How to outsmart garden weeds
Weeding the garden is not mindless work. This struck me the other day when my wife was helping in the garden and I saw her do what we all instinctively do to a weed: rip it out of the ground. That’s generally a fine thing to do with a small weed, but this was a...
Oh, the mistakes I’ve made: Thinking flowers were for girls
I found myself doing the strangest thing in the yard the other day: planting flowers. A few years ago, I could not have predicted this day would come. Flowers were for girls. Or maybe for old men who like to prune roses. But no — I’ve since become enlightened:...
Master Gardener Spring Seminar, San Diego
You are invited! Each spring, the Master Gardener program of San Diego County holds a day of classes and workshops, plus a marketplace. This year’s Spring Seminar is called “Garden Spaces: Growing Outside the Box.” It will be held on March 17, 2018...
Planting Reeve’s placenta tree
Our third child was born last week, a baby girl named Reeve. The nurses put the placenta in a plastic container for us without discussion or funny looks; my wife is a labor and delivery nurse at the hospital, so these nurses are her friends. But also, this had become...
Gardening at the grocery store
Last week, I bought some dry garbanzo beans at the grocery store and planted them. Will they grow? I don’t know. But I have reason to believe so: Beans are seeds. And I’ve grown other types of dry beans bought at the grocery store in the past, like black beans and...
Best books for food gardeners in Southern California
I may run a website, but my affinity for books persists. A few months ago, I edited my bookshelf down to twenty gardening-related books. Of these twenty, three stand out: California Master Gardener Handbook, Sunset Western Garden Book, and The Home Orchard. These...
What is organic, actually?
When people learn that I grow a vegetable garden and have fruit trees they sometimes ask, “That’s great. Is it all organic too?” Awkward silence. I don’t know how to answer. I genuinely don’t know what people mean by “organic.” It’s not that I don’t know the word, of...
Why I still grow food at home
Sometimes gardening feels like a leisure activity, but sometimes it feels like work: weeds, aphids, gophers, heat waves. At which times I think, Why not just buy all my food at the grocery store? It’s so convenient. You show up anytime and choose from all sorts of...
How long does it take to grow a productive yard?
Well, it depends what you mean by productive, but for me, I had the goal of growing almost all of the fruits and vegetables my family could eat when we moved into our house in July of 2013. Actually, 80% was the arbitrary number I had written in my notes. So...Welcome
I'm Greg. My goal is to help others grow some food at home, with a focus on vegetables and fruits -- especially avocados -- in Southern California. I write a new "Yard Post" every Friday morning. My book
My first garden was in Lesotho, Africa. I invite you to have a look at the book I wrote about the years I lived there:
