Abundant Harvests - garden info
What vegetables to plant when in Southern California
Here in Southern California, we can grow and harvest vegetables year-round. That doesn’t mean we can harvest tomatoes every month of the year; it means different crops will grow well here in different months of the year. The trick is…
What benefits does your drought-tolerant garden provide?
A California Natives garden can be a beautiful haven for bees, pollinators, butterflies, beneficial insects, birds, and urban wildlife. An edible garden can feed you and your family, perhaps with extra to share with your neighbors and the food pantry…
Soil pH in Southern California
I’ve been thinking about soil pH lately – particularly since the oven project at the Garden will be creating an ongoing supply of wood ash. pH is a measurement of the acidity or alkalinity of your soil. “Soil pH influences…
Make your own flowerpot ollas
how to make an easy, inexpensive, DIY olla for your garden - using flowerpots
Raised beds vs. Sunken beds
With effusive and glorious terms, the garden catalogs and East Coast garden magazines try to persuade us that “to be a successful vegetable gardener you need raised beds.” Not in Southern California. Consider what is behind those arguments: a drive…
Building water-saving features with urbanite
Today was our first earth-building workshop. Since I’m a little lean on earth-building handouts, here’s a substitute. It’s not particularly about earth-building, but it is about earth-wise construction. It’s about building with “urbanite,” which is a name for reused broken concrete.…
Root knot nematodes
Yesterday in the Community Garden, we discovered that we are experiencing an attack of Root Knot Nematodes. The beets we pulled up had failure to thrive, failed to form a beet root, and had tons of tumor-like growths on the hair…
Drought-tolerant food plants
Vegetables and food plants that thrive in low water conditions in Southern California … Amaranth African basil (Ocimum kilimandscharicum) Arugula sylvetta – the small-leafed, intensely-flavored perennial arugula Arugula (W) Chicory (W) Grapes Cowpea / blackeyed pea – especially the varieties…
Building a Food Forest garden – cover crops
We’re designing a Food Forest garden, to be built later this spring. We’ll be tearing out asphalt, cleansing and rejeuvenating the soil, and recrafting the space as a community gathering area with a cob bread oven and food forest. Today…
5 reasons that Fake grass is so Dead
Turfgrass doesn’t belong in Southern California. It’s far too water-thirsty for our dry climate. Plus turfgrass demands chemicals to keep it green, and most lawnmowers are highly polluting with both smog-producing particulate and global-warming carbon emissions. We need to shift…
