In September 2009, I started working on a project for the Dream Center in
downtown Los Angeles. It's been a long road, gathering grant money and donated supplies, but the Dream Garden is shaping up to be a fine reality for the residents of the Dream Center.
Today a team of about 15 people planted the first batch of transplants into the garden. The excitement was palpable as we placed plants in each bed, according to a diagram I made ...
I'm supposed to be a garden guru with a bountiful garden year-round, right? When crops fail or disease sets in, my husband is thoughtful enough to remind me that a true gardener's approach to
gardening is experimentation, and more specifically trial and error. So in the spirit of true gardening, I present my latest error.
You may remember that I spent the winter growing milk thistle and
chicory in my community garden plot to remove some excess zinc from the soil. Included in the results from the initial soil ...
They're coming. In fact, they're already here. The seemingly beautiful white butterflies that hover delicately over your kale plants might appear to be innocent, but in reality they can wreak havoc
on your brassicas if left unchecked.
They'll flutter around looking for a nice place to land, then disappear underneath the leaves of your treasured broccoli and cabbages. When they emerge, they will have laid dozens of eggs on the
underside of the leaves that are so tiny they are almost invisible to the human eye. Almost, but not to the trained ...
As the winter growing season is winding down, we've already planted some spring crops, and planned out the summer crops. There's still one important thing to do, however, before we move on to spring:
appreciate winter's bounty.
Even though we can see what's growing above ground, there's an element of surprise when harvesting root crops like carrots, parsnips and potatoes (okay - it's a tuber, not a root crop). Students
always ask me how they will know when to pick their root vegetables. I tell them to run their index finger around the ...
Experimentation yields results - just not always the results we expect. Such is the case with our trail planting of the Italian broccoli, Cavolo Broccolo a Getti di Napoli. The picture on the seed packet indicates that this
sprouting broccoli is harvested mainly for it's leaves, but those leaves (and the shoots of sprouting broccoli) are reported to be slender and spear-like.
Well... not so much.
While it's true that this is a ...
NERD ALERT! This one is for you. You know who you are.
Question: How do you solve domestic disputes between husbands and wives who have differing opinions about how composting should be done?
Answer: You get a chipper/shredder and then everyone is happy.
The Problem: You see, I sit squarely on the side of the fence that prefers to chop up all the green and brown bits into small pieces before it goes into the compost bin - because it breaks
down faster, and ...
It started as an agreement for peaceful co-habitation. Then it ate half of my Christmas Lima Beans right through the young green pods. Then it pulled out all of my pea sprouts, nibbled on the ends,
and left them for dead.
That's when we declared war on the rat.
Note the dark lines outlining the eaten area. Now dry, this bean pod was eaten through while green,
leaving the pod empty and the beans devoured.
Prior to this ...
With all the talk of winter storms and canceled flights, it's clear that comfort food is in order. As a blanket apology from Southern California and our lovely weather, I offer this warming recipe to
those in icy places across the country.
It starts with baby lima beans, but we used Christmas Lima Beans that we grew this past summer:
It also calls for pearl barley, but we didn't have any on hand, so we used brown rice, since they cook in ...
Garden math breaks the rules. It's one of the only places where things multiply without the need for a calculator, or the stress of bubble tests or sweaty palms. Possibly the best example of garden
math is the potato. Plant one, get many.
Spring is a great time to plant potatoes, and lucky for us, spring is coming soon. In warmer climates, you can also plant potatoes in the fall. That's what we did last October with a couple of
scary potatoes left in the pantry too long. Yesterday we ...
For some unknown reason, my Swiss chard is covered - no, make that enveloped - with aphids. I have fed the plants with worm castings and compost and worm tea. I have sprayed them off with a strong
hose blast. I have squished the aphids with my bare fingers. I have pleaded and begged for them to go away, to no avail.
My next plan, as a last resort before pulling out the chard, would be to try laying down a layer of tin foil around the base of each plant, to reflect ...