What’s Growin’ On

Read more about the article Houston, We Have Some Squash

Houston, We Have Some Squash

I admit it, I went a little crazy.  I was determined to have a successful squash crop in the wake of last year's squash catastrophe.  So I planned for extra, you might say.  This season, at Ocean View Farms, I planted Delicata and Butternut Squashes.  While at the Gardenerd Teaching Garden, we planted zucchini, patty pan, yellow crookneck and pumpkin. 

The First round of zucchini and patty pan squash were eaten by birds.  So were the second round.  So then we planted seeds indoors to make sure nothing went wrong.  That did the trick.  Meanwhile, the pumpkins and ...

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Read more about the article Mega Garlic

Mega Garlic

Garlic was one of the very first things I planted when I started gardening 16 years ago.  There's something about the magic of putting a clove in the ground and getting a bulb back at the end of the season that made me want to try it immediately.  That first year, my boyfriend and I planted garlic cloves in unamended clay soil (clearly we didn't know anything about compost at the time).  We watered it every day and watched it grow.  7 months later, we harvested what has become the best garlic I've ever grown in my life.  ...

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Read more about the article Where the Recycling Goes

Where the Recycling Goes


A while back, I met Kathleen Jacecko of Teaching Green, and have since been on her mailing list of newletters filled with ideas for sustainable living.  Last month, she published an entry about a field trip she made to the Materials Recovery Facility - a.k.a. where the recycling goes.  I have always been fascinated with recycling (my first environmental passion after gardening).  I thought the ...

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Read more about the article Japanese / Vegetable Garden in Sierra Madre

Japanese / Vegetable Garden in Sierra Madre

This spring, Gardenerd has helped many new gardeners get on their way.  Whether it be through classes, consulting or food garden design, it's been a delight to watch people get bitten by the gardening bug and begin growing their own food.

One such delight came last month, when we finished installing a new garden in Sierra Madre.  At first it was going to be a simple, straight forward garden with a few raised beds to maximize growing space.  But as the process went on, the home owners realized that they really wanted to incorporate their dream garden - a ...

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Read more about the article Gardenerd at Esalen

Gardenerd at Esalen

As I write this, I'm sitting in the lodge at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA.  When last I was here, I was particpating in a 5-rhythms workshop.  This time I'm on the teaching side of things.  Like a miracle that fell in my lap, I was invited to co-teach a workshop on the Heart of Organic Gardening with Shirley Ward, the fabulous woman in charge of the farm and garden at Esalen.  With Shirley and a few other guest teachers, we've been immersed in the wonder of Esalen's soil structure, composting production, seed-starting and transplanting schedule, ...

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Gardenerd on Homegrown

Today was a first for Gardenerd.com.  We got radio exposure!  I met Carol Banker at a party recently and she invited me to be a guest on her internet radio talk show, Homegrown.   She and her co-host Chris Donnelley discuss all topics of interest that fall under the category of locavore.  Here is their mission statement:

we think, believe, attempt, celebrate and explore making conscious choices when buying food, products and services.


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The Coming of Spring

Awhile back, I was invited to write for Inside Look Magazine's green issue.  While they ended up with an abundance of entries for the magazine, my article on the coming of spring made it into this month's newsletter.  Here is the article that went out to the world this morning:



Enjoy!
...

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Read more about the article Spring has Arrived

Spring has Arrived

Sunday was the first day I was able to walk around outside without a jacket on.  In fact, I brazenly put on a tank top and walked to the farmer's market.  It was heavenly!  The spring sun is officially warming our skin and soil. The smell of that subtle change in the air lets us know, at least here in Los Angeles, that spring has finally arrived. 

We often take it for granted in Los Angeles, given that the weather's subtle changes often go unnoticed.  We are admittedly accustomed to consistent weather - sunny and warm all year ...

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Root Down LA

This event came across my desk this week, sent by a student from my Santa Monica College class, Lise Matthews.  Root Down LA is striving to reduce the number of kids with obesity in the city buy helping to create "healthier school food communities".  A very worthy cause...   


We're
RootDown LA and we're on a mission to help tackle the obesity crisis in
South LA by engaging youth at Manual Arts ...

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Read more about the article HR 875 – Organic Consumers Association’s take on it

HR 875 – Organic Consumers Association’s take on it

In an effort to read more into the recent rumor (or 'myth' as the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) has put it) about HR 875 and the idea that it would ban organic farming, I found that the OCA website has been either hacked or blocked by every major search engine out there.  It smells of conspiracy, since they are the voice of the people when it comes to organic standards and food safety.  Not that I'm a conspiracy theorist, but I thought it was uncanny that while e-mails are flying around about this bill, the ...

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