Tuesday’s Tips — Seedling Success

Here are a few tips for making sure the seedings you started inside stay alive and thrive. Seedlings should have plenty of light to prevent them from getting leggy. Grow lights should be 2 inches above seedlings. If you have a south facing window you can put your pots close to the window and rotate...

Tuesday’s Tips — Seed Starting Mix & Weeding Tool

Two Tuesday's Tips in a row! We amaze ourselves. This week Mary Beth wants to tell you about her favorite tool. Last summer she slapped one in my hand and I was an instant convert. Then I've got some tips for starting peas and beans. Mary Beth: If I had to pick only one important...

Garden Workshops and Master Gardeners

Barbara: The wonderful UCCE Master Gardeners of Orange County are at it again. They'll be presenting a series of five exciting gardening workshops March 13 — May 15 at the Farm and Food Lab in the Great Park in Irvine (details below and in the sidebar). If you live in Orange County and are a...

What the Lettuce Taught Me

Barbara: Like most of you, I've been doing a lot of end-of-the-year/beginning-of-the-new year navel gazing, which I kind of hate, but can't stop doing. I've been groping around for some profound, life-changing insight, some thought that can carry me into 2010 with energy and excitement, but which I have been having the hardest time generating...

Garden Dreams

Barbara: Once upon a time my parents dreamed of a place where they could live by the sea with their five children during lazy summers. So in the winter of 1964 my mom pored over the rental ads in the Sunday New York Times. She found a tiny ad for a summer cottage on Block...

Deer Fencing and Other Spring Happenings

Mary Beth: Memorial Day weekend on Block Island was a busy one and if it hadn’t started to rain I’d still be out there. The reason I was so busy was that this is the year Ray and I decided to come up with a real solution to the deer problem — well, I decided...

Tomato, Tomahto

MB: This is the time of year when everyone's daydreaming about their vegetable gardens and the star of the dream is usually the tomato. Everybody has their favorite tomato — or ten. The reasons for these preferences are as numerous as the varieties of this delectable vegetable. (And don't start with the "Is it a...

Rescuing the Seedlings

MB: The seedlings inside and outside are all coming along, albeit not without a little scare. I had 2 tomato plants suffer from the dreaded Damping Off Disease, which strikes fear into my heart. But I stopped it in it's tracks with chamomile tea sprayings and sprinklings of cinnamon on the soil around the seedlings...