About Mycorrhizal fungus
I’ve been reading more about mycorrhizal fungus and how incredibly beneficial it is to our gardens — indeed to our long-term future. If you don’t know much about this beneficial soil organism, grab a copy of Lowenfels and Lewis’ Teaming…
Lately in my garden
Here’s a sneak peak into my home garden …
It’s Garden Planning Time
I know, I know, it’s the middle of the holidays. But garden catalogs are pouring through my mail slot, and that means it’s prime time for planning your cool season garden. After the winter solstice, all those cool season veggies…
VegGarden365 app
How do you know what to plant when? Here in Southern California we have a year-round growing season. But that doesn’t mean super-delicious tomatoes every day of the year. Rather, it means working with the seasons — warm, hot, and…
A quick and easy cool-season vegetable garden
After a rain, the weeds sprout — so quickly that you can almost hear them. What if the green that magically appeared wasn’t weeds, but food plants? Your cool-season vegetable garden can be just that easy! And, this time of…
What’s in your El Niño garden?
Oh, this is the season for leafy greens and root vegetables — and an El Niño year is no exception! They grow plenty of veggies in English gardens and (although we in So Cal may be unaccustomed to it) that’s the…
The Art of the Edible Landscape
Imagine a beautiful front yard — a sculpture in three dimensions — that you can walk through and enjoy, that will feed you luscious organic food! How does one design such a thing? This spring I’ll be teaching “The Art…
The One-Finger Test
In the Community Garden at Holy Nativity, we used what we call “the one finger test.” That means you take your finger and stick it into the garden soil – about one inch down into the soil. The soil down…
More compost
Premade plastic bins are great for newbies and for those who demand a slick visual appearance in the garden. But ours is a culture which has been so completely out-of-touch with natural cycles and growing things; we have lost our…
Moving the compost
Q: What is hot and juicy and black and very, very stinky? A: My anaerobic compost trial. In the mid 1990’s when we lived in Orange County, composters were hard to come by. I read somewhere that you could compost…