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 Think about the last time you walked in a forest. There was a carpet of leaves, the newly fallen lying atop decomposing layers of leaf litter, the smell of dampness, perhaps some mushrooms poking up ready to send their spores out into the woods. And if you […]
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 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 What classifies a tree as “hardwood” as opposed to “softwood”? How do evergreen (trees that keep their leaves year-round) and deciduous (trees that lose their leaves in the fall, go into dormancy over the winter, and leaf out again in the spring) trees differ in their behavior […]
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 […]
ABG has long promoted composting to improve soil and to keep organics out of the solid waste stream. Adding just 1-2 inches of compost to your soil can do wonders for your plants – it helps your soil retain moisture, improves its structure, and helps your plants access nutrients. Where […]
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 Linda Carloni Herbs serve us in wonderful ways – they can help with our health, make our food taste better, provide food for insects, and provide lovely scents and beautiful flowers. This post focuses on three commonly used and delicious perennial herbs for cooking. I grow these, and other […]
by Marla Koss The best peach I ever tasted actually came from my own backyard. In Alameda. On a tree I had planted myself, not some consecrated tree grown by a wise old soul before we lived here. It was a Bonita peach, a yellow-fleshed freestone, one of the few […]
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 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 […]
Gardening in mid-summer frequently means pest management, as the warmer temperatures bring more insects and the summer veggies get maladies. Some tips for the season: While aphids attack some plants in spring, they can be a real problem on cole crops and other veggies in the summer. For help controlling […]
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 […]
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 […]
by Margie Siegal I came back from a short trip and did a tour around the back yard. The Gala apple tree was drooping. I knew what it was – oak root fungus. I started soaking the tree with fungicide and clearing out the ground around the roots, but it […]
by Linda Carloni, Master Gardener and ABG Board Member The calendar is turned, and we’ve started turning the pages in our seed catalogs (or clicking online). January can be a busy month for the gardener. Two major tasks for food gardens are planning the spring and summer garden and selecting […]
by Birgitt Evans Master Gardener and ABG Board Member When we first moved to Alameda, we rented a house with a huge garden and I began my lifelong experiment with growing as much of our food as I possibly could. In those days, I was wildly experimental, growing six colors […]
by Linda Carloni, Master Gardener and ABG Board Member Now that it’s autumn, gardening changes, but in our area it doesn’t end. Here’s a guide to resources from ABG and other excellent sources for some autumn gardening tasks: planting and cultivating fall and winter crops; improving your soil with cover […]
Alameda Sun, Thursday, August 11, 2022 by Linda Carloni, Alameda Backyard Growers It’s a lovely warm summer day. The kale plants in the garden have looked lush and productive, ready for salads and sautés. The broccoli and chives have been doing well too. But suddenly — aphids! Aphids are small […]
by Margie Siegal Mulch can be a lot of different things, from straw to high tech plastics, but basically, it is anything you put on top of the soil your plants are growing in to help them along. There are almost as many reasons to mulch as there are kinds […]
by Stefani Leto If you garden in the Bay Area, you are either familiar with powdery mildew, or you soon will be. The fungus is ubiquitous and there’s a spore variety for seemingly every plant. Powdery mildew is a catchall name for a group of airborne fungi that reproduce on […]
An Interview with Tom Bressan, Founder of the Urban Farmer Store by Margie Siegal Setting up a drip irrigation system for your vegetable garden is an excellent DIY project. It takes a minimum of tools, information is available, the components are not very expensive and there is even an item […]
by Stefanie Leto Consider the lawn. If well-maintained, it requires a lot of water, weeding, and mowing. It’s also usually a monoculture. You can free yourself from the lawn, and enjoy fresh produce from the same area. My current house presented me with three lawn areas. More fun, more work, […]
by Margie Siegal Bermuda grass, whose Latin name is Cynodon dactylon, is native to Europe, Africa, Australia and much of Asia and is found both world wide and all over my yard. The blades are a grey-green color and one to six inches long. The grass blades grow on erect […]
