We came home yesterday after work to carnage. I almost cried. Almost. But I didn’t because deep down inside the demise was a relief. Our Fuji apple tree was dead. Snapped off a the base. It really wasn’t a surprise and was eventually going to happen. Half the tree and thus half of the trunk…
It’s that time again. It’s time to go over what has and has not worked this year in the garden. It’s always a learning experience and this year was no exception. I like making these posts because I always go back to them to remember what we need to change the following year. 1. “We’ll…
I’m fairly new at celery as this is only my third year growing it. I guess that’s because I’m not the biggest fan of it. It’s got its place but it’s just a vegetable I use that often. Tom likes it better than I do so we figured we’d give it a try. Of course…
This picture makes me sad. It makes me sad because it no longer looks like this. We had a brilliant plan to redo the garden. We pulled everything out to make room for new plants. And then we moved the chickens. And now it looks like this. And I hate it. I’m the mechanic with…
Yesterday Tom picked a GIANT tomato. It was enormous and weighed 1lb 8oz. It’s the largest tomato we’ve ever grown and in my opinion only got that large out of sheer luck. I’m still really proud of it and immediately saved seed from it. It’s a Dr. Wyche’s Yellow tomato – a heirloom beefsteak type…
This past weekend I decided to do a hot pepper taste test. We have issues with getting hot peppers because we just aren’t hot enough around here. I was really hoping for some hot jalapenos this year in particular. I probably could live with medium heat as well. The black plastic has been really helpful…
This year was my first time ever finding a lacewing in my garden. I was probably more excited than any normal human being should be. Of course in all my excitement I wasn’t able to get a photo of it for this post, so I borrowed one from flickr. Why was I so excited to…
I’ve decided to build upon my tips for frugal gardeners. This however has more to do with using items you probably already have in your house. Aspirin – Dissolve 3/4 of an uncoated asprin tablet in 1 gallon of water. Spray plants ever 2-3 weeks with the mixture to prevent fungus problems, including powdery mildew…
Last year I decided to give black plastic a try in the garden for all of our heat-loving plants. The main purpose of the plastic though was to help beat back the bindweed and Bermuda grass in our garden. We just finished up the first half of the year and the report is pretty good…
I was puttering around in the yard when I realized that we sure have a lot of random crap around our yard. I guess you can’t call it crap because it’s all really, really useful stuff. None of these items’ primary use is for gardening or livestock keeping but here we are using them all…
Dog Island Farm is a small urban farm in the San Francisco Bay Area.
