Daily gardening blog reaches its sixth anniversary -- thanks to our readers!
This citrus cake is ideal for any celebration. See the blog post for a link to the recipe. Kathy Morrison
Happy birthday to us! It’s time for cake!
On Saturday (June 1), Sacramento Digs Gardening celebrates its sixth anniversary. Since June 1, 2018, we’ve posted (at least) one original story every day to our website. And with technology willing, almost all of those stories went out the same day as our e-newsletter.
That’s 2,191 blog posts – all devoted to local gardening and homegrown food.
We started Sunday recipes early on in this journey (July 2018) and now have more than 300 recipes posted online. To make them easier to access for our readers, we broke them down into four seasonal e-cookbooks that are also available online. That series started with “Taste Spring!” and continued with compilations for Summer, Fall and Winter.
Did I mention readers can access all this for free? No paywall, no fees; just good solid local information at your fingertips. We truly are news you can use.
Because all gardening is local, and gardeners need vetted local expertise for the best chances at success.
Your SDG team – Debbie Arrington and Kathy Morrison – are that kind of experts. We obviously care deeply about Sacramento-area gardening because that’s where we garden, too.
Over the years, we’ve developed SDG into the kind of gardening blog we’d like to read: Packed with events and information about what we need to know now. (And then, what to do with all that fruit and vegetables we grew.)
What keeps us writing and posting? Our readers. We now have about 2,500 followers on Facebook who are looking for us every day. Our average Facebook readers tend to be a lot like us: Women over age 60. (In fact, 83% of our Facebook followers are female and, like Facebook in general, tend to skew toward boomers.)
But Facebook is just one way people find SDG. Thanks to our sponsor Green Acres Nursery & Supply, nursery customers can find direct links to our website and recipes via new signs with QR codes.
We also see a lot of readers from our web host, CaliforniaLocal.com, and from search engines. According to its data, “Sacramento Digs Gardening” showed up in 23,823 Google searches since December 2022 when we migrated to the CaliforniaLocal.com platform. Our website has had more than 141,000 page views since that move, too. That’s almost 8,000 page views a month. Thank you, California Local!
To keep going and growing, SDG needs sponsors. We’re thankful for Green Acres’ support as well as that of our original sponsor, the Regional Water Authority/BeWaterSmart.info, and its “Summer Strong” campaign.
We’re always looking for more sponsors. (If you’re interested, reach out directly to us at sacdigsgardening@gmail.com.)
Later this summer, you can meet us in person on Aug. 3 at the Sacramento County master gardeners’ annual Harvest Day at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center in Fair Oaks Park. (More on that as we get closer to the event.)
Meanwhile, what about that cake? Try our zesty one-bowl citrus cake. (Recipe here: https://sacdigsgardening.californialocal.com/article/30939-spring-recipes-from-sacramento-digs-gardening-california/884-desserts-and-sweets/10242-celebrate-spring-with-citrus-cake/)
And thank you for reading!
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Food in My Back Yard Series
May 6: Maintain soil moisture with mulch for garden success
April 29: What's (already) wrong with my tomato plants?
April 22: Should you stock up on fertilizer? (Yes!)
April 15: Grow culinary herbs in containers
April 8: When to plant summer vegetables
April 1: Don't be fooled by these garden myths
March 25: Fertilizer tips: How to 'feed' your vegetables for healthy growth
March 18: Time to give vegetable seedlings some more space
March 11: Ways to win the fight against weeds
March 4: Potatoes from the garden
Feb. 25: Plant a fruit tree now -- for later
Feb. 18: How to squeeze more food into less space
Feb. 11: When to plant? Consider staggering your transplants
Feb. 4: Starting in seed starting
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Garden Checklist for week of May 11
Make the most of the lower temperatures early in the week. We’ll be back in the 80s by Thursday.
* Plant, plant, plant! It’s prime planting season in the Sacramento area. Time to set out those tomato transplants along with peppers and eggplants. Pinch off any flowers on new transplants to make them concentrate on establishing roots instead of setting premature fruit.
* Direct-seed melons, cucumbers, summer squash, corn, radishes, pumpkins and annual herbs such as basil.
* Harvest cabbage, lettuce, peas and green onions.
* In the flower garden, direct-seed sunflowers, cosmos, salvia, zinnias, marigolds, celosia and asters. (You also can transplant seedlings for many of the same flowers.)
* Plant dahlia tubers.
* Transplant petunias, marigolds and perennial flowers such as astilbe, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, dahlias, rudbeckia and verbena.
* Keep an eye out for slugs, snails, earwigs and aphids that want to dine on tender new growth.
* Feed summer bloomers with a balanced fertilizer.
* For continued bloom, cut off spent flowers on roses as well as other flowering plants.
* Add mulch to the garden to maintain moisture. Mulch also cuts down on weeds. But don’t let it mound around the stems or trunks of trees or shrubs. Leave about a 6-inch-to-1-foot circle to avoid crown rot or other problems.
* Remember to weed! Pull those nasties before they set seed.
* Water early in the day and keep seedlings evenly moist.
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