by Linda Carloni, Master Gardener and ABG Board Member For me the very best reason to plant asparagus is because it’s delicious. It also grows well here by the Bay, thriving in cool, humid summers. Asparagus is a perennial plant, so you plant it one year and with luck it […]
by Birgitt Evans, Master Gardener and ABG Board Member It’s the most wonderful time of the year! No, not the holidays, silly. Seed season. All your seed catalogs have arrived, the nurseries are chock-full of seeds and it’s time to get out some Post-its and start making your choices. This […]
by Linda Carloni, ABG Board Member Many experts recommend that broccoli and bok choy (as well as other cruciferous vegetables) be planted in the inner East Bay in February/March or from July through September. But I plant mine from seedlings in October. Planting in October risks slow growth if the […]
by Margie Siegal So there you are, poking through the seed racks at Ploughshares Nursery or Encinal Nursery, and trying to figure out what variety to buy, or scrolling around all the different seed companies on-line, reading through the descriptions and trying to figure out what variety to buy. Once […]
by Birgitt Evans, Master Gardener and ABG Board Member Last year I took a class from Master Gardener Guy Duran and finally perfected my onion growing technique. This year I grew big, fat onions, some weighing in at 15 ounces! Onions are biennial, producing bulbs in their first year to […]
by Linda Carloni, Master Gardener and ABG Board Member Plants that are native to California are becoming more and more popular, both as part of an established garden or as a replacement for a lawn. There are lots of good reasons for the increasing interest in native plants. Why Plant […]
by Birgitt Evans, Master Gardener and ABG Board Member Trees are the largest living organisms in the landscape and the most important. Trees take carbon out of the atmosphere and store it in their roots and tissues, they cool the ground and reduce the heat island effect, they slow, sink […]
Alameda Sun – Wednesday, August 11, 2021 by Alison Limoges, Board member of Alameda Backyard Growers and Master Gardener When I was growing up in New York state, my brothers and I spent more than a few summer hours picking hundreds of hungry, non-native beetles off of our few fruit […]
by Linda Carloni, Master Gardener and ABG Board Member Your full-size tomatoes have started to ripen. Your cherry tomatoes may be ready to eat now. Nothing tastes like a tomato from the garden! But while tomatoes are one of the most popular foods to grow in your garden, they are […]
by Margie Siegal Here it is, not even the Fourth of July. Isn’t it a mite early to be planning the fall and winter garden? Actually not. As the sun dips and the air chills, plants grow much more slowly. The trick to growing many vegetables for a winter harvest […]
by Marla Koss, Alameda Backyard Growers Board member After gardening in the same backyard for years, I thought I’d seen everything I was ever going to see. I’ve had peanut plants come up in my garden thanks to a squirrel; I’ve been visited by the most beautiful bee – a […]
Alameda Sun – Wednesday, June 9, 2021 by Birgitt Evans, Board member of Alameda Backyard Growers and Master Gardener It’s June now and the garden is planted and beginning to take off. Also taking off are those organisms people identify as “pests.” Contrary to most articles, this one is not […]
Alameda Sun – Wednesday, May 12, 2021 by Kristen Smeal, Board member of Alameda Backyard Growers, Master Gardener and Garden Science teacher at St. Philip Neri School in Alameda The past few weeks of Spring enthusiasm have certainly activated the sense of sight. Bright, bold, blooming flowers and trees present […]
Virtual Meeting: Apr 20 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm Sheet mulching is an easy and efficient technique for saving water, recycling resources, suppressing weeds and building healthy soil. Please join Lori Caldwell as she discusses the steps for this process as well as her own tips and tricks for […]
Alameda Sun – Wednesday, March 10, 2021 by Holly Johnson, ABG Board member In addition to growing vegetables from seeds or plant starts, there is a fun, easy method to try without needing to buy or acquire anything extra. Many types of food are very easy to grow from scraps […]
Alameda Sun, Thursday, December 10, 2020 by Marla Koss, ABG Board member When the first day of winter is not long off, gardeners in harsh-winter areas may get a guilt-free pass to ignore the yard in favor of the cozy indoors, but those who grow backyard vegetables and fruit in […]
Alameda Sun, Thursday, October 8, 2020 by Alison Limoges, ABG Board member and Master Gardener It’s officially autumn now and while some people persist in blowing away the falling leaves, it’s so much healthier to use, not remove, them. In addition to the annoying and unhealthy noise, dust, and air […]
by Birgitt Evans, ABG Board member and Master Gardener When my future husband and I rented a house in Alameda 30 years ago, I suddenly had more sunny land than I had ever imagined. And I went hog wild, planting every inch of it with dozens of tomato and cucumber […]
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