by Greg Alder | Nov 24, 2017 | Misc |
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...
by Greg Alder | Nov 17, 2017 | Misc |
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...
by Greg Alder | Nov 3, 2017 | Misc |
When people learn that I grow a vegetable garden and have fruit trees they sometimes ask, “That’s great. Is it all organic too?” Awkward silence. I don’t know how to answer. I genuinely don’t know what people mean by “organic.” It’s not that I don’t know the word, of...
by Greg Alder | Jul 27, 2017 | Pests |
In my yard, the most damaging, relentless, and challenging pest to control has been gophers. Birds peck plums and squirrels may steal plums, but a gopher will kill a plum tree. While I haven’t lost any plum trees to gophers, I’ve lost other fruit trees and innumerable...
by Greg Alder | Jun 2, 2017 | Chickens |
I used to think of chickens as a threat. When I lived in Lesotho, my neighbor’s roaming chickens repeatedly ate the leaves of my chard down to the stems despite my attempts to fence them out. I couldn’t have imagined that I would see them as I do today, as...
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