Rich Affeldt is chief agronomist at Cascade Mineral Products. He’s been spending the long days of summer in a hot and toasty test greenhouse located in Madras, Oregon. Why? To help answer the question, “How much Cascade Minerals Remineralizing Soil Booster should I apply to my garden and containers?” In this short video, Rich explains…
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Born with two green thumbs, Diana Brown-Pierce turned her 20 years of nursery experience into her lifelong dream when she opened The Petal Pusher Nursery in 2004 in the small town of Culver in Central Oregon. Word quickly spread of her small nursery off Highway 97 with a local flavor and beautiful hanging baskets. Diana…
Known as the City of Roses, Portland, Oregon and its residents are accustomed to throwing celebrations in honor of this most beautiful of flowers. Yet yesterday’s festivities were extra special at the Peninsula Park Rose Garden, Portland’s first public rose garden which was founded in 1913 and was celebrating its 100th anniversary. You might recall…
If you took a sample of soil from your garden and looked at it under the microscope, what would you see? Hopefully, you’d see billions of microorganisms hard at work. Healthy soil should be teeming with these busy biological “workers” whose main task is to break down organic material and make nutrients available for plants…
It’s the month of June and gardens (and gardeners) everywhere are in full swing! One of the questions that people frequently ask us is, “Is it too late to apply Cascade Minerals?” The answer is an emphatic “Not at all!” It’s never too late to improve soil health. Although pre-plant incorporation is ideal, top-dressing with…
A few months ago, we shared the story and photos of a replanting event that took place at Portland’s Peninsula Park Rose Garden. Hundreds of volunteers replanted 3,000 roses in anticipation of the garden’s upcoming centennial celebration. Cascade Minerals was honored to help by donating nearly 2,000 pounds of our all-natural volcanic soil amendment to…
Whether you are new to composting or consider yourself a master composter, you may not have considered the benefits of adding volcanic rock dust to your compost pile. Ground up rock material doesn’t usually appear on lists of compostable materials such as “greens” (e.g., grass clippings, hedge trimmings) and “browns” (e.g., fall leaves, wood chips)….
It’s encouraging to see more and more people becoming interested in eating healthy, nutritious food that they grow themselves. Because good food begins with good soil, the time that you spend conditioning the soil in your garden now will pay off with plenty of delicious and healthy produce in the months ahead. We can’t all…
Whether you tend a vegetable garden, grow prize-winning blooms or cultivate containers, great soil is the place to start. As the saying goes, “For every dollar spent, 90-cents should be for the soil—and 10-cents for the plant!” Mike Darcy, host of KXL-FM’s “In the Garden” which airs Saturday mornings in Portland, Oregon, invited Cascade Minerals’…
The month of May has arrived here in Oregon with beautiful, sunny weather. Needless to say, gardeners are itching to get their tomato plants into the ground. (Including all of us here at Cascade Minerals. After all, our company mascot is “Mr. Tomato!”) Do we go for it? Should we wait? These are the questions…
