Palatino Garden Adventures

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Palatino Garden Adventures Passionate Seattle gardener helping locals start kitchen gardens with personalized consulting and coaching for growing fresh food at home.🌱🏡

30/05/2026

A walk through my Seattle garden at the end of May. If you're not sure what's safe to plant outside in June, comment JUNE and I'll send you my Zone 8b/9a planting checklist.

I overplanted my zucchini again. Three plants last year buried us. I shared them with friends and neighbors and called i...
29/05/2026

I overplanted my zucchini again. Three plants last year buried us. I shared them with friends and neighbors and called it generosity.

Here is the rule I keep forgetting: one zucchini plant per person in your house. That is it. One plant gives you more than you think, and two will turn your kitchen into a squash emergency by August.

This is not a watering problem or a soil problem. It is a planning problem. You decide how much zucchini you actually eat before the seedling ever goes in the ground, and you stick to that number.

If you want the math done for you, I built a planner that works out plant counts per person for 72 crops that grow well here in the PNW. Comment ZUCCHINI and I will send it over.

Don't be me. Your neighbors will thank you.

What's the one herb you'd actually use if you grew it? 🌿
28/05/2026

What's the one herb you'd actually use if you grew it? 🌿

Most kitchen gardens go quiet in July. The beds were full in May, the first harvests came in June, and by mid-July there...
27/05/2026

Most kitchen gardens go quiet in July. The beds were full in May, the first harvests came in June, and by mid-July there is a long empty stretch before the fall crops are ready. That gap is the reason a lot of people quit growing their own food.

The fix is succession planting. Instead of planting all your lettuce, beans, or radishes in one go, you plant small amounts every 2 to 3 weeks through the season. You get a steady supply instead of one big harvest followed by nothing.

The move most people miss is relay planting. You sow the next crop while the current one is still producing, so the bed is never actually empty. Look at swipe 4 — the kohlrabi is almost done, and the lettuce at its base is already coming up. By the time the kohlrabi comes out, the bed is halfway through the next crop.

Not every crop needs this. Tomatoes, peppers, and winter squash are one-time plantings that produce for months. Succession planting is for the fast crops that finish quickly: lettuce, bush beans, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, beets, and a few others.

If you want the full schedule with sowing dates for 12 PNW succession crops, comment HARVEST and I will DM it to you.

End of May in my Phinney Ridge kitchen garden, and the bucket of dark brown liquid against the side of the shed is one o...
27/05/2026

End of May in my Phinney Ridge kitchen garden, and the bucket of dark brown liquid against the side of the shed is one of my most useful tools.

It is fermented stinging nettle brew. Brennnesseljauche, in German. A handful of nettles cut with gloves, chopped roughly into a five-gallon bucket, covered with rainwater, lid set loosely on top, stirred every couple of days. After about two weeks the bubbling stops and the liquid is the color of strong tea. The smell is famously strong, which is why the bucket lives against the side of the shed and well away from any window.

Diluted one to ten as a soil drench, it is the closest thing a kitchen gardener has to a free liquid fertilizer. Diluted one to twenty as a foliar spray, it deters aphids, mites, and thrips. The spent pulp goes onto the compost pile and speeds the whole thing up.

It is the section of this week's blog post my German gardening books take most seriously and most American kitchen garden writing skips over: eleven other herbs in the bed doing similar work for the garden itself. The full post is here, including the curry plant most people misunderstand, three kinds of insect hotel, strawberries that actually do well in the PNW, and an honest review of FoxFarm Happy Frog.

https://www.palatinogardenadventures.com/post/pnw-kitchen-garden-end-of-may

P.S. If you have ever wondered what kind of kitchen gardener you actually are, the planner, the experimenter, or the seasonal harvester, this short quiz will tell you: https://jackie3586.wixforms.com/f/7465143504168027422

The May Garden Tour of the year is in the books. Thank you to everyone who came out today.We walked through every bed. W...
24/05/2026

The May Garden Tour of the year is in the books. Thank you to everyone who came out today.

We walked through every bed. We talked about the Bok Choy and the radishes that bolted, the Tomatoes that are that are in their prime locations, the Swiss Chard that overwintered in the greenhouse and is about to come out, and how many Potatoes can be harvested from an 8 sq ft raised bed.

The questions today were good ones. How to keep the soil moist when the weather turns. Where to find good compost. How to get the family eating more vegetables and herbs. How to grow food in containers when you don't have the space for a raised bed.

I'll be doing this once a month through the growing season. The next one is Saturday, June 20. The garden will look completely different by then.

If you couldn't make today and want to come to the next one, DM me TOUR and I'll get you on the list.

And if you walked the garden today and want to talk about your own space, you know where to find me.

21/05/2026

This is wild garlic in a wooden planter on my patio, and it is the laziest crop in my whole garden. I love it for that.

The flowers just finished, and right now the plant is forming seed pods on the stems. When those dry out, the seeds drop straight into the planter and come back next spring as little baby wild garlics. No replanting. No new seed packets. No work from me.

We call it Bärlauch in Germany. Here in Seattle it grows beautifully in shade, comes back every year, and is one of the first things ready in early spring. It fills that gap when last fall's stored garlic is running out and the new crop is months away.

Want to start your own patch? Come to my Garden Tour this Saturday and go home with your first wild garlic. Comment WILD GARLIC and I'll send you the booking link.

Here is the one thing that decides whether your tomatoes actually produce this summer, and it happens the day you plant ...
19/05/2026

Here is the one thing that decides whether your tomatoes actually produce this summer, and it happens the day you plant them.

Plant them deep. Strip the lower leaves and side branches off the bottom half of the stem, then bury that whole bare stem so only the top cluster of leaves stays above the soil. A leggy, stretched-out start is not a problem for a tomato. Every spot where you removed a leaf grows roots once it is underground, and that buried stem becomes a large root system. A big root system is what carries a heavy crop through the summer.

Late May is the week for this in the Pacific Northwest. The soil is warm enough now, the cold nights are behind us, and the tomato plants that have been waiting on windowsills are ready for the ground.

One thing that matters here specifically: keep the rain off the leaves, because our wet spells spread blight fast. A simple clear cover over the top, open on the sides, does the job.

I put the full late-May garden guide on the blog this week. It covers containers, growing tomatoes on a balcony, setting up watering so it is not a daily chore, and what else needs attention right now. I will drop the link in the comments.

The best way to see how all of this actually looks is in person. My next Garden Tour is this Saturday, May 23, here in Phinney Ridge. If you would like to come, sign up below and I will share the details. And if you are working through your own tomatoes and have a question, ask me here, happy to help.

https://www.palatinogardenadventures.com/service-page/walk-my-garden-with-me?referral=service_list_widget

18/05/2026

Full walkthrough of the PNW Harvest Yield Planner. Five tabs, each one doing something different.

This Month shows you what to sow and harvest right now. Pick Crops lets you build your garden from 70+ PNW-specific options, each tagged by difficulty and season. Planning does the yield math - how many plants you actually need based on how many people you're feeding. Planting is your sow calendar with succession guidance and companion flowers. Harvesting shows you the full timeline for each crop across the year so you know exactly what you're getting and when.

Built specifically for Zone 8 through 9a.

Comment or DM the word PLANNER and I will send you the link.

15/05/2026

Spring transplant losses are frustrating, especially when you did everything you thought you were supposed to do. Most of the time it comes down to five things: timing, transition, soil prep, watering habits, and crop selection. Get those right and your success rate goes up significantly. I put together a PNW transplant timing checklist that covers Zone 9a windows for the crops I get the most questions about. DM me for the checklist, or comment MAY below and I'll send it your way.

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