Your water-wise veggie garden Does everyone in our Mountain Community grow at least one tomato? I think so! For me, sun-ripe, sliced tomato sandwiches, with slivers of cheddar, a little lettuce, salt and mayo is the goal. Planning now Now, in spring, is the time to plan and build that deer fence or raised bed…
How to grow a Salad! Thinking about ‘Cut and Come Again’ salad gardens…you may have already started lettuce or mesclun seeds or found some healthy starts to plant. For Cut and Come again, you snip off the leaves about an inch and a half from the soil, make your salad, then two weeks later you…
Learning to grow from seed It’s Spring! My friend, Marie, inspires me so much with her courtyard garden fitted with raised garden beds she and her husband built. Each year she plants a garden and this one is all from seed. Here she shares a few easy secrets. Also, which flower seeds transplant best, building a…
This Year’s Veg Garden Experiment: The last two years have been straw bale gardens with great success! This year, there is still so much straw that I decided to see how the tomatoes and peppers would do in the remnants of composted soil and leftover straw. When observing the garden for the first time after…
Harvesting the straw bale garden I call this experiment a success! After reading and reviewing the book Straw Bale Gardens sent to me by author, Joel Karston, I became intrigued by the concept of growing a garden in straw instead of soil. I wondered if this would be a good idea here in the Sierra…
Part Two: Summer In May, Tractor Man and I lugged four bales of hay down our slope and set them up as a garden! At the same time, we constructed a ‘Ranch Gate Garden’, by stringing three old ranch gates together that we found on our place, fencing in the 16′ x16′ garden. The fourth…
A Straw Bale Garden? Sure, I love experiments! Recently I decided to try the technique called straw bale gardening, after an online chat with the author, Joel Karsten, who wrote the book, Straw Bale Gardens. My garden is on a mountainside in Central California. See the steps I took in this experiment! My Ranch Gate…
Sowing smart! What vegetables can you grow this year to save the most money at the grocery store? Yields per square foot and dollar value and of that (organic) produce at harvest in the supermarket were considered to form this list. Here are the ones to grow that will save you the most. Of course,…
First views of my garden at the first of April…. First views is the brainchild of Town Mouse, with the idea that wider views will give a better idea of what our gardens look like and a record of how they change throughout the year. Join in by visiting her post here! *** I have…
Did you know that when green onions get a bit old in the fridge, you can plant them in a garden pot or veggie garden? I did this in my galvanized wash tub garden and could cut fresh onion tops all through Autumn. These are regular grocery store green onions that I plugged in next…
