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Craig Sailor is the Arts & Entertainment editor at The News Tribune. Last year he planted his first vegetable garden. Focusing on unusual varieties, “Freak of Nature” returns for 2008 with a new crop of uncommon vegetables and flowers. This year he’ll try yin yang beans, giant pumpkins, blue poppies and mutant sunflowers. He gardens at his North End Tacoma home and sneaks seeds in to his mother’s garden at Willapa Bay when she’s not looking. E-mail him at craig.sailor@thenewstribune.com.

Sue Kidd is the Lifestyle Editor at The News Tribune and the ringleader for the Home&Garden section. She is a decent vegetable gardener, but occasionally a tragic mess at growing other stuff. She’ll blog about gardening events, gadgets, her weird obsession with guerrilla gardening and all her assorted garden disasters. E-mail her with thoughts/rants/questions/bizarre observations. sue.kidd@thenewstribune.com.

More gardening blogs:
Greengirl
"Starting seeds, dreading weeds."

You Grow Girl
"Gardening for the people."

Between Plow and Wood
"Meditations on farming, nature, food, art, sustainability, the environment and rural living."

Downtown Tomatoes
"A gardening club for the rest of us."

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Get Growing
A Gardening Blog
Friday, June 13th, 2008
Fix My Yard: A tiny backyard... and a blank slate
Posted by Sue Kidd @ 10:39:43 am

We are all about garden inspiration here right now. After our Fix My Yard section ran last week with garden designer Sue Goetz offering readers advice on how to fix up their yards, we had a few more people send us photos of their plain yards. Do you have advice? Post your comments here, or email them to sue.kidd@thenewstribune.com.

Today's tragic mess of a yard (we are going to trademark that phrase, Craig Sailor and I have been using it so much)... is a Pierce County yard withlittle inspiration, a dog and a lot of dirt. Here's what Des Rodgers had to say about the place:

Please find attached ... photos of the yard at my friend's house in Meridian Campus off of Marvin Road. ... the neighbors at back can look straight into the living area. It's approximately 12 feet from the edge of balcony to fence. And the ground is very clay like.

Here is a pic of the yard

:

Categories: Fix my yard!
Momotaros and The Temple
Posted by Craig Sailor @ 06:19:38 am

Some of you may remember earlier blog posts about a variety of tomatoes (Momotaro) I grew from seed in my bathroom.

I gave four to my mom and hardened off the rest outdoors here in Tacoma. Fellow garden blogger Sue Kidd took one look at them and said, "Dude, you're going to kill these things."

Well, I haven't killed them but they are so stunted they look like they have been smoking four packs a day all their lives.

On the other hand, the ones I gave my mother are doing great. She kept those in her greenhouse where they still live (top photo).

Outside the greenhouse we resurrected the Temple of Tomatitude (second photo). After she read an article in Sunset about using new soil she bought wine barrels (they still smelled of Pinot Noir) and is growing several varieties. The Temple is designed to keep rain off the leaves and fruit and heat them up a bit. She's keeping the sides open this year.

Last year's Temple wasn't a big success. The fruit was meager and suffered from stagnant air.

Meanwhile, back in Tacoma, I have a couple of my dwarf Momotaros in my garden and some gigantic starts (comparatively speaking) that I bought at the garden show and at the Proctor Farmers Market.

I'll blog on that in the near future.

Categories: Tomatoes • 2 comments