Magazine will cater to gardeners statewide

Area gardeners may not be able to get their hands into their gardens this time of year, but they will be able to get their hands on a new quarterly gardening magazine.

Debuting Thursday and published by Good Fruit Grower Publishing in Yakima, Master Gardener will focus on growing conditions in Washington state.

Managing Editor Jim Black says, “Master Gardener will be attractive to all of us who’d rather be grubbing in the soil than socializing.”

The Spokesman-Review HOME garden correspondent Pat Munts will serve as the East Side editor.

“Often the East Side has been left out of the loop in gardening publications. We’ll take situations that the entire state faces, but address them by growing zones,” Munts says. “Things grow differently on the east side of the state.”

Produced in cooperation with WSU Extension, the magazine will be science-based. “We’ll take the science as it comes out of WSU and translate it for the average reader,” Munts says.

Linda Chalker-Scott is the WSU editor. She says, “This magazine is the only one that I know of that is geared toward a popular audience, yet has been peer-reviewed for scientific accuracy.” Her own contribution to the first issue will focus on the science behind compost tea.

“It’s a topic that generates both interest and controversy,” Scott says.

For avid gardeners the next best thing to being in a garden is reading about it. “This is a subject that is a personal passion for me and the other editors as well,” Black says.