Should you prune a bare-root fruit tree?
Whether or not you should prune a bare-root fruit tree depends on two things: One, what the tree looks like when you buy it. And two, what you want the tree to look like when it's all grown up. This being mid-January, heart of bare-root season in Southern California,...
Where should you buy a fruit tree?
"Sorry," I said as I leaned in front of a guy to snap the above photo of the label on the bag of a bare-root Carpathian walnut tree at Home Depot. “Do you know what is different these?” asked the man, pointing also at the tree beside the Carpathian walnut, labelled...
Don’t dig in your garden
A light frost kissed my sweet potato foliage to death at the end of December, so I dug the tubers up. I don't do much digging in my garden anymore, it occurred to me. In fact, I realized, besides while harvesting sweet potatoes and Irish potatoes, I don't dig at all....
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...
Passion fruit: best edible, evergreen vine
I had a problem and passion fruit solved it. I live on a dirt road and my vegetable garden starts only twenty feet from the road. I wanted both privacy and dust catchment. Because there’s a chain link fence between the road and my garden, I was able to plant a passion...
Avocado leaves turning brown? Here’s why and what to do
One of the many signs of the fall season in Southern California is the browning of avocado leaves that is also called “tip burn” because the browning starts at the leaf tips. The photo above shows leaves on one of my Hass avocado trees in late fall. Why do they look...
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
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 three have been, over the years, the most useful to me as a...
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