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…
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…
I can’t believe it’s already time to start the fall crops. It seems like it was just New Year’s last week. I haven’t even harvested all my long season cabbage yet either! I’ve never been successful at growing Brussels sprouts. They would grow fast at first but then as the season wore on they would…
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…
There are many types of vegetable gardens out there from the traditional rows – one plant wide row with walkways in between – to raised beds (and wide beds) or more natural, loose organic gardens. I try to stay away from rows because they are much less space efficient than the other two types. With…
Dog Island Farm is a small urban farm in the San Francisco Bay Area.
