Seattle Urban Farm Co Ideas, Tips & Guides

Every plant in your garden has to come from somewhere, and for most home vegetable gardeners, that “somewhere” is either a seed in a packet or a transplant tray in a garden center. For the ambitious and curious few, there’s a third way to populate a backyard vegetable patch growing your own transplants at home.

In this video we wrap up our irrigation installation by connecting the drip lines and testing the system.

[The following introduction is an excerpt from our second book, “Grow More Food: A Vegetable Gardener’s Guide to The Biggest Harvest Possible”]

A surprising number of annual crops benefit from the support of a trellis. Because we love trellised crops and because we’ve been trialing a ton of varieties, we started carrying a selection of Renee’s Garden seeds in our shop! Here is a short list of some of our favorite crops and varieties to grow vertically in the garden and links to our store where you can find our favorite types:

One of the best things about using the Freyr trellis and compostable strings to support your crops: end of season cleanup! All you do is cut the strings, bundle up your debris and toss it into the compost. If you’ve ever spent hours detangling vines from metal mesh or plastic netting, you may understand what a game changer this can be! Below you’ll find a few videos of us cleaning up tall, vining crops from the Freyr trellis at the end of the season.

Tomato plants supported by vertical strings on a Freyr trellis.

Seed saving is the art of collecting the seed from your crop and using it in subsequent seasons to grow new plants. Even if you save only small quantities of a few crops, understanding more about the life cycle, breeding tendencies, and botany of your crops will help you manage and care for them more effectively. 

Tomato plants supported by vertical strings on a Freyr trellis.

To celebrate Spring the team from Bale Breaker’s Yakima farm is bringing 6′ hop plants sell at our their Ballard Taproom. We’ll be here selling our new Freyr trellis, our friends at Beyond Peat Professional Organics will have some of their latest soil to sample, and Ecolibrium Farms will also be in house selling plant and flower starts for the spring season!

It’s the time of year when vegetable transplants (or “starts) begin to show up at nurseries, hardware and grocery stores, and plant sales. Transplants are wonderful for many reasons. First, certain crops are difficult to grow from seed and will simply perform better if transplanted. In order to grow to maturity, many summer crops need to be propagated indoors for several weeks while the weather is still too cold to plant outside. Most plants from professional greenhouses arrive healthy and viable, but they don’t always receive the care they need from the retailer. Vegetable plants grow quickly. When stuck in small nursery containers, they can use up all of the available soil nutrients and become so stressed that its hard for them to fully recover. Here are a few things to consider when buying vegetable transplants:

Lycopersicon esculentum

We are excited to partner with our friends at Ecolibrium Farm to offer expertly tended, organic veggie & herb starts direct from their greenhouses, and our new Freyr trellises and accessories. Plant sales are first come, first serve, but we’ll have lots!

I love basil. I love growing basil, eating basil, looking at basil, thinking about basil, and talking about basil. One of the best things about basil is that, while on first blush it may seem like a challenging plant to grow, in reality it is very easy, prolific, and predictable. As long as you go about it the right way.

In addition to ordering online directly from us, all 4 colors of the Freyr trellis and our compostable trellis clips can be found at the following Seattle-area, locally owned garden centers: