You can grow just about anything here :-) Not semi-tropical stuff like much of FL can accommodate. But a huge range of other plants - the PNW, in particular the Puget Sound area, offers one of the broadest ranges of plant selection to a serious gardener than just about anywhere else. Except maybe the UK :-)

I don't know where your online friend lived or how experienced a gardener s/he is but darn everyone who gardens around here grows tomatoes! You just need to know the best varieties for a cool summer climate and have a good sunny location. And squash is a no-brainer!! It grows as rampantly here as it does anywhere else.

Olympia is just a skosh colder than other parts of the close to sea level Puget Sound area. It's also about an hour and half drive from Seattle in "good" traffic and longer in "normal" traffic, which I'm not sure exists here anymore :-) But there are other, less-expensive-than-Seattle locations that are closer and that offer the usual benign Puget Sound climate. Rather than north or south of the city and having to deal with the I-5 freeway traffic, you may want to look west. The Kitsap peninsula is a pretty special place - very scenic, close to ferries (easy access to Seattle), less traffic, less expensive living and a wonderful gardening climate.

btw, most Puget Sounders enjoy the mild winters. Seldom do we have significant winter cold and it is not always wet, gray and dreary. Yesterday, my area was bright and sunny much of the day and lots of folks out for midday Christmas walks!! And summers are great and very comfortable - low humidity and few homeowners see any need for air conditioning. Hitting 90F is considered a heat wave and we might hit a day to two of those high temps but 70-80F is far more common.

Most of us who live here consider this area a superior gardening location - I'm sure you will too ;-))

@gardengal48, I was hoping you would pipe up and give me some advice! I don't own a car, so Olympia was chosen because of their public transportation availability. It seems there is a bus and a train that goes to Seattle daily, and it takes about 2.5 hours, which is better than fighting traffic, I'd say. Plus, someone said there is a ferry that goes down the sound and back, but it's rather expensive.

Your summers are much like our fall and winters down here in FL, which is my favorite time of year. We have a very short spring. By May, it's almost too hot to garden, and the heat is so bad on my lupus. I hated cold weather when I lived in SC, but only because I had to go out in it every day to go to work, etc. Now that I work at home, and will only have to go out to shop, I think the winters would be o.k. Of course, I'd need a SAD lamp, but I'd gladly do that to be closer to my son.

I'm not really keen on most salad greens, but I do love greens like collard, mustard and kale that you can cook. Root veggies I ADORE, especially turnips, beets, and potatoes. I will miss my sweet potatoes, but I imagine I can buy a few at the market. Plus, maybe if I can find a place to grow one, I can plant an apple tree.

I also love fishing and hiking, so I should be in hog heaven in the summer. ETA: speaking of 90 degree heat waves, one day it was 82 and my son was talking to me on the phone while he was waiting for a bus. Some older man next to him commented on the heat, and he said "I'm talking to my mom in Florida. She has no sympathy." LOL

We'll let you move here as long as you continue to tell everyone elsewhere in the country the weather is terrible and you can't grow anything.

The main thing about Olympia is that is where Arctic air moving down the Sound ends up. So the prairie the airport is on can get sharp temperatures. But if you settle in a building near downtown or a similar situation near the water you might find it quite charming.

We let everyone else think the weather is horrible - keeps the riffraff out! LOL It is beautiful and wait till you look up and see Mt. Rainier and our other majestic mountains! There is no place that you can grow everything, but in our Marine climate you have more choices than almost any other location in the USA. The greater Seattle area is very diverse and you might find reasonable housing closer than you think. Welcome the the PNW it is a glorious place to live.

I'm sure you will love the weather here! We get lots of transplants from other parts of the country, moving here to escape the weather extremes and the weird and frequent storms elsewhere. I currently have clients from Fort Lauderdale, Minnesota and San Diego that have relocated here and now need assistance in planning their gardens in an unfamiliar climate. My sister recently moved here from coastal Orange County in SoCal, which is a pretty glorious area to live as well, but she is certainly enjoining life here and has become a pretty successful first time vegetable gardener in her senior years!!

This area is incredibly scenic and you do not need to travel very far to enjoy forests and mountains and fishing streams or beaches and water. A ferry ride is an excellent way to enjoy some of Puget Sound as well as great views of the mountains on a clear day but ferries only travel across the Sound, not down the Sound :-) There is NO ferry from Seattle to Olympia!

Someone said there is a ferry that goes down the sound and back, but it's rather expensive.

This must have been the service to Victoria B.C. from Seattle.

The joke about the PNW is that there is only "Two Season, winter and road construction seasons." It starts raining here in late September and doesn't stop until after the 4th of July. Then the city, county, and state road crews have a couple of months of good weather to repair the roads, so they are blocked with contruction projects. Because we are so far north, further than Maine, and winter is cloudy we don't get much sun. It can go months without sun, so be sure to have a lot of bright lights in you home. Because of this many of us, even natives, take our que from our bears and go into a type of hibernation
during the winter. Or we move down to Arizonia for the winter months and come back to the PNW in the summer. If you vegetable garden, do so in a raised beds so that the soggy soil doesn't rot your seeds and what sun light you get will warm them enough to help them grow. Because we don't get any rain in the summer from mid July to mid September you should water your garden with soaker hoses or drip irragation. People have short memories so they start belly aching about the lack of rain by September but by next June they are belly aching about too much rain. That's the PNW.

We are east of Seattle at almost 600' elevation, so colder, and less sun than even Olympia, plus lots of 100' tall trees. We still manage to grow tomatoes and other summer crops. The lack of sun from trees shading the yard, and the pests (deer, rabbits, squirrels and raccoons did eventually cause me to build a greenhouse in the spot that gets the most sun. With the short growing season, it's best to buy plants that are already in blossom or at least have buds, and put into the ground after the last frost, usually about Mother's Day. This last summer, I was still picking tomatoes at Halloween, and after bringing the green ones inside to ripen, was eating the last few in mid November.

There is constant pressure from sharecropping wildlife anywhere this is present and adequate fencing is not. I'd rather decide what I can grow myself.

Olympia is great! If your gardening doesn't pan out, the Farmer's Market is open Th-Sunday April through October, then weekends through December, with Saturday only market Jan-April. There are express busses to Seattle with very limited leave and return times. You have to drive about 20 minutes north to catch a commuter train to Seattle (Amtrak goes from Olympia, but the station is actually located south of Lacey, but on a bus line). If you hang out for 30 more years, there may be a commuter train to Seattle from Olympia!

garypnw, recognized the garden but not the writing! Great letter and full of information about our wonderful PNW climate. BTW, welcome back to the PNW, I also have returned after many years and love it completely.

Your description of our growing zone is spot on and great information for gardeners - even those of us who try to push the zones one or two clicks. LOL

ophoenix thx

Yeah we kill $ until we learn our zone. Then we work learn how to cheat our zone a level or two.

My current cheat test to try to maximize that last end of season Brugmansia flower flush is shown below. A faster start with bigger rootstock might.do it. You know the drill ... 2,4,8,16,32,64 ... why not shoot for 128 & 256 flowers in our hammock area. It costs a greenhouse to get 1028 of 2056, and may be death by fragrance in an enclosed space. I might have to visit FL to pretest the idea, using a packable plastic tarp.

My prior cheater test was a "water pit bog" dug last summer as shown below. It was 8"x8'x4.5".and plastic lined in the bottom 3.5'. No it's not a quicksand play area, but rather to support to a Chilean Gunnera (G. tinctoria), The current 5' baby mulched noe for winter is being positioned to growing to mature size. I'm shooting for 8'9' this next summer and those neat Dinosaur Land ground cone like flowers ... to make me/others feel small and vulnerable. Goal is hold a week's worth of water, rather than visit it is summer nightly, with a hose. It's positioned in a low spot to catch rain water from the yard. Yeah water hydrology and my soil clay can work for me.

Oh yes, it connects and shares water with a Japanese Iris (wetter w liner) and Canna Bog (drier w no liner). Compost mixed growth zone vs clay non-ammended soil "container" connects the moisture flow to help regulate the horizontal triplex habitat and share pit water to protect all of it, and try to just maybe satisfy the Gunnera.

Ye Ol' Perc test ... yup acts like a river bank or pond edge habitat. 30++ min to top side drain.

Hope I didn't outsmart myself ...

In hindsight, I'm a bit worried that said Tinctoria might claim more than 11-12' between neceassry trimmings. This concern is based on that big/average? one went down at Pt Defiance Park this winter. It has same sun as mine, but with less obvious water supply l, and I suspect less than my 50% compost loading.

Hey G. tinctoria is marginally smaller in the wild than G. manicata. But in rethinking this that is without compost. Now I hope to not be pushed into the pond or pulled into the beast's pit, and in the process over fertilize things one way or another.

I was a research scientist in an eariler incarnation this life and like experimenting. And am hard headed enough to use a digging rod and rock screening process to work my newly acquired, ancient hard glacial till soil yard. No predominantly sand, sand dollars, and sea shells at 3' as in my last inland yard. Makes one glad to not live long enough to experience such changes in one's purchased yard!

My first cheater tests last summer in an "empty slate" grassy yard showed me why the former owners likely did not plant much. No digging rod experience? Or their plant buying $ were already invested in a healthclub? I choose to dig instead.

I soon learned water supply pits would be essential here, in this sunnier yard than my last. GOSH! I brought 80 hydrangea divisions with me from that shady yard, including a 12' footprint Hydrangea aspera 'Sargentianum'.

Life is funny ... now I'm learning to find shade or heat with building wall proximity and making more shady microclimate niches with Timber Bamboo. The megagrass is hopefully held in submission with root barrier and that poorer outside zone soil. It's tricky stuff I know. So I'm using edible shoot varieties just in case have to fight back.

Did you pick up an East Coast accent?

I picked up the exuberant Midwest USA extroverted nature ... which is less appreciated here. I best learn to cut down on Starbuck visits. My glee is because I'm trying to make up for 20 yr lost gardening years.

We best not tell our potential PNW Newbie about "Flower World",

I was there last week looking for Daphne 'Eternal Fragrance' (love the concept name but it's not vack in stock yet). The Sarcococca confusa fragrance inside the greenhouse was mind boggling. And I now feel it might be named for fragrance effect rather than leaf arrangement as claimed in some scholarly texts? Was their plant placement last week legal or entrapment?

And the Witch Hazels were showing "waft level" fragrance potential by I suspect next weekend. The "nose test" is the best way to pick y/our flavor and nasal incense-ment level. Hum ... Yellow 'Arnold Promise' fall leaves/flowers or Chinese Flaming Orange Red leaves/flowers and with 'Jelina'? Guess you know what picked me or at least my pocket.

Wow but 'Pallida' really smells GREAT and there's that sourness to the aerial bouquet (everything sounds mo' better in French, "smell" just doesn't cut it). However., PAL is Yellow/Yellow. So next week's feared excursion, which I'm trying to ignore currently, decides if TWO must be witched into the yard. An in person nose test is the only way to answer this. The online experience in contrast pales miserably.

However, a Japanese 'Coral Bark' Maple or 'Purple Ghost' (possessing even better cognitive potential) could take that 12' spot. And a maple shape is better to place that 'Komodo Dragon' and that aptly named 'Great Expecations' Hosta next to it, unless the more costly tree form Y/Y endearing sour-ish smelly 'Arnold Promise' is selected.

With dueling Wiches ... stereo yard-crossing fragrance wafts would continuously change in ratio as one's feet tracks the sources, and so in doing, would be better noticed. Or at least be more mind boggling, which is the real goal anyway.

Now I understand all the compact plants they keep releasing. You don't need to rule any out. One only needs to balance the design possibilities over their personal space, planting time, continuum ... with current piggy bank savings. Isn't it great that time is infinite in this paradym?

