Gardening in Vancouver, Washington

Gardening Information

Understanding your gardening environment is essential to success.  What are the climate conditions in your area during a year's cycle?  What is the soil like?
What kinds of plants are grown successfully in your area?  What nurseries are nearby.  

Vancouver, Washington, USA, Zip Code: 98662

Hardiness Zone:  Zone 8a: 10F to 15F

Average First Frost:  October 21 - 31

Average Last Frost:  April 1 - 10

Koppen-Geiger Climate Zone:  Csb - Warm-Summer Mediterranean Climate

Ecoregion:  3a - Portland Vancouver Basin

Palmer Drought Index:  Extremely Moist

Average Annual Rainfall:  43.55 inches

Heat Zone Days:  Rare Over 86F 

Elevation:  171 feet above the Pacific Ocean

Soil:  

Nurseries:  Yard and Garden, Shorty's, Tsugawa in Woodland, Lowe's and Home Depot.  

General Geography: 

The Pacific Ocean and Astoria, Oregon, is 100 miles to the West from Vancouver.
The south side of the City of Vancouver is the Columbia River, and across the river is Portland, Oregon.  The Cascade range and Columbia Gorge is to the East.  Looking north: 165 miles to Seattle, 494 miles to Vancouver, Canada; 105 miles to Olympia, and 45 miles to Mt. St. Helens.  

January Average: 33F low, 46F high, 6" Rain

February Average: 35F low, 50F high, 4.99" Rain

March Average: 37F low, 56F high, 4.38" Rain

April Average:  40F low, 60F high, 3.28" Rain

May Average:  45F low, 67F high, 2.67" Rain

June Average:  50F low, 72F high, 1.88" Rain

July Average:  53F low, 79F high, .8" Rain

August Average:  57F low, 82F high, .5" Rain

September Average:  49F low, 75F high, 1.91" Rain

October Average:  42F low, 64F high, 3.41" Rain

November Average:  38F low, 52F high, 6.49" Rain

December Average:  34F low, 46F high, 6.68" Rain

Yearly Averages:  42F low, 62F high, 43.55" Rain


The Spirit of Gardening

Gardening in Red Bluff, California

Colors in the Garden: Vancouver, WA

From the Front Porch 2

Creating A Raised Bed Garden Over Grass

On the west side of our home, there are a few pruned shrubs near the house, then there is unwatered grass in the side lawn down to the street curb.  There are no trees or shrubs in this area of the west side lawn to block the direct sunlight all afternoon.  I wanted to convert some of this unused sunny ground into a raised bed vegetable garden for future planting.    

I started working in 9/2019, and created the raised bed you see me sitting on below.  I've been working in 11/2020 on expanding that first raised bed garden.  Thus far, I have added 52 square feet of new raised bed garden space this month.  

How?  Method?   I lay down the concrete blocks (16"x8"x8") in the pattern desired.  Then I lay cheap doubled cardboard over the grass.  On top of the cardboard I add, at various times in the year: small wood chips, leaves from our sweet gum tree, grass clippings, composted cow manure, kitchen vegetable garbage, bags of raised bed soil, back yard soil from digging, bags of vegetable and flower soil, 16-16-16 fertilizer, , etc.- in short, organic materials.  I get my blocks and bags of organic material from Ace Hardware or Lowe's in the nearby Orchards' neighborhood.

Here is how the west side raised bed garden looked in August-September 2020.  We enjoyed eating many tomatoes, squashes, peppers, zucchini, garlic, onions, and cabbages.  We also enjoyed sunflowers, nasturtiums, marigolds, and other summer annuals.  

 

September 2020

There are a few pictures below that show some of the ongoing process of creating an expanded raised garden bed in 2020-2021.  

"We seem to have lost contact with the earlier, more profound functions of art, which have always had to do with personal and collective empowerment, personal growth, communion with this world, and the search for what lies beneath and above this world."
- Peter London, No More Second Hand Art, 1989 

For me, this gardening project involves my personal empowerment: gets me moving, keeps me physically active, provides for regularly scheduled enjoyable work assignments, and allows me to create something useful pretty much on my own.  Family members help a little and we all share in the beauty and productive output of the new raised bed garden.  I always have personal growth in my knowledge and appreciation by doing, by refining my planning skills, by using good judgments to balance means and ends, and in creating something beautiful.  Gardening generally brings people into closer communion with fundamental aspects of our world- a communion of touch with the soil and the spirits of the seasons.  Here I searched beneath the new fertile soil; and, from above, maximum sunlight.  Here I searched with my own hands and body by nurturing fertile soils; integrated with a few aspects of the scope of the mind of gardening language and gardening tradition far above me.  

"Nothing is more completely the child of art than a garden."
- Sir Walter Scott

Gardening and Art

The Spirit of Gardening

Fun in Fall

 My daughter and her husband are celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.  

Karen and I are watching our grandchildren.  Both are smart, a 7th and 9th grade girl, and they worked all day Thursday and Friday at home attending online Zoom classes and doing homework.  We stayed at their house in Salmon Creek, and brought our dog, Bruno.  Saturday and Sunday we stayed at our house in the Orchards, and brought their dog, Roxi.  

Grandparents Spending Four Days with Our Grandchildren!  Aging Well     How to Live a Good Life

I have been busy expanding our vegetable garden on the west side of our home.  I've added 48 square feet to the vegetable garden already.  I plan to add 40 square feet more this coming week.  I border the new area with standard concrete two hole blocks (8x8x16').  Then I lay down a layer of cardboard over the existing grass.  Then I cover the cardboard with organic matter: small wood chips, grass cuttings, fine tree debris, composted steer manure, leaves from our sweet gum tree, kitchen garbage, bagged topsoil for raised beds, etc.  In a year or two, you can create some productive raised bed soil for growing vegetables in a sunny location.  

November Garden Planning

Every year, from 1998-2017, in November, Karen and I would talk about what fruit and nut trees, shrubs, and ornamental trees we were going to plant that winter.  We would purchase bare root tree stock in December and January, and plant in our orchard.  We would also place potted plants in the ground in the winter season.  

We purchased most of our plants at nearby Kathy Goodin's Rock Garden Nursery near Flores Road and Highway 99W.  The photograph below was taken in late winter in part of our orchard in Red Bluff, California.  We both enjoyed this creative garden work.  I miss our five acre gardening playground.  

Front Yard Gardening Project 431B

The Spirit of Gardening Website


Our Front Yard in Vancouver, Washington
Spring 2019
Front Yard Gardening Projects
Project 431
Karen and Mike Garofalo

"Good work is dignified. It develops your faculties and serves your community.  It is a central human activity.  Work, in this view: makes you honest with yourself, requires that you develop your faculties and skills, empowers you to do what you are really good at and love to do, connects you in a compassionate way with the outside world, supports the philosophy of non-destructiveness and sustainability, and integrates work with personal life and community."-  Roger Pritchard

"Once one knows what really matters, one ceases to be voluble.  And what does really matter?  That is easy: thinking and doing, doing and thinking - and these are the sum of all wisdom.  Both must move ever onward in life, to and fro, like breathing in and breathing out.  Whoever makes it a rule to test action by thought, thought by action, cannot falter, and if he does, will soon find his way back to the right road." -  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe