Bellevue Demonstration Garden

10/07/2026

More information from WSU

This WSU fact sheet is one of a three-part series on cover crops for home gardeners. It focuses on choosing the best cover crops for gardens in Washington and Oregon, west of the Cascades.

10/07/2026

🌱 Don’t wait much longer to sow those cover crops!

If you’ve been planning to plant a cover crop in your vegetable garden this fall, now is the time to get those seeds in the ground.

Cover crops help protect bare soil from winter weather, reduce erosion, suppress weeds, and add organic matter back into the soil. But they need time to germinate and become established before colder weather and shorter days slow everything down.

Here at the Bellevue Demonstration Garden, we use cover crops in our garden beds too. We’ll let them protect and feed the soil through the winter, then carefully work them into the soil in spring before planting begins again.

If a garden bed won’t be ready for a cover crop soon, don’t leave the soil bare. A layer of organic mulch can help protect it through the winter instead.

Feed the soil, feed the garden! 🌱

10/06/2026

🌱 Tool Tip Tuesday: Meet the dibber!

Planting fall bulbs like tulips, daffodils, and alliums? Skip the hand cramp and reach for a dibber! This simple, pointed tool makes quick planting holes, so you don’t have to dig a big scoop for every bulb. And bulbs aren’t its only trick: a dibber is handy for making holes for seeds and seedlings, too.

If yours has depth marks, use them to keep holes consistent. Check the bulb package directions, too. Bulbs can be particular about how deep they want to go! 😊

Just press, drop in your bulb, cover, and let spring handle the rest.

Got a favorite tool tucked in your garden shed for bulb season? Let us know in the comments!

10/06/2026

🌷 Plant now, celebrate later!

Fall is an ideal time to plant spring-blooming bulbs like daffodils, tulips, and crocuses. Planting while the soil is still workable gives them time to develop roots before winter.

Quick tips for success:
🌱 Planting depth: A good general rule is to plant bulbs about 2–3 times as deep as the bulb is tall. Check the package directions, too.
☝️ Which side up? Pointy end toward the sky! If you’re looking at a mysterious round lump and guessing, plant it on its side. Nature is surprisingly good at figuring out which way to grow; the shoot will still find the light.

You and your spring garden are going to love these early pops of color!

10/04/2026

Petals & Poetry 🌸

“The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry…”
— W. B. Yeats, The Wild Swans at Coole

October has arrived at the Bellevue Demonstration Garden.

The flowers may be fewer, the seed heads a little browner and the mornings a little cooler, but the garden is far from finished. Late blooms still feed visiting pollinators, seeds are ripening for birds and next year’s garden, and fallen leaves are beginning their quiet work of protecting and feeding the soil.

There is beauty in a garden winding down — if we resist the urge to tidy it all away.
Happy Sunday from the Bellevue Demonstration Garden. 🍂🌼

10/03/2026

🪻Saturday Smile

09/29/2026

🪏 Tool Tip Tuesday: The Broadfork

It looks a little like a garden fork that decided to get serious. 😄

A broadfork has long tines, a wide crossbar and two handles. Step on the bar to sink the tines into the soil, then pull the handles back toward you. Instead of turning the soil over, you're gently lifting and loosening it.

Why might that matter?

Turning or tilling a bed can disrupt soil structure and the community of organisms living beneath our feet. A broadfork can help loosen compacted soil and improve air and water movement while leaving much of that soil structure in place.

And you don't necessarily need to dash out to one. For a smaller bed, a regular garden fork can be used in much the same way—insert, gently rock and lift, then move to the next spot rather than flipping the soil over.

Yesterday we talked about protecting naked soil with cover crops. If a bed needs loosening first, a broadfork can help prepare it with less disturbance. Then sow that cover crop and let living roots do some of the work over winter. 🌱

Sometimes the best garden tools aren't about working the soil harder. They're about disturbing it a little less.

09/28/2026

🌱 DON’T LEAVE YOUR SOIL NAKED! 🌱

As the vegetable garden opens up in fall, it can be tempting to clean everything out, rake the soil smooth, admire your work…and walk away.
But wait! Your soil would really rather not spend a wet Pacific Northwest winter sitting there completely naked. 😳

Bare soil is vulnerable to erosion, compaction from winter rains, nutrient loss, and weeds happily moving into the newly available real estate.

One solution? Cover crops.

Cover crops are grown primarily to protect and improve the soil. Their roots help hold soil in place, support soil life, and improve soil structure. Legumes such as clover, field peas, and vetch can also work with soil bacteria to capture nitrogen from the atmosphere.
Later, many cover crops can be cut down and left to decompose, returning organic matter to the soil.

Think of it as putting your garden to bed for winter — but giving the soil a nice green blanket first. 🌱

And we're practicing what we preach! This fall we're planting cover crops right here at the Bellevue Demonstration Garden. On Wednesday, we'll show you what we're planting and why.

Feed the soil. Feed the garden. 💚

09/27/2026

🍂 Petals & Poetry Sunday

Autumn breeze whispers,
Golden leaves dance in the air,
Quiet warmth remains.

09/26/2026

🏵Saturday Smile