California Gardening Guides

...things about California is that we live in a Mediterranean climate and most of the information on what, how and when to plant vegetables is written for places where it snows. So here’s a few links courtesy of our Extension Service that should help you get started with your vegetable garden: Burpee California Planting Guide Vegetable Gardening Handbook for Beginners (by friend of the blog Yvonne Savio) Sacramento Vegetable Planting Guide UC Master...

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Mulch, mulch, mulch!

...d the idea of leaving the odd corner or bit of slope un-mulched.) Mulching vegetables: Mulch in the vegetable beds is potentially useful, but also has downsides. It’s very specific and local knowledge, so you have to see what works best for you. I’ll say straight off that if slugs are a big pest in your vegetable beds, mulch will provide them with lots of nice habitat, so I’d not mulch anywhere near my vegetable beds in that case. A mulch of clean...

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Matching Your Waste Stream to Your Composting Method

...t be added like citrus and onions. Conventional compost pile If you have a vegetable garden and want to grow organically, you’ll need to generate a large amount of compost. This is a great way to deal with yard trimmings, grass, manure, and food waste. Advantages: makes the kind of high quality compost needed in large quantities for a vegetable garden. Disadvantages: a lot of work, can’t be added too once the pile is built, may require car trips t...

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening

The new hexagonal raised beds. More on the design in another post. Due to contaminated Los Angeles soil, we’ve got to grow our veggies in raised beds. There’s just too much lead and zinc in the ground, according to our local soil lab. Putting together three new beds recently got me to thinking about the ups and downs of gardening in raised beds. I thought I’d list off the pros and cons: Pros: Keeps roots away from contaminated soil. Good for disa...

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