- Author: Pamela M. Geisel
So you may have heard of ”farm to fork” or “farm to table”? Well, I like to think even more locally than that. I think in terms of “backyard to belly” . . . food so fresh you can eat it while standing in the garden without cooking it or with a little more effort, carrying a basket of fresh tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, eggplants, peaches, corn and beans into the kitchen to create wonderful meals for your family.
I have a few tips on getting quality food from your harvest. So often we lose a lot of our homegrown produce because we don’t harvest at the right time. It is important to harvest at the peak of perfection - not before and not after. My worst food experiences from my garden have come from waiting too long to harvest. The...
- Author: Pamela M. Geisel
What do Santa Rosa Weeping flowering plum, persimmon, variegated lemon and Tiger figs all have in common? They are all fantastic ornamental plants that produce wonderful edible fruit. There are a variety of fruits and vegetables that can be incorporated into your landscape that produce food for you, your family and your neighborhood. Every landscape should have edibles in it, particularly in light of our goals to produce food closer to home, to conserve water and make the water we do use count for more than irrigating a lawn that nobody ever plays on. Growing your own food feels good and is good for you and your community!
Some simple ideas for incorporating edibles into your landscape are to include fruit as part of your...
- Author: Diane Nelson
If life were a Disney movie, we would have no trouble identifying beneficial bugs in our garden. They would all have big puppy-dog eyes and sing sweet songs. They would not have names like assassin bugs, which, in fact, some of them do.
So when we see creepy critters crawling and flying around our freshly planted vegetable garden, we have to work a little harder to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. The good guys, by the way, are the ones who feed on what we consider the bad guys – insects like aphids that damage plants by clustering on young shoots, buds and leaves, sucking out the plant juices.
Ironically, in our bug-eat-bug world, your garden won’t attract the good guys without the so-called bad guys, so...
- Author: Rachel A. Surls
Today, it's the most populous urban county in the U.S., with more than 10 million residents. But not that long ago, Los Angeles was the largest farm county in the country. A part of L.A.'s preeminence in agriculture during the first half of the 20th century was its focus on small-scale, home-based farms. In fact, Los Angeles was home to a movement which was a precursor to present-day interest in urban sustainability.
The trend was called “Small Farm Homes”, or “Little Farms,” and gained momentum in the 1920s, then continued full-force for several decades. As the population of Los Angeles County mushroomed, and real estate boomed, subdivisions were developed with micro farming in mind. Many homes were constructed on lots of...
- Author: Chris M. Webb
A wonderful example of community coming together in partnership to grow good food has taken root in Oxnard, Calif.
Last year, in an effort to reduce costs while improving the taste and nutrition of meals, the Senior Nutrition Program began growing their own tomatoes. They set up their garden with the help of UC Master Gardeners on a quarter-acre behind the Juvenile Justice Center.
The program began when the County of Ventura Area Agency on Aging, which serves over 200,000 meals annually through senior nutrition programs, collaborated with the Probation Agency Juvenile Justice Facility staff to create this positive program. As word of the project has spread many business and organizations have come forward to donate...