With an iPhone 4, dictation software on the iPhone, WordPress for the iPhone, a great integrated camera on the iPhone, the gardening blog may have a new life this growing season.
The garden was planted starting on Feb 13. and despite three hail storms since then, most of my seedlings have survived in the raised beds (although some did get beat up).
Photos and commentary are on the way…stay tuned.
As I collect new & useful links, I update the Gardening Links page. I’ve done some basic organizing and have added more links as well as a few comments on that page.
The Gardening Links page will continue to grow over time, so be sure to check it out.
I use a green bin that the city of Berkeley picks up and sends to a central composting facility in Modesto, CA. I’d considered driving down and picking up some free compost sometime until I found out that there is a lot of carelessness with what gets sent to composting facilities.
It isn’t widely publicized, but there are increasing amounts of compost that is contaminated with very long lasting herbicides that are manufactured by Dow Chemicals.
After finding this out, I ordered a 2nd composting bin for my yard. When compost comes from your own yard, you can control what goes into it and ensure that poisons don’t end up in your compost.
The chemicals in question are ending up in commercially sold products as well and are clopyralid and its close cousin, aminopyralid. Both can persist in compost, hay, & manure for years. Before you buy (or pick up free compost) you’d better ensure it is being tested by the producer for contaminants.
I was thinking that it would be great to connect with other backyard gardeners in my area (Berkeley, California) or in the greater SF Bay Area. If you are reading this and are part of a local online gardening group for this area, please let me know where to find that resource so I can sign up.
FYI – I have enough work in my own yard, so I’m not interested in a community volunteer gardening group. My interest is in finding a SF Bay Area online community that shares resources, knowledge, & perhaps does seed exchange.
If you know of this kind of online community for the SF Bay Area, please comment on this blog with the URL. Thanks!
I’m not crazy about how I’ve done this blog, so after some thinking on this, I’ve decided to completely rework the appearance and feel of this blog so that it is focused exclusively on gardening & hopefully becomes a repository of information that I can personally rely on as I manage and maintain my backyard organic garden.
If you occasionally stop by this blog, you’ll start to slowly see changes as I get inspired and figure out the feature sets at WordPress that will be most useful to me and hopefully to others that drop by the site to see what’s happening in my 21st Century victory garden
After both potato harvest and both garlic harvests, there has been a game of waiting for new seeds to sprout since I don’t believe in buying herbs and vegetables from the local nursery. This waiting game has had a challenge thrown into it in the form of neighbor cats that like to hang out, dig, & do their business.
My solution, if you can call it that is chicken wire, but frankly it’s a serious pain in the ass, so next season I’ll have to figure out something that is easier to work with.
I have a lot of photos that I’ve taken throughout the growing season and I plan to post them as time permits with some explanation as to what is being looked at.
