It’s seed starting time! And I want to show you why and how I get my seedlings in the sun as soon as possible. One of the common questions I get is how to keep seedlings from getting leggy and flopping over. Almost always, this happens from growing them indoors in weak light. Maybe you […]
Oh my gosh! We have bananas forming right now, in the middle of winter! Many of you have seen my previous post about growing bananas in Sacramento County – it’s actually my most popular article lately, so apparently a bunch of you are considering it. And you should! It’s a fun plant to grow, and […]
We needed to create a long trellis for the raspberries this year, and we decided to DIY it, learn a little lashing technique, and use some handy leftover branches from last year’s prunings. This was especially cool, since we’re trying to spend as little money as possible during this pandemic recession! After we finished, though, […]
Just last week, it was late November, and we were still able to harvest tomatoes and make fresh tomato sauce from our garden! That’s one of the joys of gardening in a mild climate, especially when I see my friends back in Utah covered in snow lately. ;) Garden cleanup and tomato fatigue After some […]
See the update at the end! Did you know you can compost your shredded paper? It’s great with used coffee grounds! You probably already know that coffee grounds are a valuable addition to your compost bin, but learning about using shredded paper was like an epiphany for me! It feeds my garden, helps avoid adding […]
Rather than just letting your flowerbed go dormant in the winter, consider this — here in northern California, we can grow some fantastic winter flowers. It just takes a little planning ahead and sowing while it’s still warm. And hey, I get the fact that you may having some of that end-of-summer garden fatigue (too […]
I have the good fortune of working at home most days, and it’s great. But one downside is that many of my neighbors are fairly well-off retirees who hire professional gardeners to care for their lawns, and the noise is distracting! Mowers, weedeaters, lawn edgers, and leaf blowers — they all seem to use gasoline-powered […]
I recently read Plenitude, a book by Juliet Schor. She came highly recommended by a fun financial blog I sometimes read – Mr. Money Mustache. Anyway, Schor is a leader of the Center for the New American Dream, and Plenitude is about living a more sustainable life, leaving behind the typical American consumerism, and basically […]