Sunset Magazine has a lot of good information and fun links on their website for gardening. Check out this page for ideas on square-foot gardening, raised beds, vertical gardens…..well, you get the idea. Always fun to see what creative gardeners are coming up with!
Also, fellow garden blogger, Fern, has a great post of container garden ideas. On her website, LifeOnTheBalcony.com, she hosts a Blog Carnival occasionally with a specific theme, inviting fellow bloggers to send her a post that fits into that theme. After she compiles all the info that other bloggers send in, she posts it out to her readers, spreading great ideas across the blogosphere. She even included my post in this last collection. Thanks Fern!
Sunset Magazine’s web site is a great resource for me. This page, ‘How to grow your own vegetables,’ just popped up in front of me and I thought it was worth sharing. Lots of links that include seed sowing, soil prep, composting, transplanting seeds, tomatoes, raised beds and growing veggies in pots. Sunset’s website is great and getting better all the time. The Garden section is just one part of the site but crammed full of great info.
The first numbers are in for crop yield – Summer 2009.
32 cherry tomatoes
11 baby zucchini
Most of the tomatoes went straight from the plant into my mouth! Mmmm, warm cherry tomatoes right off the vine. That’s what I’m talkin’ about!
I was working in the front yard a couple of weeks ago when a couple on bikes stopped to look at the garden. The woman asked me, “Are you selling trellises?” which was a reasonable question because the garden is a mish-mash of bamboo poles, redwood, wrought iron and various other sticks and rods I’ve stuck in the ground. Last year I was not prepared for the incredible growth that took over so this year I overcompensated by making sure every plant that has sprawl potential was staked or trellised to the max. It was a bit much when all the plants were small, but now that everything is really starting to take off, it is becoming obvious to me that I did the right thing. Oh, and no, they are not for sale!
My sister sent me a great link to an article in the NY Times about people foraging in their neighborhoods and swapping fruits and veggies they’ve grown. Cool concept. My friend Amy and I were walking early one morning and came upon not one, but two peach trees hanging over the sidewalk with perfectly good fruit laying all over the ground so we collected a bunch and ate some on the spot, too. Everybody has citrus coming out their ears if they have a producing tree and the same goes for avocados, but if you don’t have that connection you miss out. Read the article. It is inspiring!
I found this the other day when I was web surfing and I thought it was a helpful. One of the problems I have is figuring out how much I can plant in a bed but this link provides a tool that is a good guide for vegetables in a raised bed. I laid out one bed on the interactive page and printed it out. Not only did it show me the layout of the plants I have picked, it also printed out instructions for each of the vegetables. Check it out!
Kitchen Garden Planner
We’ve been eating salad from the garden for the last two weeks. Fresh lettuce, spinach and beet greens torn up with good olive oil, Salata vinegar and some salt and pepper makes a simple, fresh salad.
