Home Orchards for Year Round Food Resiliency

...tree). Our Fuerte gives us several months of avocado toast. Growing fruit takes knowledge and effort. Thankfully, we have a great resource in UC Davis’ guide to backyard orchards. My advice: talk to avid gardeners in your area to learn what grows best. Pay attention to irrigation and pruning. Take out under-performing trees. Buy bare root trees to save money. If you don’t have a yard perhaps a school, business or faith institution in your communi...

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Reader Favorite California Native: Ceanothus

...e managed to kill. It’s true that once you get it going, other than yearly pruning, you can retire to the nearest bar and rest on your gardening laurels. But getting it established can be tricky. The most common mistake is over-watering during the summer months and planting in overly fertile soil. We didn’t over-water, so how we manged to kill three of them is a Root Simple gardening mystery. That said, many of our neighbors have had no problems w...

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What Equipment do I Need to Keep Bees?

...s spray bottle with syrup made with a 50/50 combo of water and white sugar pruning sheers for cutting tree branches a roll of caution tape bee suit/gloves/boots (most, but not all swarms are docile) nuc box mesh bag to put the nuc box in (especially important if you don’t own a truck!) knife (for cut-outs) Benadryl for when you get stung! I strongly suggest having all of the things in this post on hand before you think of getting bees. So beekeepe...

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July Linkages

...f “lip-smacking Peach & Lavender Butter” to promote her upcoming series of homesteading books. Look for a new contest each month. English’s “Canning & Preserving”, published by Lark Books, will be available April 2010. The third and fourth books in the series, “Home Dairy” and “Beekeeping”, will be available in April 2011. Hopefully we’ll be having English on our new Homegrown Evolution Podcast that will debut when we can get our computer, seen ab...

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A Report from the 2014 Heirloom Expo in Santa Rosa

...had a great time, as usual. I’ve attended every year since its inception in 2010. The Expo features mind boggling displays of what can only be called vegetable porn. Hint: if you hang around after the conclusion on Thursday evening you can score the display items. For two years in a row we’ve gone home with a rental car stuffed with heirloom watermelon and squash. But the real draw for me are the seminars and panel discussions. Above, some of the...

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