There's something special about sneaking outside in your bathrobe into the crisp, cool, fall air to pick a citrus breakfast off a tree: a fresh orange dripping with new fallen rain. December is when navel oranges really hits their stride, and lemons fall abundantly from the tree. Instead of installing a front lawn four years ago, we opted for a mini orchard of five trees. This week the navel orange and Meyer lemon have finally turned color and are ready…
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.…
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…
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
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…
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.…
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.…
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…
Earlier this week I attended Do The Math at UCLA with Bill McKibben and 350.org. For those who aren't familiar with Bill McKibben, he is the author of 14 books including Eaarth and The End of Nature. He is an educated voice in the field of climate change and he has a plan to turn things around. As organic gardeners, we're already doing a lot to cut down on carbon emissions. We compost (which captures carbon), we grow our own…
I've been unknowingly conducting an experiment on compostable cutlery over the last three years. Today I report my findings to you, in hopes that it will dispel some of the myths about biodegradable products. I celebrated a landmark birthday in February nearly 3 years ago. In our effort to lower our carbon footprint, we bought compostable/biodegradable cutlery and planned to compost everything from the party, including paper plates and cups (no birthday girl wants to do dishes in a ballgown). …