gardening
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How to Overwinter Herbs in Missoula
Fresh herbs do not have to end with the first fall frost. Overwintering herbs in Missoula splits into two very different jobs: deciding which perennial herbs can tough out a Montana winter in the ground with a little protection, and knowing which tender ones need to come indoors or be preserved before the first hard…
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Putting Raised Beds to Bed Without Tilling
Somewhere along the way, putting the garden to bed became synonymous with digging it up. Fall spading, tilling in amendments, turning the beds, all of it framed as good hygiene. Putting raised beds to bed without tilling is not just possible, it is a sound way to build soil over time, and it happens to…
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Mulching Your Garden for a Montana Winter
Bare soil has a rough time over a Missoula winter. Between freeze-thaw cycles, wind, and the snowmelt that comes and goes all season, an uncovered bed can lose structure, crust over, and greet you in April with a weed crop underway. Mulching for winter heads off much of that for the cost of an afternoon,…
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Cover Crops for Missoula Gardens: Feed Your Soil While It Rests
One of the cheapest soil improvements available to a Missoula garden is a bag of seed you scatter in September. Cover crops, plants grown not to eat but to protect and feed the soil, are standard practice on good farms and weirdly rare in home gardens, mostly because nobody tells home gardeners how simple the…
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Fall Garden Cleanup in Missoula: What to Cut and What to Leave Standing
There are two kinds of fall cleanup in Missoula. One strips the garden to bare dirt by October because that is what tidy looks like. The other one, the approach this guide recommends, cleans up strategically: removing what actually causes problems and deliberately leaving the rest standing, because a lot of what looks like mess…
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When and How to Plant Garlic in Missoula
Garlic is the one crop you plant in Missoula as everything else is dying, and it might be the most forgiving thing you can grow here. Planting garlic in the fall, letting it sit under the snow, and pulling fat bulbs in July fits Montana’s climate so well that MSU Extension calls it very adaptable…
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Saving Seeds From This Year’s Missoula Garden
Every September, some of the most useful seed in Missoula is already in your garden. Saving seeds from open-pollinated plants that thrived in your yard this year costs next to nothing, takes an afternoon, and lets you select, year after year, for plants that do well in your soil, your microclimate, and our short Montana…
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Curing and Storing Winter Squash, Potatoes, and Onions
The difference between winter squash that lasts until March and winter squash that rots by Halloween often comes down to a few careful weeks in late September. Curing and storing your harvest properly is the least glamorous part of vegetable gardening in Missoula and one of the highest payoffs, because it turns one good growing…
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How to Protect Your Missoula Garden From the First Frost
Missoula’s median first fall frost comes in late September (about September 26 at the airport, per NOAA’s 1991 to 2020 normals), and the operative word is median. In about 1 year in 10 it arrives by mid September, and low spots often frost earlier than the airport. A first light frost is often followed by…
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What to Do With Green Tomatoes Before the First Frost
If you grow tomatoes in Missoula, you already know how this ends. Sometime in September or early October, a cold night takes the vines and every green tomato still hanging on them. Missoula’s median first fall frost is late September (about September 26 at the airport, per NOAA’s 1991 to 2020 normals), and in about…