Northwest Edible Life

urban homesteading in the pacific northwest

Frequently Asked Questions

Quick Links to FAQ Answers:

Where do you garden?

My garden is located about 20 miles north of Seattle, not too far from Puget Sound.

What zone are you in?

My garden is in USDA Hardiness Zone 8B, and Sunset Climate Zone 5. I personally believe that USDA Hardiness rankings become only moderately helpful west of the Rockies, and lose their helpfulness almost completely west of the Cascades. To put it in perspective, 7B is the same USDA hardiness as Columbia, SC, Atlanta, GA and Birmingham, AL but how, when and what Maritime NW gardeners grow is very different from Southern gardeners.

How big is your garden?

We garden a generous one-third of an acre. Roughly one-quarter of that, or perhaps 3,700 square feet including lots of paths and non-bed area, is used primarily for edibles. Additional perennial plantings that do double duty as ornamental and edible (blueberries, elderberry, etc.) are scattered around yard.

Do you grow all your own food?

Oh, goodness no! We grow almost all of our fresh-eatin’ vegetables (still working on carrots and in the winter we might pick up a few things in the store) and probably one-third of our fruit, depending on the year.

We supplement the produce that we preserve by sourcing pickling cukes, canning tomatoes and assorted heat-loving tree fruit from Eastern Washington farmers. My primary source for preserving produce is Valicoff Family Farms.

We also buy most (but not all, because we live in the real world) of our meat, poultry, seafood, grains, dairy and sweeteners from local and/or trusted sources.

When should I plant my tomatoes (I live in Seattle)?

I write monthly garden To Do Lists that will will be broadly appropriate for gardeners in the maritime Northwest, although every gardener will need to determine their exact timing for their own latitude, altitude and microclimate.

When should I plant my tomatoes (I live in Atlanta)?

I have no idea. Sorry, but I can’t claim any expertise in growing edibles outside the Pacific Northwest. I hear rumors of places where peppers overwinter and tomatoes take over garage walls and need to be shielded from late afternoon heat. I have readers who live in places where they easily grow watermelons and sweet potatoes. But none of these things happen where I garden.

I highly recommend looking up your local university cooperative extension program for growing guides tailored to your region.

Can I link to or use your post on my site?

I love spreading the word about this blog and the joy of edible gardening, and having other bloggers and journalists share links to this site helps tremendously. Link all you want!

Please remember that all content on this site, including original images and writings, is protected by copyright. Quoting small portions of my writing on your site is fine, but reproduction of entire posts or substantial portions of them without permission isn’t. Interested in re-publication rights? Contact me and let’s talk!

Can I write a guest post for your blog?

Maybe? I do very, very few guest posts, and generally I solicit them from the authors. While I am willing to consider commercial-free guest posts from passionate, authentic gardeners or homesteaders, the topic has to be spot-on for the Northwest Edible audience and of an appropriate tone, length and style. Typically, my guest posts come from other bloggers who are already part of this community.

I will not run a guest post written to sell or promote Your Great Thing, so please don’t ask. I will not run a guest post designed primarily to create backlinks or other social proof for a commercial site or third party, so please don’t ask.

See below for more on how much I hate backlink requests.

Can you add the following links to your website…?

Please do not email me asking me to put backlinks to your irrelevant, half-plagiarized, bland commercial content in all my most popular posts. It’s honestly just really rude. I don’t show up at your house unannounced with a velvet clown poster and tell you to hang it in your dining room, do I?

How Do I Subscribe To Your Blog?

To have posts, tips and updates delivered to your email inbox for free, click here, enter your email address and complete the subscription request. Thank you so much for subscribing!

What type of camera do you use for the photography on your site?

Bwaaaa Haaa Haa! Whoo boy, sorry, but every time I get this question I have to laugh. I don’t have any fancy-pants camera or anything.

I take pretty much all my photos with my iPhone. It’s not the most recent one. One or two generations back. Sometimes the pictures are respectable. I’ve learned that taking pictures in the daytime near a window is better than at 8:00 pm under a florescent light. But other than that, when the pictures don’t suck it’s mostly luck.

What are the technical details of your blog?

This is a self-hosted WordPress blog built on the Genesis Framework by StudioPress. The theme is  Cook’d Pro with very, very minor look-and-feel customizations by yours truly.

You wrote “panty” instead of “pantry” and other typos.

Yeah, that happens. Posts get written at midnight. Mistakes get made. Spellcheck ok’s the word “panty” when I meant “pantry” not realizing how silly it will seem when I say I’m keeping apricot preserves in my panty (true story).

I do go back and edit, double check and reread everything before I publish it, but it’s just me. There is no copy-editor, no proof-reader, no publisher. So, I beg your patience and your understanding when typos happen.

Your (kind) notation alerting me to typos is appreciated, but don’t be a jerk about it, ok? Let’s just keep in mind that literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of words are up on this site that are exactly what they should be.

Why did my comment not appear or get deleted?

If your comment didn’t appear, it probably got caught in the fantastically awesome spam filter I use which is run by Akismet. If you’ve noticed that you aren’t required to prove you aren’t a robot or do trigonometry before you can leave a comment, thank Akismet.

I generally have 1000s of comments in the spam queue and I just don’t have time to sift through them. I’m sorry if your legit comment got caught. If you think this happened (and if you included a URL in your comment it’s more likely that it did) email me and I’ll see what I can do to find your comment and get it published.

If your comment was deleted it’s almost certainly because you came onto my site and acted like a raging dick. Sorry, life’s tough that way – Wheaton’s Law is enforced here. I am happy to see productive discussion from multiple viewpoints here, but if a comment is hate-filled or just plain rude, I delete it.

For more information of my philosophy of comment moderation, see here.

Wait, What? What’s Wheaton’s Law?

Wheaton’s Law is an internet axiom developed by professional geek Wil Wheaton that says: “Don’t be a dick.” That’s the full extent of it. For more information, see Mr. Wheaton explain his own law, here.

I’m really offended because there is swearing on your site!

Sorry to hear that. Before you take the effort to comment or email me and tell me how offended you are because I occasionally use swear words in my posts, please consider that it’s a very big internet and there are many websites out there that will be a better fit for your language preferences.

Many people enjoy the content on this site just the way it is and, in fact, most of my most popular posts contain a little salty language. If you don’t enjoy this site, that’s okay. You don’t have to read any of the content or utilize any of the many tools, planning guides and resources I make freely available here.

I like your site but don’t live in the Pacific Northwest. Is there a blog like yours but for my particular climate?

I don’t know. Probably not. Maybe you should totally start one!

Did I fail to answer your question?

Let me know and I’ll try to get it answered for you. Thanks so much!