by Marla Koss ACTION ITEM! Please read this UCANR article, and pass on to anyone you know with a fig tree! One Saturday morning in June 2025, members of Farm2Market’s orchard crew were arriving and assembling their tools when I heard happy shouts of “Mae!” through the trees. And suddenly […]
by Sarah Miller In April I participated in the East Bay Municipal Utility District’s Community Water Academy. Over 4 evenings and one full day, we got a behind-the-scenes look at how our region’s drinking water travels from the Sierra Nevada all the way to our taps—an intricate, carefully managed journey […]
by Joyce Peters As food costs climb, let’s take a hard look at the higher cost of organic produce vs. conventionally grown. Whether or not you believe that the health and environmental benefits of organically-grown fruits and vegetables are a certainty, it is good to know which crops are grown […]
On Saturday, June 13, 2026, Ploughshares Nursery General Manager Jordan Taylor gave a comprehensive talk on the ins and outs of caring for our backyard tomatoes throughout the season. Though most everybody has some experience growing tomatoes, access to a nursery professional like Jordan helps fill in the various knowledge […]
[March 8, 2026] Alameda Connection host Scott Piehler talks with Liz about the many resources offered by ABG, including assistance with growing, ways to introduce your children to gardening, and the Project Pick program, which gives homeowners a way to ensure their excess harvest gets to those in need, via […]
ABG Advocates for Long-Promised Community Garden at Jean Sweeney Park [March 22, 2026] In 2010, when the City purchased the 22-acre Alameda Beltline property — now known as Jean Sweeney Open Space Park — it launched an extensive community input process. Through online surveys and multiple public workshops, a shared […]
by Joyce Peters Kale has been the “it” vegetable for a while – cooks add kale to smoothies, soups or roast them into chips for flavor and a nutrition boost. It is a powerhouse vegetable, loaded with vitamins A, B6, C, K, folate, fiber, carotenoids and manganese. Salad is the […]
Rooted in Alameda: Free Seed Libraries Celebrate a Record 2025 and Look Toward Spring by Kristen Smeal and Birgitt Evans What a truly remarkable year it has been for the Alameda Backyard Growers’ Free Seed Libraries. Thanks to the unwavering support of the ABG Board, our dedicated donors, and our […]
by Margie Siegal Not only is this the time for New Year’s resolutions, but a lot of us are looking to stretch that budget. If your New Year’s resolutions include putting in a vegetable garden, start planning now to harvest your first crop of snow peas ($7.00 a pound in […]
The City of Alameda’s December 2025 Sustainability & Resilience News featured an article called Feed Alameda Families with Project Pick (their December edition hasn’t been added to their website yet). In addition, a November 26th article by Momo Chang in Nosh Dishing on the East Bay (Oaklandside.org and Berkeleyside.org) featured […]
by Birgitt Evans In 2023, members of Alameda Backyard Growers (ABG), including myself, as well as other Alamedans, were invited by Danielle Mieler and her team at the City to join a working group. Together with Ryan Allen and his team at consulting firm, Dudek, we helped craft a new […]
by Linda Carloni It’s been a cool summer in June and July, and the dread ‘Fogust’ may continue the cool weather. But we may get some warmth in August, and we are pretty sure to have a warm September. Our tasks for the next two months include both celebrating the […]
ABG was awarded the (Alameda County) StopWaste Environmental Leadership Award for Excellence in Community Engagement For the July 2025 award presentation StopWaste wrote: Congratulations to Environmental Leadership Award winner Alameda Backyard Growers! They deeply engage City of Alameda – Local Government’s community of gardeners in building a healthy food system, […]
Project Pick Shatters Records and Aims Even Higher for 2025! Project Pick is celebrating a truly monumental year, far surpassing all previous records for fruit gleaned and donated to Alameda Food Bank (AFB). Thanks to the incredible dedication of our volunteers and generous fruit donors, Project Pick has achieved unprecedented […]
by Joyce Peters Cabbage is one of those overlooked nutrient powerhouses. The cabbage family, which includes arugula, bok choy, broccoli, cauliflower and kale, is rich in folate, vitamins C, E, and K, and fiber. All are good sources of phytonutrients that help lower inflammation and reduce the risk of cancer. […]
by Margie Siegal The bird in the photos is a California Towhee. This robin-sized bird is common in the San Francisco Bay Area. It eats just about anything, but what it really likes is the seedlings you just planted. One year I lost half of my tomato starters to this […]
