A while back, I met Kathleen Jacecko of Teaching Green, and have since been on her mailing list of newletters filled with ideas for sustainable living. Last month, she published an entry about a field trip she made to the Materials Recovery Facility - a.k.a. where the recycling goes. I have always been fascinated with recycling (my first environmental passion after gardening). I thought the ...
Combat aphids with this sneaky trick to keep them out of hiding.
This spring, Gardenerd has helped many new gardeners get on their way. Whether it be through classes, consulting or food garden design, it's been a delight to watch people get bitten by the gardening bug and begin growing their own food.
One such delight came last month, when we finished installing a new garden in Sierra Madre. At first it was going to be a simple, straight forward garden with a few raised beds to maximize growing space. But as the process went on, the home owners realized that they really wanted to incorporate their dream garden - a ...
Here's a new question that came in this week:
"Dear Gardenerd, How do I keep the pesky ants off of my precious
artichokes? I soaked the ones I harvested and still found some. . .
ugh! Please help! - No Ants On My Tree"
Ants are, in and of themselves, not harmful to a garden. That said, they are the harbinger of bad things because they have a symbiotic relationship with aphids. They consume the sticky sweet sap that aphids excrete and in exchange they will take the aphids from place to place. It's the ultimate dealer-junkie relationship.
There are ...
Use this easy pest control tip to keep birds from eating your seed starts.
As I write this, I'm sitting in the lodge at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA. When last I was here, I was particpating in a 5-rhythms workshop. This time I'm on the teaching side of things. Like a miracle that fell in my lap, I was invited to co-teach a workshop on the Heart of Organic Gardening with Shirley Ward, the fabulous woman in charge of the farm and garden at Esalen. With Shirley and a few other guest teachers, we've been immersed in the wonder of Esalen's soil structure, composting production, seed-starting and transplanting schedule, ...
Celebrate Earth Day with a walk around the neighborhood. Garden Tours help "fill the well" and provide inspiration for your own gardening projects.
Today was a first for Gardenerd.com. We got radio exposure! I met Carol Banker at a party recently and she invited me to be a guest on her internet radio talk show, Homegrown. She and her co-host Chris Donnelley discuss all topics of interest that fall under the category of locavore. Here is their mission statement:
we think, believe, attempt, celebrate and explore making conscious choices when buying food, products and services.
Awhile back, I was invited to write for Inside Look Magazine's green issue. While they ended up with an abundance of entries for the magazine, my article on the coming of spring made it into this month's newsletter. Here is the article that went out to the world this morning:
Celebrate Tax Time with this handy tip of the week. Don't chuck it, shred it!