This guest post was written by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant?, and originally appeared on their blog.

David and I are wandering the Northwest Flower and Garden Show this week. The display gardens are beautiful, as always. Some are even spectacular.  But only two garden installations serve to truly inspire an urban gardener in these times. Since David and I are particularly interested in sustainable, organic food production for urban dwellers we found that these two gardens had the most to offer: “A Family’s Little Farm in the City” and “The Truck Farm.” (More on that in my next blog). “A Family’s Little Farm in the City” certainly lives up to its promise: to “demonstrate how a family can live sustainably in the city.” A small dwelling – actually a barn, but it could be modified – with solar panels, a quiet patio serving as a front porch, vegetable beds, an edible forest, compost bins, rain barrels, and bee hives. All thrive on this tiny plot of land.

I love this chicken tractor. The hen industriously scratches and pecks, tilling the soil for you. She can retire to her little shed to lay her eggs. Talk about a valuable partner!!  This is probably my favorite item in the display.

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This guest post was written by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant?, and originally appeared on their blog.

Kathryn and I taught a Master Gardener training class on plant disorders, diseases, and pests yesterday. We’ve learned through experience that most plant problems result from poor growing conditions. Growing conditions are physical and cultural environmental factors that affect the well being of your plants.

Light, water, temperature and soil nutrients, for example, are all physical factors of the environment that profoundly affect plant performance. Cultural environmental factors  are the things we, as plant managers, do to the plants in our care, including pruning to improve air movement, thinning heavy crops of fruit, and avoiding overcrowding among many others. Good growing conditions are the foundation for plant health, and eighty percent of plant problems are due to poor growing conditions.

Physical environmental factors include light, water, temperature, and soil.

Sunlight is, of course, vital. All green plants manufacture food from sunlight through photosynthesis. Fertilizer and mineral nutrients are sometimes called “plant food” but that is an erroneous concept. Sugar is actually “plant food” and plants create sugar out of solar energy, water and carbon dioxide. Obviously, if a plant does not get enough sunlight it becomes malnourished and could even starve to death.

Water, like sunlight, is also absolutely vital for a plant’s well being. It moves through the plant’s veins like blood in our own bodies. Water transports food and mineral nutrients to every cell. Roots absorb water, which moves up through the stem, and is lost to the air through the leaves. Losing water through the leaves is the pump that drives water movement through the plant’s body. If the pump stops, the plant can get into serious, life-threatening trouble very quickly.

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Last year at this time, I had fond dreams of growing sweet peas that would climb up the railings of my front porch and fill the air with sweet scents. I would have a chair on the porch, of course, and sit there with a cup of hot lemon tea on warm spring mornings. Everything would be perfect.*

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Sunday was one of those rare sunny winter days in Portland. Birds were chirping, the kids were riding their bikes in circles, and I decided to tackle some front yard clean up.

My house’s former owner had quite a green thumb—come spring my front yard will be a fun mix of vegetables, fruits, ornamental grasses, and perennials. On Sunday morning it was a soggy, overgrown, and under-pruned mess of fallen leaves and barren branches. I looked around and realized it was all up to me now. This yard is mine and I can either take up where the former owner left off or become that yard on the street that everyone whispers about.

So I began to clean up. I cut back perennials, trimmed the grasses, and raked the leaves. I cleaned out the unknown mess that had taken over one of the containers on my porch and made room for the succulents I plan on putting in it. I’m dedicating the next clear weekend day to recreating these this design found in Debra Lee Baldwin’s new book, Succulent Container Gardens.

In the end, I filled an entire compost bin with yard debris and I didn’t even step into the backyard, which is quickly becoming an unappealing jungle. But my front yard is no longer hiding in shame, and I’m actually excited to do some more work.

Last year’s CENTS show was pretty slow due to a giant snow storm that prevented a lot of people from attending. This year there were only a few flurries, and much more traffic at the show!

Willoway Nurseries had a neat booth that included a lookout platform, where you could see out over the top of the whole show. (The picture only shows about a quarter of the show.)

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This guest post was written by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant?, and originally appeared on their blog.

On Thursday David and I taught an all day long Master Gardener class about insects. What fun! Insects come in so many different colors, sizes, and shapes it boggles the mind. Some insects (the good bugs) are a gardener’s friend and some (the bad bugs) are foes. Learning how to identify friend from foe really helps in successful garden management. Your friends are the beneficial insects, the predators, parasites, or pollinators. Predators and parasites eat the insects that ruin your garden and pollinators pollinate the flowers on your fruit trees and vegetables. The list below is a continuation from David’s last blog post.

