by Greg Alder | May 15, 2026 | Misc |
“Harvesting honey completes a circle in your yard,” said Jacques, as he was guiding me through the process of taking honey from my hive of bees which he had helped me install three years prior. He explained: You grow these plants that flower (strawberries,...
by Greg Alder | May 8, 2026 | Misc |
Friends have been asking about these topics: 1. How will you support your tomatoes this season? I use cages for some, and I use stakes and string for others. Check out this post: “Comparing tomato supports: cage vs. stake-and-string” 2. Your avocado tree...
by Greg Alder | Apr 9, 2026 | Misc |
My goal with The Yard Posts is to help others grow food at home, with a focus on vegetables and fruits — especially avocados — in Southern California. How do I do this? I write short articles – “posts” – each Friday, and I augment each post with photos and...
by Greg Alder | Apr 4, 2026 | March, Misc, Weather |
One day it got up to 101 degrees in our yard, and on another day we played at the beach and got sunburned and the ocean water felt like summer — in March. It was hot, but how unusual was that for March? And how did plants in the food garden respond? HOT...
by Greg Alder | Mar 10, 2026 | Misc, Native Plants |
In 2019, I wrote a post about growing a “Bee Garden,” a patch of flowering plants that provides food for bees and other pollinating insects. The point was to bring them in and keep them around such that they would also pollinate my nearby vegetables and fruit trees....
by Greg Alder | Feb 13, 2026 | Misc |
In 2025, I visited my friend Jacques about once a month to walk through his eclectic garden of edible plants and taste whatever was ripe. Our goal in filming these tours was to generally show the diversity of what can be grown in Southern California and specifically...
by Greg Alder | Jan 9, 2026 | Misc |
To help you make sense of, and apply to your own yard, the experiences I relate in my “Yard Posts,” I’d like to paint a picture of my yard’s physical aspects: where my yard is located, how big it is, the type of soil underneath, the climate above, and so on. I’ll add...
by Greg Alder | Dec 25, 2025 | Misc |
It’s a cornucopia, dig in. Find all of my Yard Posts under the categories and curations below. AVOCADOS California, where are your local avocados? How I girdle avocado trees A tour of John Schoustra’s innovative, organic, low-input, high-density avocado grove...
by Greg Alder | Dec 19, 2025 | Misc |
Dr. White, El Bumpo, Sabor, Lucida, Fino de Jete, Honeyhart, Fortuna, Deliciosa, Pierce, Booth. Who? Cherimoyas! It’s all about cherimoyas in Jacques’ garden this month. Have you ever eaten these “custard apples,” also called Annona cherimola?...
by Greg Alder | Nov 14, 2025 | Misc |
Last month many fruits were ripe in Jacques’ garden that are still available here in November: pomegranates, dragon fruit, pineapple guavas, tamarillos, and persimmons. So we skipped over those in this tour, but we did find a few new items to taste: longans,...
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