by Birgitt Evans As we enter 2025, in the midst of a polycrisis, it is unclear if the price of groceries will go up or go down in the coming months. Facing uncertainty, it is easy to become overwhelmed. However, there are positive steps we can all take to help […]
By Marla Koss Every year ABG offers various tomato starts at its Spring Plant Sale. The past three years we’ve sold them at our booth at ARPD’s fabulous Spring Shindig out at Alameda Point (this year, held on Saturday April 19th – mark your calendars!). Since we have yet to […]
by Joyce Peters Roasting brings out the best in vegetables. High dry heat caramelizes the vegetables to give them sweetness and intensify flavor. This dish is a great company dish that can be prepared ahead by cutting all the vegetables except the potatoes. When you are ready to cook, add […]
With the rain beginning, both the calendar and a step outside indicate that autumn is here and winter is not far behind. Pest management strategies need to change with the season, so here are some seasonal tips on pest control in the colder, wetter months. Ants If ants can’t find […]
By Marla Koss – November, 2024 Remember when you first learned that the tomato was a fruit, not a vegetable and you were confused? Well, it’s even more confusing than that. It’s not just a fruit, botanists classify it as a berry. Which sounds almost as daft as my five-year-old […]
by Maricelle Cardenas, StopWaste In preparation for the big food gatherings coming up, we’ve asked StopWaste, the agency in Alameda County focused on reducing our county waste stream, to tell us about ways to minimize food waste over the winter holidays and throughout the year. The holidays often provide the […]
by Marla Koss We call fertilizer “plant food” because it’s the main energy source for plants. True / False Companion planting allows gardeners to cut back on the use of pesticides and fertilizers. True / False Tomatoes and other members of the nightshade family should never be planted near Black […]
by Joyce Peters An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Few other proverbs have stood the test of time. We’ve known that apples are a good source of vitamin C and fiber. They also contain pectin, a fiber that breaks down in your gut and makes you feel fuller […]
by Margie Siegal A friend was turning green over my productive tomato patch. We discussed what I might be doing right – and then I remembered that I had dug out my compost bin at the beginning of the year, sifted the contents and dumped a large portion of the […]
by Marla Koss Where in the Ancient World did these crops originate? (Marla Koss provides a pop quiz, in case you’re in want of a pleasant time-waster.) Match these 8 regions of the world A through H to crop groupings 1 through 8 below. Note: while researching, we found that […]
by Joyce Peters Tomatoes are a gardener’s treasure to enjoy in the summer heat when their flavor is at its peak. Besides being delicious and versatile in recipes they are a powerhouse of nutrients. A good source of vitamin C and vitamin A, tomatoes also provide fiber and other trace […]
ABG Free Seed Libraries, Seed Updates, and Seed Saving by Kristen Smeal What started out as a passion project for Birgitt Evans and Kristen Smeal continues to grow into something special for the Island of Alameda. Started in Spring of 2020, the Alameda Backyard Growers’ Free Seed Libraries consists of […]
Since ABG’s inception, Marla Koss has been a Board member and critical volunteer. She’s been incredibly valuable on many fronts, but is perhaps most visible as our fruit tree expert. Marla writes about fruit tree care for us regularly and is chief instructor for our fruit tree pruning workshops. Marla […]
by Linda Carloni We’re featuring tomatoes for June here at Alameda Backyard Growers. It’s a favorite summer garden plant all over, including in our Island City. To help keep your tomato seedlings successfully growing, check out these resources: Continuing care General tips for beginning vegetable gardeners Tomato tips for beginning […]
by Birgitt Evans What is odorless, colorless, tasteless – basically undetectable – and is present in every part of the vast majority of the ornamental plants that will be sold by California nurseries this summer? That’s right, it’s neonicotinoids, also known as “neonics”. Billed as a safer insecticide for vertebrates, […]
by Marla Koss June is here, and for certain fruit trees with overly abundant crops of fruit forming, so is ‘June Drop’. During this month apple, peach, nectarine, plum, apricot, persimmon and plum-apricot hybrids tend to drop excess fruit on the ground to relieve themselves of too much of a […]
by Amy Kalkstein Project Pick is off to a great start for 2024, despite another rainy winter making it challenging to schedule picks. With a great group of volunteers stepping up whenever there were breaks in the rain for last minute picks not only on weekends, but also mid-week, we […]
