Sustainable Thanksgiving
Mother Earth News with List of helpful Tips on Thanksgiving
They're perfect and beautiful, just slow to mature.
Fall is about Patience
File this post under philosophical ruminations. As the holidays careen toward us, we might feel a twinge of anxiety to hurry up and plant the garden, or to harvest, or to shut it down for the season, depending on where you live. The urge to rush through the process before holiday craziness arrives is strong. We planted our fall crops in stages as the weather cooled down (really it was more like a raid on the garden. As soon as…
Long tables sloped up the hill. We sat listing to one side but the food more than made up for it.
Review: Outstanding in the Field
You've probably heard of them, these renowned dinners with elaborate, farm-fresh menus eaten on long-tables in the middle of a field somewhere. Outstanding in the Field (OITF) dinners are a feat of catering genius that bring people together for a cause. I was lucky to attend one at my very own Ocean View Farms last week as the sun dipped below the horizon. OITF's mission "is to re-connect diners to the land and the origins of their food, and to…
Cooler temperatures means the kale can go in the ground. Protected with floating row cover (water and sunlight penetrate), our babies are ready to go.
Wordless Wednesday: RAIN!
Los Angeles saw its first real rain yesterday, a bit later than usual, but still in October. It may have lasted for only 20 minutes, but it was enough to wash off the roof for clean rain water collection later this week. Fall is finally here! In celebration, here are pictures of plants with real live rain dripping off the leaves, plus a few other activities for fall gardening. Fall is here - plant cool season veggies, build compost piles,…
Honey bees taking pollen and nectar from wisteria blossoms.
Ask Gardenerd: Pollinator Garden Density
A very cool question came in to Ask Gardenerd from Trevor Pratt this week: "How geographically dense does the distribution of pollinator gardens have to be in the LA area to support bees and other interesting threatened species of pollinating organisms? I am not sure what the problem is but it seems they need a network. Pollinators are neat." Great question, Trevor. The good news is that statistically speaking, bees and other pollinators in urban areas like Los Angeles are…
Brassicas under grow lights
Too Hot to Plant
Twenty five years ago, when I started gardening in Southern California, we planted cool weather crops in September. As Climate Change increased, September became too hot to plant. Now we plant brassicas, lettuces, alliums (onions, garlic, shallots, etc.) and root veggies in October. No...wait. Now October is too hot to plant. It's October 25th and it's going to be 95 degrees on the westside. This post is for those experiencing this weather in lower latitudes. Last year we didn't plant…
Wasted aims to change the way people buy, cook, recycle, and eat food.
Review: Wasted! The Story of Food Waste
Last week, I attended a screening of Wasted! The Story of Food Waste, a new film from Executive Producer Anthony Bourdain and other concerned citizens. The film "exposes the criminality of food waste and how it’s directly contributing to climate change, and shows how each of us can make small changes – all of them delicious – to solve one of the greatest problems of the 21st Century." For most of us in attendance, it was preaching to the choir, but for…