Hydrophobic: What to do when your soil is too dry
You pour water on your garden soil but it rolls right off the surface. It won't soak in! Here's what to do.
Resources for my Soil Building class
When we pull harvest from the garden, week after week, we are taking from the garden ecosystem. We are taking from the soil. Here in Southern California, where we can harvest year-round (with a seasonally-appropriate crop mix), that means we…
Seeding the new forest garden
A forest garden is a garden of perennial plants that produce food. It is often designed to look “forest-like,” with trees forming a canopy above, and smaller plants creating a “forest floor” effect underneath. As part of the Westchester Community…
ebook The Secrets of Soil Building now available
You can now get my new ebook, The Secrets of Soil Building, to help you in your gardening journey. At the heart of every successful organic garden is rich, healthy, ALIVE garden soil. The Secrets of Soil Building helps you build it, and…
Soil pH in Southern California
I’ve been thinking about soil pH lately – particularly since the oven project at the Garden will be creating an ongoing supply of wood ash. pH is a measurement of the acidity or alkalinity of your soil. “Soil pH influences…
Raised beds vs. Sunken beds
With effusive and glorious terms, the garden catalogs and East Coast garden magazines try to persuade us that “to be a successful vegetable gardener you need raised beds.” Not in Southern California. Consider what is behind those arguments: a drive…
Root knot nematodes
Yesterday in the Community Garden, we discovered that we are experiencing an attack of Root Knot Nematodes. The beets we pulled up had failure to thrive, failed to form a beet root, and had tons of tumor-like growths on the hair…
Building a Food Forest garden – cover crops
We’re designing a Food Forest garden, to be built later this spring. We’ll be tearing out asphalt, cleansing and rejeuvenating the soil, and recrafting the space as a community gathering area with a cob bread oven and food forest. Today…
The One-Finger Test
In the Community Garden at Holy Nativity, we used what we call “the one finger test.” That means you take your finger and stick it into the garden soil – about one inch down into the soil. The soil down…
About the Legume family
Members of the Legume family – peas, beans, and all their cousins – are superstar soil-builders. In partnership with certain beneficial bacteria, legumes can capture nitrogen from the atmosphere and lock it into the soil where other plants can access…
