From Spreadsheets to Se
Welcome to Moss & Tomatoes. If you’re looking for perfectly manicured, sun-drenched, pest-free garden inspiration… you are entirely in the wrong place.
I’m Jordan. I live, work, and garden in the beautiful, damp, and chronically overcast Pacific Northwest. By day, I’m a bookkeeper (yes, really—I balance books for a living). But the second I log off, I’m out in the yard, balancing soil pH, fighting the endless moss, and trying to coax tomatoes out of wet clay before the first frost hits.
Our PNW Gardening Philosophy: Gritty & Realistic
I started this blog because so much of the gardening advice on the internet is written for people who live in places where the sun actually shines in April. They tell you to “plant after the last frost.” Out here, if you wait for the soil to dry out, it’s July. For more on that, see our complete guide to prepping PNW soil for spring.
Moss & Tomatoes is about the gritty, realistic, muddy side of PNW gardening. We deal with slugs that look like small dogs. We deal with invasive blackberries that belong in a horror movie. We deal with rain.
Embracing the Ecosystem
But we also get to grow some of the most incredible cool-weather crops on earth, we don’t have to water our lawns for nine months of the year, and there is absolutely nothing like the taste of a strawberry that survived the spring. This approach is heavily influenced by the sustainable practices recommended by institutions like the Oregon State University Extension Service.
Whether you’re trying to reclaim a mossy patch of lawn, figure out how to keep the rain off your blight-prone tomatoes, or just looking for solidarity in the war against slugs, you’re in the right place.
Grab a trowel (and maybe a raincoat). Let’s get some dirt under our fingernails.