Category Archives: edibles

the learning garden at Venice High School

I’m late posting about the Learning Garden, a garden stop on the May 2012 Venice Garden & Home Tour, and today the LG offers a class open to the public on vermiculture/composting, a deadline I had been hoping to beat. … Continue reading

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summer camp for locavores

From the Wikipedia entry: “A locavore is a person interested in eating food that is locally produced, not moved long distances to market.” I’ve been hinting without going into too many gory details that my new little community vegetable garden … Continue reading

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Bike to Work Day

Today, 5/18/12, is Bike to Work Day, which I heard over the car radio stuck in traffic. So I have no cycling adventure to recount, but it’s the perfect opportunity to share this very cool photo of Humphrey Bogart cycling … Continue reading

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Wrapping Up the Venice Garden & Home Tour 2012

“The Venice Garden & Home Tour is an annual fundraising event, benefiting the children of the Neighborhood Youth Association’s (NYA) Las Doradas Children’s Center in Venice, CA. This self-guided walking tour showcases the unique homes and gardens of the creative … Continue reading

Posted in agaves, woody lilies, design, edibles, garden ornament, garden visit, MB Maher, pots and containers, succulents | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Brassica juncae ‘Scarlet Frills Mustard’

This mustard is the only edible I brought home from the recent plant sale at the Huntington Botanical Gardens. I have a satellite 10X20 foot vegetable garden this year at a local community garden that’s already full to capacity with … Continue reading

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fertilizer and its discontents

My dainty coronilla reminds me of Cytisus battandieri a little bit, which is another member of the vast legume family. All legumes have the ability to convert and “fix” atmospheric nitrogen, making it available to plants as a natural fertilizer. … Continue reading

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Growing Dragon Fruit

Yesterday, 12/20/11, The Los Angeles Times ran a well-informed piece on the cultivation and propagation of pitahaya, or dragon fruit, written by Jeff Spurrier of the The Global Garden, which you can read here. I wrote about my neighbor’s dragon … Continue reading

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Villa Mundo Nuevo

This fall photographer MB Maher revisited this Northern Californian residential garden designed by landscape architect Jarrod Baumann of Zeterre Landscape Architecture and built by contractor Jim Everett of EvLand LLC that won the 2010 California Landscape Contractors Association Trophy Award. … Continue reading

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Garden Miscellany

Since the post on the tree collard continually gets a surprising number of hits, full disclosure is in order: I’ve composted the tree collard. It is a defiantly ugly vegetable. My hat is off to fellow tree collard growers who … Continue reading

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Square Stems & Other Botanical Curiosities

Studying taxonomic classification and “keying” out the physical characteristics of plants almost 18 years ago was incredibly absorbing, but the detailed vocabulary has mostly slipped from memory from disuse. Still, it’s a rare occasion that I look at a salvia … Continue reading

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