My motivator is that my current lifetime isn't infinite. Then there is that pesky "uncertainty principle". Here I mean that if there is more than one life, I don't know how to hold a land contract constant, unless somehow cheat I cheat my current planting zone, and somehow become my great great.heir. Sure it sounds like an easy solution. However, space is in fact only conditionally fixed ... we recently moved why?

My gut feeling is to plant me at the right time under the Gunnera and gift the garden to the public. Duality!. I'd be there always! In body and spirit and they won't likely kick me out in either case. Best not use Miracle Gro in the pit to avoid self planting by indicated vigorous, remnant Dinosaur Age plant. The books speculate that the plant was the fodder. I best avoid a new chapter.

Oh ... the life of a newbie zone Hobby Gardener comes with some tangible mental challenges. And I'm hungry to explore my new roots ... figuratively, categorically, literally ... two of the three?

RE growing vegetables from seeds, especially if live in an Apt.

There are a great many locations in PNW that sell fat healthy seedlings at very reasonable costs. So it might work for best to many to get the more common plants there. This is especially true if the cat ate your seedlings or dog play time claimed them.

Farmer's Markets, McLendons, Lowes, Home Depo, Costco (at times), Ace Hardware, and many big chain grocery and drug stores sell vegetable seedlings here, often at almost break even prices for you. Some sell organically grown. Biodynamic? I mention these stores because you're often going there anyway.

Now the real fun happens when you visit our bigger garden focused stores! Blame it on the Katz, but you know you wanted to go there anyway. Alphabetically in the greater Seattle area e.g., Carpitino Bros, Flower World, Furney's, Molbak's, Sky, Swanson's, Well's Medina, Wights and so many more. There's Co-op and speciality stores in larger city areas, where some folks have never had a car to shop hop.

Want 5 kinds of mint or basil? Yellow, red, purple, and maybe white-ish potato, tomato, carrot, radish, beet, or chard? And how about pansey flowers to color mark the food root hidden below ground? Hey who needs tags? And who needs to dig out a garden weed and destroy it? Just mark it with catnip (suggest best left in pot).

Let's save growing semitropicals and medicinals for another post. Also indoor growing and hydroponic stores.

Apt living?

Yes agree Pea Patches are accessible many places. However, I bet you could find home owner nearby to work with. Try using Craig's List or an old school grocery store posting board. Post a note saying "Will grow AAA of delectable BBB and other vegetables in your yard to share. Contact Bob/Jenny the Garden Wizard."

One can filter for the desired space preference (AAA = bucket, patch, acre; or skip AAA and just use Corn or Squash in BBB). And also try to filter for the ethnic flavor or personality type of the person you most want to deal with (BBB = SWISS Chard, Italian Garlic, Kiwi, Catnip, British Dogvine, Corn, Tomatillo, Tobacco, Sweat Lodge Incense, Golgi Berry, Ginseng, Lemon Grass, Tumeric, Awesome Flowers, Interesting Kinds, KOoL KinDz, or Dope Flower). Be word efficient, unlike demonstrated in these suggestions. Use one word.

The more creative AAA or BBB is the more focused and possibly eclectic your result might be. For instancel, just use "MeDiciNaLs" or "ISIS Death Herb" for AAA and you select to be visted by your local Police or CIA, respectively. Not a bad result. They can tell you what's really good to know in your local area or regionally. Hint: if use MeDiciNaLs, you will be needing donuts on hand for that visit. And for the latter example, hide away any Middle Eastern halloween costumes, unless you hope to earn a free overnight vacation.

If you need to starts seed for the pea patch or other garden I like the Park Seed Biodomes. They are awesome.

I posted some notes on Houzz for the Biodomes and also using an indoor light garden if you can't garden outside or in a greenhouse A light garden is great in helping to get through our dark cool wet PNW seasonS, which are about half the year here).

Looking for a reliable seed starting system? https://www.houzz.com/discussions/looking-for-a-reliable-seed-starting-system-dsvw-vd~4412727