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, […]
Late Bloomer – Summer Garden Wrap-up covers the resolution of Kaye’s big mildew on cucurbits (squash, pumpkin, melons, cucumber) after a visit to friend Dorothy’s squash patch in the 20 degree hotter San Fernando Valley, plus seeding and planting her third winter garden. When the goldfinches have had their fill of the amaranth, the area of […]
L.A. County Fair Fairview Farms has a one-acre gem of a food and teaching garden called Heritage Farm. Kaye dropped into the fair and got a tour of Heritage Farm and the Children’s Farm Market by Don DeLano, chief horticulturalist at the 500 acre Fairplex in Pomona, California. One of the main purposes of the […]
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 – Summer Garden Update – Part 1 covers what you can grow in 300 square feet in a front yard, in this case, amaranth, corn, cucumbers, zucchini, beans, tomatoes, California native plants and more. The Nanday Conure wild parrot flock return to destroy Kaye’s sunflowers, and amaranth shoots survive transplant. Kaye tries flytraps […]
Seed Freedom Fest to make Los Angeles a “GMO-Free Zone” brought together seed savers, seed lovers, live music and theatre, silkscreening, hand-crafted local foods, and local politicians at the Venice Learning Garden, Saturday, August 17. “Seed Freedom LA is working with LA City Hall to have L.A. declared a“GMO-Free Zone” to protect homegrown food in our home gardens, school […]
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 […]
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