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Written by Ann Shepphird
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Tuesday, 05 May 2009 16:48 |
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Called the "eco-oracle" by Wine Spectator magazine, "Amigo Bob" Cantisano is a legend in the organic gardening field. I had the opportunity to learn a ton from him during a recent workshop on the Heart of Organic Gardening up at Esalen. 
Amigo Bob started with a factoid: There are 70,000 different species of insects in the world and less than 100 are pests in the garden. The rest are our allies. That's pretty cool, huh? We have 69,900 allies! Yea! So the question becomes: how do we get these allies into our gardens? The answer is through diversity. The greater the diversity, the more stability a garden has. So if you're growing mostly vegetables, you will want to add flowers and herbs and allium (onions, garlic, etc.) as they attract the beneficial insects (those allies we talked about) like ladybugs, which are predators and eat the pests, and wasps, which are parasites and love to lay their eggs within the little buggers. |
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Written by Janine Warner
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Monday, 04 May 2009 01:03 |
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 After all the warnings that Bamboo will take over your yard if you let it, you'd think we'd have no trouble growing it, but despite buying large bamboo plants, they just don't seem to be adjusting well to our garden.
Not long after we planted them, they developed a black fungus, which we were able to cure, but they've just never taken off, and a year later, I'm wondering what else we can do. They're not too sickly looking, they're just not growing very fast. We planted them in wine barrels, which are huge, but we got concerned at one point that they weren't draining properly. So we flipped over the barrels, gently laying our distressed bamboo on its site, drilled holes in the bottom of the wine barrels and tried to break up the soil a little. There isn't much room in the barrels for their roots to expand further, but they don't seem rootbound yet. A friend suggested grass fertilizer, which we added, and we water them pretty regularly. But, alas, our bamboo is growing slowly and with spring blossoming all over the rest of the yard, you'd think they'd be happy. What are we doing wrong? |
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Written by Ann Shepphird
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Monday, 13 April 2009 19:26 |
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 There’s something about summer and growing tomatoes. Maybe it’s because they really only grow in the summer or because they taste so much better (so much better) than anything available in the stores, but there’s something really satisfying about a summer tomato you’ve grown yourself.
There are those, of course, who take their tomato growing to the extremes, such as the guy chronicled in the Los Angeles Times last year who grew something like 10,000 tomatoes in his San Fernando Valley yard. It was in reading that article that I discovered Tomatomania – no, not this particular gentleman’s mania for tomatoes, but the Tomatomania seedling sales, listed at www.tomatomania.com. |
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Written by Janine Warner
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Sunday, 02 November 2008 23:01 |
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 Want to get off to a great start as a newbie gardener? Try basil. Not only is it easy to grow, it adds incredible flavor to so many dishes.
Basil plants are happy as long as they have plenty of sun and water (and a little organic fertilizer now and then). You can grow basil almost anywhere -- in backyards, community gardens and even small pots. I have a big garden, but I still like to keep the basil close to the kitchen in big wooden planters on the deck. Starting as early as March in warmer climates, you can find basil at nurseries, farmer's markets, and most places that sell gardening supplies and plants. |
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Gardening Tips
