by Greg Alder | Mar 12, 2021 | Vegetables |
I’ve been starting my vegetable seeds in homemade compost for many years so when I hear someone say that this can’t be done, or shouldn’t be tried, I wonder about their reasons for saying so. In addition to hearing individual gardeners recommend against starting...
by Greg Alder | Feb 19, 2021 | Pests, Vegetables |
I’d long heard of people using dish soap mixed with water to spray on broccoli and cauliflower in order to control aphids. I was curious to test that out. In early January, I had a row of plants and I had three kids that might enjoy helping me experiment. Control...
by Greg Alder | Feb 12, 2021 | Vegetables |
I remember well the first time I sowed vegetable seeds. They were green beans. I stood there holding the packet, looking at the garden dirt wondering, “Do I really just bury them and they’ll grow?” Though I’ve done much sowing since then, I still mess it up from...
by Greg Alder | Oct 16, 2020 | Soil, Vegetables |
October being one of the two transitional times in the vegetable garden in Southern California (March being the other), it is a month when I usually add compost to the beds. So compost is on my mind right now. I’ve been using compost to fertilize my vegetable gardens...
by Greg Alder | Sep 4, 2020 | Vegetables |
At the end of summer, peppers look better than anything else in my vegetable garden. Corn has been harvested and stalks are drying, tomatoes are getting brown leaves from the bottom up, but peppers remain verdant, and adorned by red, yellow, orange, brown, purple,...
by Greg Alder | Jul 24, 2020 | Pests, Vegetables |
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...
by Greg Alder | Jun 19, 2020 | Vegetables |
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...
by Greg Alder | May 15, 2020 | Vegetables |
I didn’t much like cucumbers until I grew ‘Green Finger.’ I didn’t love to eat them, and I was frustrated while growing them. From my garden, too often they were bitter, and I never could figure out how to consistently prevent that. Insufficient or uneven watering...
by Greg Alder | Mar 6, 2020 | Vegetables |
My “reliable” gardening calendar for Southern California says to plant your first tomatoes after March 15. So why are these already in the ground in my garden, planted February 29? How early can you plant your first tomatoes? Do you realize how dry it has...
by Greg Alder | Feb 7, 2020 | Vegetables |
Cilantro is my favorite feral plant in the yard. It pops up in pathways, under fruit trees, over by the fence. And I do still plant some in my garden beds. Yearly routine I haven’t bought cilantro seed or plants for years because I’ve got a routine that keeps the...
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