2025 Scion Exchanges (of the California Rare Fruit Growers)
Is this the year that you learn to graft? Would you like to grow a new variety of fig, peach, dragon fruit, avocado, plum, mulberry, or cherry? Then these events are for you. Winter is the season for the California Rare Fruit Growers "scion exchanges," where growers...
What to do in a Southern California garden in January
Here it is: our deep winter. In January, we might see frost on our lettuce, and we can enjoy a fire in the fireplace. Appreciate it before it's warm again for the rest of the year. Have your deciduous fruit trees lost all of their leaves? Enjoy that look while it...
How dry, this fall?
Each evening I record weather numbers and observations, along with what I’ve planted and how my vegetables and fruit trees are performing. I’ve done this for ten years straight (off and on for twenty). Occasionally, it feels like a waste of time, but at moments like...
Want kids to eat vegetables? Grow them
Over the years I’ve noticed a phenomenon that I have to share because I hear some parents talk of their kids not wanting to eat vegetables. One thing that I guarantee will increase their consumption is allowing them to graze. Grow what you want them to eat, and then...
Rats! Protecting your garden fruits and vegetables
At least squirrels work in daylight, such that it is easily observed if they’re chewing and stealing your produce. But rats! Nocturnal, sneaky, fecund, voracious. How to protect your garden fruits and vegetables from them? There are no rats doing damage among my...
The layout of a food garden: where to plant what?
You might be planning a food garden for the first time, or you might be wondering if your vegetables and fruit trees are planted in the best places. Either way, this post is for you. I have built food gardens in a couple different yards for myself and my family, and I...
California Avocados: a delicious history, by Rob Crisell (book review)
Did you know that you live in Avocado Land? “The citizens of the Golden State can make a better claim for having ‘invented’ the avocado than anyone else,” writes Rob Crisell in the opening chapter of his new book California Avocados: A Delicious History. I did not...
Old guava trees in Southern California
Guavas don't get as big as some other types of fruit trees. And they certainly get bigger in the tropics than they do here. The biggest guava tree I've ever seen was on a coffee farm in the Monteverde region of Costa Rica. Old guava tree on coffee farm in Monteverde,...
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