Growing Watermelons

...While we’ve got a very long season here in Southern California for summer vegetables, with almost no chance of a fall freeze, I’ve begun in the past year to plant early varieties of most vegetables simply because there is less time for bad things to happen. 3. Watermelon is a living mulch. Watermelon, an enormous vine, makes an excellent living mulch, snaking, as it does, amongst our tomatoes and okra. I’ve laid down a layer of straw as mulch, bu...

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Daikon Radish!

...way to tougher to grow things like broccoli and cauliflower. Like all root vegetables loose soil is a plus, especially for daikons, so it’s best to grow them in a raised bed. We’ve also discovered that all radish greens are edible, as they are members of the cruciferous vegetable family, which includes broccoli, cabbage, kale and many others. With many of the root vegetables we’ve grown, especially beets, we’re actually more fond of the greens. No...

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Front Yard Vegetable Gardeners Fights Back

...len, NPR. I’ve got a tip for to city bureaucrats. Bust someone for growing vegetables in their front yard and you’ll be held up for ridicule around the world. This time it’s the city of Miami Shores’ turn to make fools of themselves for forcing Hermine Ricketts and her husband Tom Carroll to tear up the front yard vegetable garden they’ve tended for 17 years. NPR has the details here. Listen to that story and you’ll get to hear an especially ridic...

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Farm in a Box

...rom the water. From the Earth Solutions website: “By integrating fish with vegetables, naturally balanced aquatic ecosystems are established making it unnecessary to add fertilizer, chemicals or remove nitrogen rich water. As in nature, plants, fish and oxygen loving bacteria create a symbiotic relationship; Fish waste is converted by bacteria to a plant loving nutrient which helps maintain safe levels of ammonia without discarding waste and water...

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Composting: Nothing is Wasted

...d with, perhaps, a greater recent emphasis on eating more fresh fruits and vegetables, but oddly, we’re somehow wasting 20% more now than we did in just back in 2000. The response of the industry to our guilt is–of course–to offer us more crap to choke the landfills new consumer products to address our needs, everything from smart refrigerators which promise to keep veggies longer, to plastic storage containers with replaceable charcoal filters in...

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