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Its the time of year that queen bumblebees are emerging from their over-wintering hiding places to find a spot to hatch the season's colony in.  Bumblebees are magical and important garden visitors.  We want to encourage them as much as we can to show up in our garden.  Providing nesting sites is one excellent way to do this.  For nesting sites they look for warm, dry, shoebox-sized cavities in the ground.  Old rodent nests or tunnels, tree hollows near the ground, or areas of grass that have grown dense and fallen over all make excellent natural sites for the bumblebee's nest.  If you...

Native wildflowers like Bee Balm, Showy Milkweed, Blue Flax, Blanketflower, and Yarrow benefit from a period of cold stratification prior to planting.  Cold stratification is basically giving your seeds exposure to a false winter.  Most plants evolved away from accidentally germinating in the middle of the winter by requiring a certain number of days exposed to low temperatures before they will sprout.  Our vegetable crops don't require this period of cold simply because thousands of years of gardeners have bred this trait out of them!  But our native plants still like to know they've been through the worst of it...

Earwigs, Dermaptera, are perhaps more well-known for their freakiness than for their capacity to be destructive in the garden- but trust me, they are both.  These lovers of water in the desert are common in dry climates where water is present- i.e. irrigated gardens and farms.  In fact, they look like miniature aquatic crawdads.  They are nocturnal so you may not even know you have them until you go out with your headlamp and see them feeding on tender corn silks, the leaves of young fruit trees, or zinnia leaves and petals.  Luckily the tell-tale signs of earwig damage are easy...

Listen to our recent interview on the Misfit Gardener Podcast! Connecting with Giving Ground Seeds

Did you know??!!! Climbing peas are an excellent use of space and are productive over longer periods of time than bush peas. This long season of harvesting makes them an excellent choice for home gardeners, who typically don’t need a bumper crop all at once but want a more sustained fresh harvest over weeks. Climbing peas are amazing at using vertical space to capture tons of light energy. While many varieties grow a reasonable 4-6’, some reach 12’ plus in height. And they do this without the energy and time intensive process of growing sturdy woody trunks.  This vertical growth is possible...