A Midsummer Garden’s Harvest
I bet you’re harvesting a lot from your garden here in midsummer. Let’s celebrate that, and let's remember how we got here. Midsummer harvest First, what to celebrate? Here are some items we are harvesting in early August from our yard. For vegetables, there are...
Smart irrigation timers and automation
(This post was written by Dave Feinglass, who grows dozens of fruit trees on his property in Fallbrook, San Diego County. Thank you, Dave!) There is just something relaxing about watering the plants in your garden or your backyard fruit tree with a trusty old watering...
What are root knot nematodes?
I planted cucumbers on June 19 and expected them to take off in the warm weather and soil, but they kept wilting in the noonday sun. So I watered more. They continued to wilt every afternoon. When they weren’t wilting, they were barely growing. Finally, I yanked one...
Heat tolerance of avocado varieties
When you see comparisons between avocado varieties, often discussed are the flower type, size of the tree and its fruit, peel color, and cold sensitivity. Rarely, however, do you get a clue as to a variety’s sensitivity to heat. (See, for example, Table 5 on page 30...
Growing sunflowers in Southern California
Sunflowers are on my mind these days, in part because these sunflowers almost bonk me on the head every time I walk down the path in the photo above. Bees get scared as I get close, and they jump off the flowers to buzz around me. But I just can’t get myself to cut...
Should you get a wood chipper?
After collecting the branches I’d pruned from my Valencia orange tree, I knew just what I would do with them. I could have sent them away in a trash can. I could have stacked them in a brush pile in a far corner of the yard. I could have chopped them into small pieces...
Thank you, Floyd Zaiger
I never met the man, but Floyd Zaiger made my yard taste better. I grow some of his apriums, like Cot-N-Candy. Cot-N-Candy aprium. I’ve got a tree of his nectaplum, SpiceZee. SpiceZee nectaplums. I’ve got his cherry for warm-winter places like Southern California,...
Comparing tomato supports: cage versus stake-and-string
After joining Roy Wilburn to harvest tomatoes in his garden last June, which I wrote about in the post, “Learning from the California Gardener of the Year,” I was spurred to try his method of supporting tomato vines. Roy uses a specific style of stake-and-string...
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. My Gardening Calendar
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