We're pleased to announce the arrival of 400+ Tips for Organic Gardening Success: A Decade of Tricks, Tools, Recipes, and Resources from Gardenerd.com. It's been ten years in the making and we're launching it on June 20th, just in time for Summer Solstice. Many of you have read our Tip of the Week on the website, and listened to the Gardenerd Tip of the Week Podcast. Each week we list a helpful link to more information about that week's tip.…
Blackberry season comes on strong, and if you don't embrace it, your garden will have an understory of rotten blackberries within a month. We've already frozen 3 pints of berries, and made blackberry ice cream. We're still picking 2 cups a day. Next up: jam. This recipe we found on The Easy Homestead uses no pectin and no cane sugar. It uses honey (which we have in abundance at the moment, thank you, bees) and half an apple instead. I…
Tips for Certified Wildlife Habitat
I can't believe I have to refer back to this article I wrote in February, but it's more appropriate than ever now. While it's comforting to see the rest of the world stand up for the planet in the absence of US participation in the Paris Climate Accord, as gardeners we have our work cut out for us. Here are some images to help inspire your spring and summer garden endeavors this month. Gardening makes a difference. Let's garden for…
I've heard colleagues say that tree kale never goes to seed, that it can only be propagated by cuttings. Well, my 10-foot tree kale would beg to differ. It's gone to seed after falling over in a wind storm (probably stress-induced) while it continues to produce tasty leaves. Tree kale is a perennial vegetable lauded by the permaculture community because it forms deep roots (obviously deep enough to withstand falling over in a wind storm). We propped that baby back…
A building caught fire in our neighborhood recently, leading to a power outage for two hours. The lack of internet and electricity, even for a short time, reminds us how dependent we are upon these modern conveniences. A recent article in the LA Times about Dr. Lucy Jones and her research of earthquakes and the San Andreas Fault brought even more clarity to the fact that we are SO not prepared for a natural disaster. Sure, we've got camping equipment…
We recently created a tidy vertical garden for a busy business woman in Marina del Rey. Her condominium patio didn't allow room for a full-sized garden, and tight quarters limited her sun exposure to one wall. Her patio housed a collection of random containers, some with leggy plants long overdue for re-potting. We took steps to unify the patio to enhance her new vertical garden. Our first step was to re-do the patio to remove infiltrating tree roots. The client…
Tips for Getting Rid of Fungus Gnats