So I went to my shop today where I keep all my seeds and gardening stuff. It's mid January. We just got eight inches of snow. I started absentmindedly filling small pots with soil. My body had decided it was time to start those tomato…

http://www.eatdrinkexplore.com/index.php/controlleradmin/controlleradmin/eat/food-news/health/674-how-to-figure-out-if-your-produce-is-organic-or-genetically-modified

http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/december2011/geneblockingnongmocornvarieties.php

This month we have been preparing the raised beds for our future winter crops with additions of organic matter, turning under crimson clover, and allowing the chickens to fertilize, conduct pest control, and do a little additional tillage of the soil. We try to integrate our entire urban farm. Everything we have has at least one function but most have many functions.  For example, our chickens provide eggs, make fertilizer for our crops, till the soil, control garden pests, and are…

During the growing season, and then again in the fall, we flail chop wheat straw and apply it to our raised beds. Fall applied…

So like many, I go overboard when it comes to seeds. I've done this too many years now.

I live in the high desert of Eastern Oregon. And it is time for me to concede that many things don't do well here.

The hardest thing to accept is that peppers are probably never going to do well.

So as I peruse my giant pile of catalogs this year I will be looking for short season varieties of everything. I will also be conceding that the Extension service in my area may have a great…

Well, we're trying it again this year. I've invited the Horticulture 4-H kids and the elementary school's Paws for a Cause community service group to help out, chatted with one of my neighbors (3 blocks down) about it, and mentioned that I'm looking for gardener-types at church. So, maybe this year there will be more peoples involved, yes?

The cardboard patio is still intact, if a little worse for wear, and still being constructed. I'm debating gravel to go over it rather than…

The gift of a dairy goat represents a lasting, meaningful way for you to help a little boy or girl and his family get empowered out of poverty.

Goats can thrive in extreme climates and on poor, dry land by eating grass and leaves. The gift of a dairy goat can supply a family with up to several quarts of nutritious milk a day - a ton of milk…

Having an empty tank was hard to do but needed to keep it down to the one. Using an empty tank in the same room I half filled it with water from the running fish tank, added a piece of ac filter, sprinkled it with basil seeds and turned on a light. As the forest grew I started reading up on aquaponics, and gardening in general. Having tasted freshly grown herbs and veggies, I have been expanding the garden.

There is now a small koi pond hooked to a growbed( both pretty much made using…

Why start something like this in the fall, after the fact as it were? Especially when this is the first year I have actually planted a garden in years...guess I am just tired of the economy/politics/BS. We humans fed ourselves for thousands of years up until the last hundred or so...so I am taking back my right to feed myself, I am giving up the status quo of large corporations deciding what I should and shouldn't do/eat/be. I have a large front yard which I want to turn under and put in…

We didn't make it to the fair, so the Jalapenos went to the kid's dad, and the potatoes became french fries.

The scorching wiped out amost everything except the tomatoes and the okra. The first got whalloped by a huge tomato worm instead, yet the poor little plant I found it on is a determined thing, and has two tiny little 'maters attempting to grow now that it's cooled way off. It's ... maybe 50something outside right now. The rest? Nothing doing. The okra managed to do 3…

Visits to the garden have been few and far between, since the temperature has been ranging in the 100-110's the last couple of weeks. Some weeds got pulled, though.

The cucumbers and corn are kaput. Heat got 'em. Didn't even get any corn off that first batch I planted. The second planting (two types), one type is coming up here and there, the other there is no sign of. Chard is... beyond destroyed. Carrots? They're not even as big around as a pencil, and about a knuckle's…

YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT'S IN YOUR FOOD!!



The 2012 CA Label GMOs Ballot Initiative will be making a campaign stop at Full Circle Farm on Aug. 19th at 6pm.



Seating is limited, so please bring a chair if you cannot stand for an hour.



LOCATION: Full Circle Farm: 1055 Dunford Way, Sunnyvale, CA 94087

DATE:   August 19th

TIME:  6pm…

 "The gathering was life changing. Welcome to a revolution!" - Paul Tryba, THE FARM, Long Beach, CA

Slow Money. A new kind of social investing for the 21st century. Join this emerging network of thought leaders, investors, donors, entrepreneurs, farmers, and activists for our Third National Gathering this October in San Francisco. Together, let's fix America's economy from the ground up...starting with food. Go to National Gathering for details and to register

 …

Hi, 

I'm a SF based photographer looking for urban farms in the NW (Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, etc) I'm looking for individuals who have turned their yards into farms (with chickens, bees, goats--any or other things too) and who have interesting ideas to share. I'm hoping to turn into a book and need to find contacts.

Here's some of my work..…

Heh. I've been hiding from heat and mosquitos, and having a birthday. Spent it out at the lake, and didn't make it back out to the garden until yesterday. Some of the weeds had confined themselves to areas where the veggies aren't growing, which was very considerate of them, but I pulled most of 'em up anyhow. One of my squashes had grown up through the sunflowers and discovered the bathtub pond, and was gleefully swimming through it. A different squash had decided it was going to start…

Yep. There is such a thing. What you do is go to your local liquor store, and see if they have any boxes or beer flats. These you take and flatten out, then put down where you don't want any weeds or grass growing up. The flaps on the boxes can be weaved together a bit to help keep them in place when the wind blows. The flats it's probably better to tape together, but you can sort of weave them together too if you're good at bending over or being on the ground. We basically dropped and…

So, I figured that even though the temperature is as close to hell as it's supposed to get this week, I'd go outside and do some of this and some of that. So I weeded here, and I weeded there, and I pulled the dried peas up and pulled the pea pods off 'em, squealed over the tomatoes that I still don't know what I'm gonna do with when they turn red, and about swooned when I realized there were 4 cucumbers! Oh, moved the now-empty pea trellis to the as of yet unidentified squash that survived…

*quickly reviews last few posts*

Ahuh. Well, I did get a few of the onions moved. All of the squash is coming up now, along with the watermelon and the second batch of sweet corn. I didn't see any of the P&C corn, though. Got a bunch of weeds ganked out, moved two of the trellis cages over to the cukes (which place did I already mention that?), kid dumped half the pool into the tub after we got a different stopper for it, and then the mosquitos got so bad we fled…