Back yard bounty tips | The Compleat Home Gardener

Published 11:00 am Wednesday, July 8, 2026

At the Auburn Farmer’s Market, from 11 a.m. to noon on Sunday, July 5, Marianne Binetti will be hosting a free seminar on “Binetti’s Summer Garden Tips.”

At the Rention Water District, starting at 6:30 p.m., Binetti will be giving a presentation on “Unthirsty Landscapes.” This is a free class, but you must RSVP. Visit www.binettigarden.com for more information.

At the Bellevue Botanical Garden, starting at 11 a.m. on July 10, Binetti will be hosting a “Walk and Talk Garden Tour.” This is a free event; meet up at the entrance.

Finally, at the West Seattle Nursery on July 11, starting at 11 a.m., Binetti will be having a “Container Garden Do’s and Don’ts” presentation. This is a free event.

The second week of July and local Farmer’s Markets are selling local produce for the freshest fruits and vegetables you can buy.

If you want to grow edibles of your own to harvest and eat here are the best tips for becoming a back yard farmer in Western Washington:

1. Plant leafy crops like lettuce and spinach in April and May: Cool season crops will germinate and grow while the soil is till moist and the nights cool.

2. Protect seedlings and plant starts from slugs – more than once. Set out saucers of beer or use a pet safe slug bait but remember in Western Washington slugs and snails are active all year. The two “A” months of April and August are the most effective time for slug control as they are out and about looking for mates.

3. Grow tomatoes in black plastic containers up against a hot south or west facing wall to increase heat and encourage early ripening. The black plastic will absorb and hold heat adding to the reflective heat from the wall.

4. For the best guarantee of success, grow cherry or patio tomatoes. Varieties like Super Sweet 100 and Sungold have small fruit but dependable ripening.

5. Growing corn is difficult. Just buy it at the farmer’s market. Corn needs other corn plants nearby in order to fully germinate and this means a corn crop takes up a lot of room. Corn also depletes the soil of nutrients and needs a lot of sunny days and hot nights to mature. Leave corn growing to experienced gardeners and just buy it fresh at farmer’s markets. .

6. Cover your carrots to prevent carrot rust fly. Agriculture fleece is a light weight spun polyester blanket to lay atop a carrot crop so flies cannot reach the green tops and infect the roots with pitted holes. You can reuse the floating row covers year after year. A great investment.

7. Brassica crops such as cabbage, broccoli and Brussel sprouts will always get green worms – unless you cover the young plants with row covers just as you would with carrots. It is the white butterflies that lay eggs on these crops and the eggs then hatch into the ugly green worms that defile all members of the cabbage family.

8. Worried about aphid, green worms, slugs or other bugs on your home grown produce? Harvest into a plastic laundry basket and hose off the crop before bringing indoors or dunk the produce in salted water for a few minutes until all the creepy crawlers float off the plant.

9. It is easier to grow food if you start with raised beds or large containers, great soil and already started plants of squash, zucchini, tomatoes, beans and herbs. Growing from seed has more room for error and just dropping seed into the ground without preparing the soil is a recipe for disappointment. Containers filled with potting soil and fertilized with liquid or slow-release plant food granules is the easiest way for beginners to break into farming.

10. Home grown is priceless – so consider your first attempts at vegetable gardening a learning experience. Then get a taste of success by planting zucchini.

Marianne Binetti has a degree in horticulture from Washington State University and is the author of “Easy Answers for Great Gardens” and several other books. For answers to gardening questions, visit plantersplace.com and click “As The Expert”. Copyright for this column owned by Marianne Binetti. For more gardening information, she can be reached at her website, www.binettigarden.com.