Winter Harvest is Beginning! Cool season crops are maturing in Southern California. It’s time to finally see the fruits of my labor, started back in October. It sounds like I’m bragging, but, as much for my own edification, I wanted to list all that I have growing in my tiny front yard garden. Most of […]
What happened to winter? The Late Bloomer Garden is feeling the effects of a Santa Ana heat wave: broccoli is bolting and cocoons are eclosing! While I was seeding twelve varieties of heirloom tomato seed for summer out back, my one-of-two Monarch chrysalises eclosed in the front yard. I didn’t know it until I went out to […]
Screening Winter Greens is now a key component to pest and varmint management for my cool season greens. What farmers have known for decades – cover crops to prevent flying pests laying eggs on brassicas and more – is rarely put into practice in a front yard garden like mine. However, after daily plucking and squishing […]
Rainy Day with Sparrows & Monarchs completes Season 2 of Late Bloomer, my urban garden web show chronicling my growth as a food gardener. I started from scratch two years ago! With original music by Jon Pileggi, a quick tour of the late December garden during a rare rain shower reveals a large selection of cool season vegetables, […]
In Late Bloomer – Summer Garden Update – Part 3, Kaye harvests late season tomatoes, okra and zucchini and deals with blight, mildew and aphids on milkweed. She vows to conquer some of these issues in next summer’s garden! Southern Fried Okra recipe below. She’s mystified by the long, scarlet radishes. Get a glimpse of […]
Kaye does it again, crowds everything together! Predictably, in a coastal microclimate like Pacific Palisades has, cucurbits (cucumber, squash, melons) get hit with downy mildew. The good news is Kaye achieves perfect corn pollination, thanks to daily shaking of the tassels. All the corn gets eaten raw in the garden. And there are baskets of […]
Late Bloomer – Winter Garden Wrap-up – Episode 32 finds Kaye pulling out all the sweet peas in her winter garden. It’s Easter and time to prepare for the summer garden. She learns the lesson, again, not to crowd vegetables together, especially in a coastal microclimate. Kaye runs into the usual suspects, aphids, slugs and […]
Late Bloomer Lesson #1 for Garden Issues covers a problem that has arisen in July in the Late Bloomer Garden. If you have downloaded my free ebook, “10 Steps to a Great First Garden,” (sign-up box on right), you will have heard of my LBL’s, or Late Bloomer Lessons. The beautiful, wondrous and sometimes frustrating thing about […]
Vegetable risotto, a quick one-pan dinner, is a dish I reach for after a long work day. If you grow your own veggies, it makes it super easy to have the freshest dinner possible. And it only takes 20 minutes! Organic Vegetable Risotto Ingredients 2 TBL organic safflower or olive oil 1 small to medium […]
Late Bloomer – Harvesting Winter Garden Vegetables is online! In this fun episode, I harvest snow peas and Swiss Chard (and show a neighbor how to cook it!), Mei Qing Bok Choi (and give it away to neighbors), and an armload of celery for juicing. As if I haven’t said enough about aphids already 🙂 , I commissioned […]
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