2012 Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase
Spring is less than a month away, and that means that garden tours will soon be populating our calendars.
New Edible Landscape for a Cottage
Back in November, I got a call from a woman who wanted to turn her front and back yard into an edible landscape. She had seen me on Food For Thought with Claire Thomas, and felt instinctively that Gardenerd was the right hire for the job.
We worked together to come up with ideas: moving existing baby fruit trees to permanent homes in the front yard, adding a vegetable garden and more fruit trees in the backyard. She ...
Spring Garden Planning Workshop This Saturday
You've riffled through all of those seed catalogs, you've taken a survey of your seed collection and filled in the blanks. Now what?
Where will everything go this season? How will you find enough room? What about crop rotation and companion planting?
With all these things to think about, planning your spring garden may feel overwhelming. It's supposed to be fun. We can help.
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Fried Green Tomatoes – in Winter?
Yes, Dorothy, there still are tomatoes in February - if you live in Los Angeles. It's one of the many oddities of living in a warm winter climate. Up until last week, we were picking tomatoes from a volunteer tomato that had entwined itself through a giant Cecil Brunner rose, but with recent pruning, it all came to a delicious end.
The vine had ...
Chickens – Part 2: The Arrival
[Cue movie voice over guy] It's been two years in the making.. But now they've come... And No One knows what to expect...It's...Chickens!
Meet the Milk Man
The latest edition of Mar Vista's Bounty Hunter is live and ready for your cheese-y delight: This week you'll learn about Milk Man Cheese Services and find out where to get local artisan cheeses in Southern California.
The Milk Man Cometh
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Chickens – Part 1: Building the Coop
In an effort to expand our garden ecosystem, we've gone the way of the farmer, adding backyard chickens to our list of on-site resources. This is the story of how we got started. We intend to share the process in hopes of making it easier for others who plan to do the same.
We spent two years researching and being skittish about getting them, while everyone with chickens kept saying, "Just get them!" 2012 rolled around, as did ...
Tasty Cabbage Season
It's time to harvest those cabbages that have been growing over winter. As readers may remember, we planted a newly discovered variety of open pollinated Vertus savoy cabbage from Bountiful Gardens this past fall, and now we're reaping the benefits. It's hard to find an open pollinated or heirloom variety of savoy cabbage, so we were very excited to test this one out.
The results are in, and they ...
Get Local with Refyll
The latest post from Mar Vista's Bounty Hunter is ready for your viewing pleasure. Check out this great way to refill your home and body products:
Reduce, Reuse, Refyll
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Homesteading: Making Yogurt…Again
After seeing Vegucated, the vegan documentary that shows the underside of our country's meat and dairy industry, I was highly motivated to find organic milk products from truly trustworthy suppliers. Many of our organic dairy manufacturers like Horizon and Organic Valley still utilize confined feedlot techniques and, without going in to details, they don't treat their cows very well. I wanted control over my dairy ASAP.
I did ...