I get powdery mildew every year I garden in San Diego. It hits my tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini badly. I had used neem oil in the past to try to prevent powdery mildew, but I just found this article today with another prevention method. They suggest using a milk and water spray to prevent powdery mildew. I will be using this method on my zucs and cucs this year. I will try to remember to post results. Read More
For anyone interested in San Diego, there is a Cheese Making 101 class in Spring Valley this Saturday at 10am – 1pm. Here is a link to the class: http://sdsustainable.org/event/cheese-making-101/ I wanted to go to this last year but I was out of town when they held the class. Read More
This gallery contains 10 photos.
Here is a full view of the Garden that my students and I built at our school. We constructed 14 raised beds that are each 8’x4′ and 16” deep. The kids moved 22 cubic yards of bulk garden soil that we purchased from Gerten’s. The garden has four main purposes: Read More
First site update of the season. We finally had Spring weather this weekend. So, I went to Home Depot at 9 a.m. yesterday and worked on the garden until 6 at night. I got every bed prepped and planted with cool season crops. Unfortunately, “Winter is Coming.” We are expecting 1-3 inches of snow on Thursday. I directly sowed all of my crops. If they sprout before Thursday, they will most likely die. Let’s hope for some better weather real soon. Us Northmen could use a break. Read More
Spring is here in San Diego and it’s time for me to write the wrap up about my first time growing cool season crops. The picture was taken in mid January. The garden was full of nice green healthy plants. The weather was still pretty ‘cold’ in January (I know, I’m a sissy from MN who can’t tolerate cold weather anymore). The chard did really well as you can see, and the broccoli was very productive. Read More
It’s still snowing and below freezing here in zone 4b, south central Minnesota, but it’s definitely time to get on the ball planning for the full exposure growing season! We’ll be doing two main gardens, one at a relative’s house in Hastings (800+ sq ft) and another at our community garden plot in Saint Paul (300 sq ft – just got our confirmation Wednesday!) I may also try a few things on our balcony, which is mostly shaded except for one corner which sees full sun – I’m thinking mostly greens/herbs and maybe a cucumber in a wine barrel or grow bag. Read More
Today I harvested lots of greens from the indoor planter box. In the pile of greens contains baby swiss chard, lettuce, basil, spinach, and cilantro. Read More
Since I am so far behind on blogging, I decided to post a few vegetable harvest pictures for you. Here is a picture of the main head of one of the broccoli plants. As you can see, it is bigger than my head! All three of our broccoli plants grew these beasts. I had to go to MN for Christmas and had Kelly take two up to her families for Christmas dinner. I watched this video by Pat Welsh on how to grow great broccoli. She says the key to growing any brassica family plants is to add humic acid. I asked my local nursery if they had any, and I ended up buying some soil conditioner that was 25% humic acid. My broccoli plants have done very well and are much larger than most plants in other peoples plots. Read More
I have been thinking about the up coming growing season and what I should start my seedlings in. I want to use the most environmentally friendly containers possible. I was thinking of using plastic cups, or buying small containers. However, these options seem expensive and over time they will have to be thrown out in the trash. Read More
In this installment on water, I’m going to report on my findings from my water treatment experiments so far. Read More