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Master Gardener Education Series

Extension Master Gardeners of King County offer gardening classes and workshops, both online and in person. Whether you’re a beginning gardener or a veteran of many seasons, adult or youth, you’re sure to find a class of interest. Find details about these series on our Education page.

Bellevue Demo Garden Workshops are offered online Saturdays, from 9:30 AM to 10:30 AM, January to October. Participants can expect to learn about new methods and ideas to improve their gardening skills with an emphasis on ornamental plants, landscape planning, and pollinator habitat. Series subscriptions are available, and registration is required.

Growing Groceries Classes are offered online Wednesdays, from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM, January to June. Participants will learn best practices for growing fruits and vegetables, many specific to Western Washington. Class content is appropriate for the time of year. Series subscriptions are available, and registration is required.

Youth Gardening with King County MGs

Children’s Programs at BDG 2023 Great Garden Picks for Children invites children to bring an adult to discover the botanist, gardener, scientist, horticulturalist, soil engineer … and the child within during these free, first Wednesday events, 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM at the Bellevue Demo Garden. Participants must pre-register, no fee required.

MG Newsletter

MG Newsletter – The Connection
Read all about what’s of interest in the January 2023 issue!

- We’re ALL in: The 2023 Northwest Flower & Garden Festival
- Bellevue Demonstration Garden Workshops for 2023 by BDG Workshop Team
- Growing Groceries: Season 5 Opens in January by MG Joan Baldwin
- A Note from the Program Coordinator by Sarah Moore
- Remembering Master Gardener Larry Davis by MG Bonny Nordgren
- Foodies in the Garden by MG Bruce Caredio, Foundation Board Member
- Master Gardener Program 50th Anniversary
- The Little Demonstration Garden That Could by MG Marty Byrne
- The website is moving! Get involved.
- Miller Library: The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature
- More education BDG workshops, Growing Groceries classes, Bellevue Botanical Garden, WNPS, and the KCD Online Plant Sale

…more …

This newsletter is sent monthly to King County Master Gardeners. Look for it in your email. Miss a past issue? Find it here.

Heads Up! from the Diagnosticians

The Heads Up! newsletter, published by the King County Master Gardener Diagnostic Lab, focused articles on timely knowledge about what to be aware of in your garden. There are weather updates, Nerd’s Corner and fun facts with photos in Twigga Mortis. Here are some past issues for early spring that you might find of interest. Find all the back issues.

Spring 2021: Nitrogen in the Spring Garden; European Chafers; Weather Station; A Systematic Approach to Plant Problem Diagnosis; Pop Quiz: Is it a Sign or a Symptom?

Spring 2020: Don’t Plant that Tomato Yet!; The Word from Captain Cleanup; 2019 Down to the Numbers; Asian Giant Hornet; Houdini Fly

Spring 2019: Ooh, It’s an Oomycete!; Warm Season Vegetables and Cold March Temps; Bunnies, Bucks, and Slime

Spring 2018: Gardens Awake, To Mulch or Not to Mulch, 2017 Lab Stats, Patience in Garden Cleanup, Organic Matter Matters

The Garden in Winter

Just when you thought you could relax and pore through all those garden catalogs that have arrived, you realize that your yard and garden still need your attention. We’ll look at those catalogs later.

The winter months—January, February, and March—offer many opportunities to get outside. So dress warmly, put on your boots, and tackle some of these winter gardening tasks:

Lawn care includes timing a lawn renovation of installation.
Tools are necessarily an important part of winter gardening. Check that yours in shape for the coming gardening season.
Rifle through the catalogs, walk through the garden and start the fun of planning the planting.
Plant those fruit trees and flowering trees, bare-root roses and berries that are ready.
Divide perennials that are summer bloomers.

Enjoy the quiet, the scents of late garden bloomers while you watch for the new growth of early bulbs.

Continue Reading »

Propagation Notes

Photo Credit: F D Richards

Spring is a good time to divide established plants, and many herbaceous perennials need to be divided every few years anyway to stay healthy.

Plan to dig on a cool morning, preferably one with cloud cover – not too hard around here. Learn about:

Dividing Fibrous-rooted Plants
Dividing Fleshy or Woody Crowned Plants
Dividing Suckers from Plants
Dividing Plants with Rhizomes
Dividing Plant with Tubers
Dividing Plants with Offset

Heads UP!

Newsletter of the Master Gardener King County Diagnostic Lab

Remember Fall 2019 Heads Up?

Brush up on what was happening then and learn more about fall gardening in this issue:

Bugs of Summer
Autumn Aerobics
The Scoop on Poop
Planning the Winter Garden
Spiders, spiders and spiders
A Guide to Lawn Fertilizing

Read more in this issue of the newsletter from the Master Gardener Diagnostic Lab in King County.

Miss a past issue? Find it here.

Online Education Series

The Master Gardeners of King County will launch their 2022 gardening classes and workshops in January 2022. Whether you’re a beginning gardener or a veteran of many seasons, you’re sure to find a class of interest.

BDG Workshops.

Series 3 Workshops are on Saturday, from 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., July to mid-October. The workshops cover a wide variety of gardening: vegetables, composting, specific plant varieties, garden pests, efficient watering, and more. Series subscriptions available at a discount. There is a $5 fee for each individual workshop. Registration is required for the series or individual classes. See https://mgfkc.org/education/bdg-workshops to register.

Classes are presented on the basics of gardening and information on specific plant families or garden problems. Classes have completed for 2022. See more information on the Growing Groceries web page.

Donate to Make a Difference

The Master Gardener Foundation of King County provides more than 80% of the financial support for the program. Please support the Master Gardener program in King County with a gift to the Foundation that is meaningful to you. Your donation will:

Continue Master Gardener outreach to share effective gardening practices.
Supply the resources that help the demonstration gardens thrive.
Ensure our plant answer clinics and the email clinic have resources for the public they serve.
Provide training to for the 2022 class of Master Gardeners.

Your donation makes a real difference. Please donate. Thank you.

Touch Base with Your Tillandsias

You don’t have to strike out with Tillandsias. These epiphytes stand out in many shapes, sizes and psychedelic colors. My local nursery tells me they are a big favorite of the people living in all the new developments in the area because they can grow indoors so easily. DispIay them creatively: glue a cluster of them to a piece of wood or a single one onto a small piece of driftwood, pop one in a teacup or hang them in various houseplants.

The best location to keep them is in a room with bright, filtered light. I had a cluster of them for many years playing hardball and refusing to bloom. I started experimenting with putting a small one outside in the summer hanging on a nail on my east-facing front porch. It received some early morning sun (on the days the sun came out.) Otherwise, it just got a good dose of bright light.

Read the full article by Wendy Lagozzino as published in the December 2014 The Dirt, MGF newsletter

Cedar Flagging

Cedar flagging is a natural process that is often confused with a disease. Evergreen plants, including conifers and broad leaf types, naturally shed some old foliage each year. Stress factors, such as insufficient water, hot winds, construction damage or other root disturbance, poor planting procedures, or recent planting can promote flagging. It is being seen more often this year because it is more common when there is hot weather followed by cold weather.