Silver Lake Farms

This week Homegrown Revolution visited Tara Kolla the founder of Silver Lake Farms. Kolla runs a ambitious and beautiful flower farm on a medium sized lot right in the heart of Los Angeles. She specializes in freshly cut sweet peas, but also grows anemones and ranunculus and sells them at the Echo Park, Silver Lake, Atwater Village, and Los Angeles Arts District farmer’s markets. Kolla believes in the power of the local, and only sells at farmers markets within a five mile radius of her unique urban farm.

But best of all Kolla will be sharing her gardening knowledge with a new class she will be offering:

“Organic Gardening: Introduction” takes place at Silver Lake Farms on Sunday, March 18 from 1pm-3pm. There are 12 spaces available for this class so register now at http://www.silverlakefarms.com or call (323)644-3700.

Also, as a reminder–permaculture expert David Khan will be offering his regular introduction to permaculture this Saturday March 3rd. After the lecture Mark McAfee President, of Organic Pastures, LLC. will present a talk entitled “Got Real Milk?”. Lunch will be available but you must RSVP. See www.sustainablehabitats.org for more information.

Purple Sicilian Cauliflower


The Homegrown Revolution compound’s purple Sicilian cauliflower (Cavolfiore di Sicilia Violetto from Seeds from Italy) from our illegal parkway garden is now ready for the table after four months since planting from seed. Cauliflower needs some attention; it needs to be kept moist and it’s prone to aphids, but the little buggers can be blasted off with a hose fairly easily. While the plant takes up a lot of room and doesn’t yield a lot per square foot, what most folks don’t seem to know is that the leaves of cauliflower and broccoli plants are edible as well, although best when small.

Ultimately if you’ve got the space cauliflower is worth the effort, especially this particular variety, since when it gets down to it, the Man’s cauliflower at the supermarket just does not compare to the rich flavor of our home grown version. And if flavor isn’t enough to convince you to grow your own, cauliflower is one of those plants that demonstrates the groovy world of fractal geometry, where the smallest parts of the plants maintain the geometry of the whole. Take a look at the even more fractal broccoli cauliflower mashup, chou Romanesco.