Planet Veggie Garden

The political season is coming to an apex with elections two weeks away.
There’s a proposition on the California ballot – Prop. 2 – that regulates how animals are treated… mostly how they’re confined.
It’s not getting much attention in these financially challenging times, but it did make Oprah. Oprah featured an expose by investigative reporter Lisa [...]

There was a great article in the New York Times a week and a half ago from Michael Pollan: Farmer in Chief.
It’s an open letter to the next President with some specific food policy recommendations.
I’s a long article, but a very good read. Highly recommended.
Food is cheap in America – relatively speaking. Well actually, [...]

One naturally believes composting is a bit messy. Yep, it generally is.However, there’s one type of composting that can be done indoors… without mess, without smell.

Vermicomposting…worm composting

Yes, you absolutely can have a worm farm in your nice, clean home.
Worms – specifically, red wigglers (Eisenia foetida) – can eat half their weight daily in food scraps [...]

You’re no doubt aware of the climate change issue.
Human contribution (or to use a fancy word – anthropogenic) to climate change is primarily from fossil fuel carbon emissions. Methane gas and nitrous oxide are lesser contributors.
Fossil fuels are made of hydrogen and carbon. When you burn the fuel, carbon combines with oxygen creating carbon [...]

One of those maxims to live by is:You can get what you want by helping others get what they want.
Applying that to the garden world:You feed the soil. The soil feeds the plants. The plants feed you.
Feed the soil
You can buy individual organic and non-organic nutrients to put in your soil. However, just as it’s [...]

We’re fortunate to live in a moderate climate (Zone 9b) with year round temps that don’t typically go below 40 degrees F (4 degrees C) or above 90 degrees F (32 degrees C).
Nonetheless, I’d like to grow year round.With fewer sunlight hours and cooler temps things are most definitely slowing down.
Cooler weather growing options
Greenhouses of [...]

Will Allen, former pro basketball player and Fortune 500 marketing exec bought a 2 acre roadside farm in an economically depressed area of Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1993.
Since then his organization – Growing Power – has produced $500,000 of affordable fresh produce, meat and fish in an area characterized as a “food desert”. “Food desert” is [...]

Garden beds on vacation

We’ve been spending a good bit of time getting the garden beds ready for…Vacation. Not our vacation, but their vacation.
We moved a couple boxes and added a couple more. Boxes #1 and #4 were moved. Boxes #2 and #3 were added.
We set up #4 as a no-dig box. (Right now we have [...]

Interesting timesThe U.S. stock market annihilated $1.2 trillion dollars of “equity” yesterday. Other markets around the world concurrently took heafty losses ahead of and following that umm, spectacular day.
I suspect some us feel less financially secure than a week ago. And if you take that feeling to the grocery store, well you’ll be matching your [...]

We learned about no-dig or “lasagna” gardening earlier this year and have set up a few no-dig beds.There isn’t ONE single way to do a no-dig garden.
The way I see it, there are three components in the no-dig system:

Isolation
Nutrition
Protection

Isolation
You can set up a no-dig garden on virtually any level surface… a growing (or not growing) [...]