Butterflies and Moths. All of these insects belong to the order Lepidoptera, meaning scale-wing, because their wings are covered with minute, often colorful scales. Adults have four large wings and are often much appreciated for their grace and beauty. Their larvae, on the other hand, are caterpillars, cutworms, hornworms, corn earworms, tomato fruitworms, and many other very destructive pests of our food crops and ornamental plants. All lepidopterans have complete metamorphosis with larvae that are worm-like caterpillars which pupate in a chrysalis, cocoon, or in the soil. The larvae have chewing mouthparts and the adults have straw-like mouthparts for sucking up nectar.

Caterpillars come in many different colors and sizes. Some are very furry, some are quite smooth. Some are brightly colored and some match their background so perfectly they are very difficult to find.

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We have a new cookbook coming out this spring—The Northwest Vegetarian Cookbook. I am not a vegetarian, but I do eat a mostly plant-based diet. This is more due to my lack of interest in cooking meat than anything else, but it works.

I’ve been looking through the pages this week to get a better understanding of the book. (As an aside—getting paid to read is maybe one of the best parts of publishing.) Though several recipes pique my interest, one really stood out: Black-Eyed Pea Chili. It sounds like a perfect Superbowl meal.

Though my beloved Patriots are not in it, I still love the Superbowl. I like the commercials, the silly halftime show, the energy, and the excuse to have people over to cheer, boo, eat, and drink. I always make a chili, and this recipe sounds like a perfect fit.

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Portland in January can be pretty drab and dreary. The grey of the bare branches matches the grey of the ever present clouds, which match the grey of the pavement (often muddied and puddled by the grey rain). Even the numerous conifers take on a charcoal cast. With spring (and color!) several months out, I was ecstatic to receive an advance copy of Tom Fischer’s The Gardener’s Color Palette.

Every chapter represents a specific color (or color range), and each page profiles a different bright flower popping off the page. In these dreary Portland weeks it makes me think that maybe spring isn’t too far away.

Though I’ve always considered myself to be a green and yellow type of gal (both are represented in the book), I find myself constantly pulled back to the chapter on orange. There’s something about the soft peach of the Tulipa ‘Dordogne’ and the brighter tropical orange of the Fritillaria imperialis that makes me wonder how I can incorporate them into my garden this spring (or fall as is the case with planting tulip bulbs).

Fritillaria imperialis

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This guest post was written by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant?, and originally appeared on their blog.

This week Kathryn and I are teaching Entomology, the study of Insects, to the Master Gardeners. Insects are absolutely fascinating animals, some are the gardener’s friend and some are foes. How can you tell which is which? Use this handy guide to help you distinguish between pests and beneficial insects on your plants.

Beetles, Weevils, and Curculios. All members of this group belong to the order Coleoptera, meaning sheath (coleo) wing (ptera). In this group, the wing covers (the two fore wings) are hard, often shiny and colorful, and completely cover the abdomen. These insects have complete metamorphosis. The ladybird beetle (aka, lady bug) is a familiar representative of this group and one of the most beneficial insects in your garden. Many destructive pests are found in this group, in addition to the beneficial ones. As a group they are rather clumsy fliers compared to many other insects. They have mouthparts adapted for chewing.

Beetle eggs hatch into larvae that are distinctly different in appearance from the adult insect. Some are C-shaped, white grubs with brown heads and three pairs of jointed legs. They live in the soil and feed on plant roots. Others, like the ladybird beetle larvae, look like tiny monsters crawling over the leaves of your plants searching for aphids to eat.

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This guest post was written by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, authors of What’s Wrong with My Plant?, and originally appeared on their blog.

I am immersed these days in the language of botany. It is just as though I have signed up for one of those immersion programs used to learn a foreign language. Which I guess is what I am really doing, after all. I had Latin in high-school, but can’t remember much of that.  But David knows the language well.  And in the classes we teach on Plant Identification, we talk about the features of plant flowers that tell us its name.

Botanical Illustrations show the technical features botanists use to identify plants. Here are some for you to enjoy:

The genus Penstemon illustrates features of the family Scrophulariaceae.

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