Welcome to the Saltese Area
I live in the place known as the Saltese area in Spokane County, Washington. Originally there was a lake called Saltese which was named for Chief Andrew Saltese of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe; thus, the namesake for the area.
I love living in this area. Many of the homes have large fields of grass, pastures, pine & fir trees, and native plants & shrubs. Living here comes with the joys and work associated with maintaining large acreage parcels.
Maintaining my property over the years has taught me about the trees, bugs, weeds, and plants common to this area. My goal in creating this website is to share what I have learned. I hope this website may be helpful to you.
Be Happy!
Scott
Hello Scott,
Nice to find your website. My wife and I are building a home adjacent to the wetlands just off Barker near the Morrison hay shed. I’ll be doing all my own landscape install and maintenance. I had been looking at different native grass seed mixes to do another round of over-seeding in our street swale and our drainage swale that runs off to the wetlands. Nice to find your custom mix recipe!
I plan on mostly native plants, no weekly mow turfgrass and a large raised bed fenced vegetable garden.
One interesting thing about our property; being down so low and part of the old lake bed, our soil is very alkaline (8.2pH on average) and thus we will be limited on what we can plant in the native soil. The ash plume from Crater lake (7700 yrs ago) covers just about our entire 5 acres at a depth of around 3ft!
I’m in the process of making a list of all alkaline tolerant plants that will not only suit our location but are also readily available in the local area.
Feel free to connect with me via email.
Hi Clint, Welcome to the Saltese! That is really exciting to hear about what you are doing with the native plants in the old lakebed. I wonder how different your experience will be with native plants compared to my property only a few miles from you. My soil is all clay and rocks. I would love to get a copy of the plant list. I drive down Barker regularly and will watch the progress on your landscaping. Scott