How to Pick a Tomato
It's tomato time, but how do you know when they're ready? This week's tip shows you how.
Gardenerd’s Summer Potluck and Seed Exchange
One of the best ways to celebrate the bountiful harvest of summer is to get together with friends. Just imagine platters of veggies grilled to perfection, mounds of fresh tomatoes ready for eating, and slices of watermelon - the quintessential summer fruit - all lined up on a table amongst friends.
Now picture another table blanketed with seed packets, with small envelopes nearby. You see a vegetable variety that you've been dying to try in your garden. ...
The Case of the Vanishing Tomato Cobbler
It was a hot and sultry day, and someone was hungry. The freshly picked tomatoes were staring at us from the counter saying, "MAKE SOMETHING with me!
High Tea with Worms
You should not drink it, but worm tea could be the best thing for your plants. Find out how to use it here.
Harvesting Garlic
Growing your own garlic is such a joy, and harvesting it can be even more fun. Each October we plant what turns out to be a year's supply of garlic in about 7 or 8 square feet (using the Square Foot Gardening method). Then we nurture the bulbs through winter and into spring. In late spring, which is May or June here in Los Angeles, the foliage starts to turn brown and die back. We cut ...
Can You Pass the Soil Test?
What's a girl to do when her plants look anemic and aren't growing like they should be, despite the mounds of compost and organic fertilizer that are lovingly applied each season? The mystery can only be solved one way: Get a soil test.
We have two sets of tomatoes - one in our test garden, and one at our community garden at Ocean View Farms. Both were grown from seed under grow lights, and both were ...
Yardsharing
Find out how gardeners can get connected with land to make everyone happy.
A Heaping Bowl of Failure Sorbet
I tried. I really tried. I followed the instructions, but something went terribly wrong.
After finishing my latest read - Cooking with Edible Flowers, by Miriam Jacobs - I felt inspired to make sorbet with the abundant lime geranium growing in a pot out in the garden. Miriam doesn't have a recipe for lime geranium sorbet, but the internet does, so I grabbed one from Susan Wittig Albert's All About Thyme website for scented geranium sorbet. It seemed easy enough, and I'm ...
The Next Step in Urban Homesteading – Keeping Chickens
Call me a control freak, but I like to know where my food comes from. I started growing my own food to get fresh, healthy produce, to use less water, fewer pesticides and harmful chemicals - but really, to know where my food comes from. That was great, but I thought, "What else can I do to close the loop here? To be more self-reliant?" Composting and
Exchange Some Produce
Find out a great way to share your surplus and fill in the gaps in your food supply.