roses, if it is not already done.
• get plans ready for a vegetable garden; if soil is dry enough, plant cool season veggies such as peas, lettuce, cabbage, onions, kale, chard.
• prune spring-flowering shrubs (forsythia, quince, witchhazel, for example) right after they are finished blooming.
• divide daylilies and hostas.
• plant berries: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, currants, gooseberries.
• fertilize existing cane berries with fertilizer (1-2 cups of EB Stone Fruit Tree Food) or manure
• top dress vegetable garden space and landscape areas with compost
• thatch and renovate lawns if needed
• protect new emerging growth from slugs – bait with Sluggo, which is safe for pets and birds.
• fertilize rhododendrons, camellias, and azaleas with acid-type fertilizer, such as EB Stone Azalea, Camellia, and Gardenia Food.

This year Farmington Gardens is celebrating its 15th year – and we want to give you the presents! We invite you to participate in our monthly anniversary drawing – we will pick a winner at random on the first of every month, now throughout the season. Enter every time you visit us, one entry per family per visit please. Prizes will vary month to month, and will be valued between $50-150. Winners will be notified on the first of each month, and posted in our store.  

Congratulations to Liam McLaughlin, who is our first winner. He takes home an Acer palmatum dissectum ‘Crimson Queen’, valued at $99.  This slow-growing laceleaf maple has deep red leaves all summer long, creating a dramatic focal point in the garden.  As with most Japanese maples, it will thrive in a container, making it ideal for a deck or small patio.