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Category Archives: Blog
Pea Protection
Last week we talked about how to grow peas. Ordinarily it’s easy as pie, but what do you
do when creatures of the night and/or sky make it their business to snatch up all your delicate sprouts before they have a chance to take hold in the soil?
You build a fortress.
That’s what we did, anyway. We planted 3 rounds of peas, and each time they were plucked out by rats or birds, we can’t tell which. So …
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Back to the Ranch – Huntington Style
I’d been dying to see the secret Huntington Ranch for over a year. Back then, I read an article in the Huntington Library and Garden’s monthly newsletter about the
development of a new vegetable garden on the property. I searched and searched each time I went to try and find its secret location to no avail.
Then an invitation to an all-day symposium for professional garden nerds hit my inbox, and when I saw that the events of the day …
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Growing Peas – The Garden Snack Food
Most people grow peas in the spring. I like to grow them in the fall. I think I started growing them in fall primarily because, A) we can, and 
I need my trellises for other things in the spring. Over the years peas have become a prominent part of my fall garden, lending height
and tastiness to fall garden chores.
They never make it into the house. A …
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Bad Haircuts – the Cutworm Way
People aren’t the only ones to suffer from a bad haircut every once in a while. Plants get them too. The only difference is that the garden stylist servicing
your plants is much less forgiving – in fact, the cutworm’s handiwork is usually fatal.
I’ve done a podcast about this already, but now I have pictures to go with it. So for those of you who haven’t seen a cutworm in action, this is for you.
…
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Harvesting Pomegranates
Do you ever wonder how the first person ever figured out how to do certain things? Like who figured out that rhubarb stalks are tasty eating, but the
leaves are poisonous? Or who figured out that soy beans have to be cooked in order to be digestible? If you’re wondering who figured out how to open a pomegranate without getting
red stains all over themselves, I can tell you – it was my friend Lynn Jordan.
…
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Posted in What's Growin' On
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Growing Swiss Chard – Nature’s Multivitamin
“Eat your greens.” How many times did you hear that as a child? If I had a dime for every time I sat in front of a cold plate of broccoli in
protest as a kid, I’d be a wealthy woman. Now, that has all changed.
I love Swiss Chard! I admit, the residual resistance to wilted green things put me off trying Swiss chard until someone gifted me with a bouquet of it a few years ago (yes …
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A Dream Garden for the Dream Center
“It all started with a butternut squash,” she said. About a year ago I got a call from Nina Girvetz asking for help on a garden project. She said that vacant
lot next door to her church was the perfect place for a garden, and when her friend Dru Hammer handed her a butternut squash, they knew it had to happen.
The residents of the Dream Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping inner cities, have taken refuge there …
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The Potato Experiment
I’ll admit it, I’ve never grown potatoes in the fall. It’s always been a spring thing for me. When some scary looking potatoes greeted me in the pantry the other day, however, that all changed. Our
Test Garden is chock-full of fall crops already, so there’s no room for potatoes, but where there’s a will, there’s a way. The Way of the Pot.
(Cue Zen Buddhist musical interlude)
Potatoes are well-known for being suitable for growing in containers. They can be grown in trash cans, burlap sacks, bags of …
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Carve a Pumpkin
It’s almost Halloween, which means it’s time for roasted pumpkin seeds, pumpkin carving, pumpkin bread and bags and bags of Twix. Okay, maybe
not that last part…<<chocolate smears across the delete key>>.
Since we had a mournful year for squash in coastal California, we have no pumpkins from the garden to carve (this is a far cry from last year), so I’m particularly longing for a pile of pumpkins of all shades and sizes …
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Home Grown Culver City
If you live in the Los Angeles area, and you want to venture out after the rain stops, head to the first ever Home Grown Culver City this
Saturday, October 23 from 9 a.m.- 5 p.m. at Media Park in Culver City. Gardenerd will be there offering discounts on all our Gardenerd Store products and we’ll be standing by to answer your
gardening questions.