Homemade Organic Pest Control
Many home remedies for bug spray call for dish soap, but if you’re not using an earth-friendly biodegradable soap, you could be doing your garden more harm than good.
Pine needles for tea?
Oh Christmas Tree (+a Book Giveaway!)
This week we have a great guest blog post from Kami McBride, author of The Herbal Kitchen. I met Kami at the Heirloom Expo, where she was sharing her knowledge of healing remedies from the garden. Today Kami presents an interesting twist on the Christmas tree. Take it away Kami... Healing Qualities of the Evergreen Trees Decorating the Christmas tree is an ancient tradition from a time when various trees and plants were honored at different times of the year.…
The family has 2 rabbits, and they plan to put up a barrier to protect the herb garden.
New Herb Garden
A call came in from a Santa Monica homeowner who had been wanting to put in a small herb garden for years. She had a busy life, and participated in a monthly CSA (community supported agriculture), so a full-sized vegetable garden wasn't necessary. She dreamed, though, of walking out her back door to harvest fresh herbs. With most of the back yard relegated for volleyball, we chose a corner of the yard for the herb garden. The homeowner wanted to…
Seeds for 2013
Even if your garden is dormant for the winter, seed catalogs carry us through with hope for another season of fresh produce.
Micro-Greens for All
The latest post from Mar Vista's Bounty Hunter is ready for your perusal. Find out more about Silver Lake Farms and how they're going "greens": New Vendor Features Organic Micro-greens for Mar Vistans
Compost Tea
If you can garden this fall and winter, take advantage of cooler temperatures to feed your soil with a dose of microbial goodness that compost tea provides.
One of two Cinderella Pumpkins grown in 2012
Making Pumpkin Puree
Did you know that most pumpkin puree sold in a can is not actually pumpkin? It's some other kind of squash masquerading as pumpkin. There's only one way to know for sure that you have the genuine article, and that's to make it yourself. It's easy, and not very time consuming. We harvested 2 pumpkins this year (sad, but still something to show for the season). One of those beauties was massacred in the street on Halloween night. The other…
New home for bees
Bee Hive Rescue – Fascinating Stuff!
Every once in a while, bees find a home at Ocean View Farms organic community garden. Sadly, we can't legally keep them there, but instead of calling the exterminators, a bee rescue team came to relocate them to a new home. I was on hand for said event, and it was thrilling to watch. Here's a play by play. The bees had taken up residence in a storage box. Rob McFarland of HoneyLove.org lit a smoker to start the process.…
Swiss chard is ready for harvest. Cilantro bolts to seed, attracting aphid-destroying parasitic wasps.
Fall Garden in Progress – Part 2
Last week we shared what's growin' on in our Test Garden. Now let's look at what the fall garden looks like over at our community garden plot. In just a few weeks it's transformed from the dry, spent garden of summer to an active cool-weather garden with oodles of potential. Lettuces, broccoli, cabbage, chard, garlic, shallots and root crops are all making way in the garden. Cilantro, parsley, mache (a.k.a. corn salad) and arugula will keep salads interesting this winter.…
Behold the yellow sweet flesh of the Golden Honey
Watermelon in November
Chalk it up to climate change, or just a fluke of nature, but we're harvesting watermelon in November. Not just any watermelon, Golden Honey watermelon. Our other watermelons grew within the appropriate time frame expected from any hot weather crop, but the Golden Honey just whimpered along, producing compact vines but no flowers. Long after we harvested our other watermelons (and just about the time we were planning to pull out the unsuccessful plant) a heat wave came along and…