Urban Farming in Oakland

Public radio station KCRW has an excellent interview with urban farmer and writer Novella Carpenter. Carpenter has pigs, goats, ducks, chickens and more all on a small lot in Oakland, California. You can listen to the radio interview here (along with some other interesting segments on hunting caribou, cooking pasta, roasting peppers, and more) on chef Evan Kleiman’s show Good Food. You can also check out Carpenter’s blog, meaningfulpursuit.com. W...

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Make that 11 Vegetable Gardening Mistakes

In my post, Top Ten Vegetable Gardening Mistakes, several readers and Mrs. Homegrown pointed out that I left out “inconsistent watering.” I plead guilty. I would also suggest an “absentminded” watering category, such as setting up a irrigation system on a timer and not adjusting it throughout the season. And those of us in dry climates could also be better about selecting and saving seeds for drought tolerance. Gary Paul Nabhan and the folks at N...

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Admitting Gardening Mistakes

...rden design dynamic is a resistance to change and a unwillingness to admit mistakes. Take, for instance, the stone fruit trees in our front yard. The “new normal” that climate change has brought to our region–fewer chill hours and drought–has greatly diminished the health and productivity of most of our stone fruit. It’s time for those trees to go and for the execution of a more coherent and attractive landscape plan. As Hermann von Pückler-Muskau...

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Saturday Tweets: Styrofoam Catamarans, Bulb Mistakes and Luxury Bunkers

...d https://t.co/9Mw0jsreVX — Root Simple (@rootsimple) October 1, 2016 Bulb mistakes I have known and now avoid | Garden Rant https://t.co/OPNZehGVEP — Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 30, 2016 Panic, Anxiety Spark Rush to Build Luxury Bunkers for L.A.'s Superrich https://t.co/Du53Wi0rDf via @thr — Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 29, 2016 Bikes shipped in boxes with TV set printed on box suffer less delivery damage https://t.co/yuMp7iVVK...

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Top Ten Vegetable Gardening Mistakes

...oth a steady supply of produce as well as a more attractive garden. 5. Not labeling plants What kind of okra is that? I have no damned idea. Too bad when I want to plant it again next year. All it takes is a sharpie and a plastic knife to fix this problem. 6. Not keeping a garden diary The two most important things to know are when something was planted and when the first and last harvests took place. With this data you can plan out next years gar...

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