by Margie Siegal “Well, we all need someone we can lean on And if you want it, you can lean on me Yeah, we all need someone we can lean on And if you want it, you can lean on me” –The Rolling Stones, Let it Bleed Some of our […]
by Linda Carloni April is plant sale month! Specifically, pop-up sales of veggie seedlings for spring and summer harvest. ABG’s annual spring plant sale is Saturday, April 20, 2024 at Alameda’s Spring Shindig. Basics of planting those seedlings Prep your soil, be it in pots, in raised beds or the […]
by Marla Koss January 31, 2024 The Edible Schoolyard in North Berkeley is a magical place. Twenty-five years ago Alice Waters and friends broke ground next to Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School, intent on giving students hands-on experience in the wonders of growing food and being nourished by it. […]
by Margie Siegal People have grown fruit trees for thousands of years. In that time, careful farmers have developed techniques to help each tree be the best tree it can be. That means appropriate watering, control of bad bugs and plant diseases, adding fertilizer as appropriate, and – pruning. Pruning […]
by Linda Carloni February can seem like a pretty dismal month for the gardener. Sometimes (thank goodness) it rains a lot, and the ground is really soaked. Sometimes it’s very chilly. And always, the days are short, at least at the beginning of the month. But for the flexible gardener, […]
by Jillian Saxty, ABG Project Pick Coordinator I read an article in the SF Chronicle on Sunday, Dec. 24, 2023 and it struck a nerve. The title was ‘On the joy of feeding your fellow humans’ written by Bob Brody. It made me think of Alameda Backyard Grower’s Project Pick. […]
by Margie Siegal At the end of the summer, gardeners and farmers from many different cultures faced a similar problem: tomatoes that got started too late and never ripened. Gardeners and farmers around the world share two traits: first, they never throw anything away if they can help it and […]
by Margie Siegal We had a cold start to the year, and the fava beans were loving it, as were the radishes. The squash and tomatoes were cowering and shivering. By the middle of June, the favas and radishes were finally done, and I was going through my seed packets, […]
by Linda Carloni, Master Gardener and ABG Board Member As the summer vegetables finish, it’s time to think about your garden next season. Many gardeners plant cool season veggies in late summer or early fall and harvest in late fall, winter or even next spring. If you do replace your […]
On August 5, 2023, Marla Koss, one of ABG’s fruit tree pruning experts, demonstrated winter dormant and citrus pruning which also helped Farm2Market in Alameda at the same time. She discussed the best methods for keeping your stone fruit trees in good shape via summer pruning and other tree care […]
On July 22, 2023 ABG members and other participants attended a demonstration and talk on irrigation by two Alameda County Master Gardeners, who focused on saving water and still meet the needs of plants! For an information sheet on what was discussed at this demonstration click here. Our speakers provided […]
by Margie Siegal We regular gardeners have experienced that a session out in the garden planting, harvesting, pruning, or even weeding gives us a mood lift, and it sure seems like all that digging and pulling is lots of exercise, and we may be right. There are now scientifically based […]
by Alison Limoges, Master Gardener and ABG Board Member Despite the fact that the Bay Area got ‘atmospheric river’ rains this winter and spring, in our typically Mediterranean climate we can still expect very dry summers, and of course, we know we will have dry winters in future years. California’s […]
On May 17, 2023, Alameda Backyard Growers’ Birgitt Evans held a pollinator plant starting workshop. Participants learned how to start seeds and plant beautiful, butterfly and bee attractive plants, including California Natives, to create a Pollinator Paradise! Bees, butterflies and other pollinators have been struggling because there are not enough […]
by Linda Carloni The calendar says it’s spring, but with our continuing atmospheric river-fueled storms, it often still feels a lot like winter, a wet chilly winter. Nevertheless, there are tasks in the garden to tackle when you can seize a dry day. Remember to avoid working the soil when […]
Alameda Sun, Thursday, March 9, 2023 by Holly Johnson Tomatoes are nearly everyone’s favorite food to grow for themselves. Here are some tips for successful tomatoes in Alameda, collected from Alameda Backyard Growers’ resources, local gardening experts, and notes from a past presentation by Evan Krokowski, the former farm coordinator […]
Alameda Sun – Thursday, December 8, 2022 by Holly Johnson When Senate Bill 1383 (SB 1383), which requires homes and businesses to separate food waste from trash, became law on the first of this year, Alamedans might not have noticed. The city’s waste management system has included curbside food waste […]
