Behind the Organic Food Label
by Paige Benviniste September 20, 2022 The organic food label means more than the absence of pesticides and herbicides. When you buy organic, you're buying food grown by farmers that are required to maintain and improve soil health. Soil health is not only important for the environment, it’s important for human health. Scientists are finding...Continue reading→
Mulch – A Primer
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 of mulch. Your aim in...Continue reading→
Powdery Mildew
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 plant tissues. Most often you’ll...Continue reading→
Guerilla Gardening with Neighbors
Alameda Sun, Thursday, May 12, 2022 by Ann Naffziger, Alameda Backyard Growers About 10 years ago, my next-door neighbor and I were commiserating that we didn’t have enough sunny space in our yards to grow as many tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant as we could eat. Privately, I was intensely jealous of our neighbor on the...Continue reading→
DIY Drip Irrigation System
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 known as a “goof plug”...Continue reading→
Transforming a Lawn into an Edible Paradise
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, more opportunity. I also found...Continue reading→
My Love Hate Relationship with Bermuda Grass
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 stems, which can get a...Continue reading→
A Farmer in the Making
Alameda Sun – Thursday, March 10, 2022 Alameda Backyard Growers (ABG) invited a youth at Farm2Market to share their perspective on gardening. Oliver Stouffer, a 17-year-old senior at Encinal High School, accepted their offer. My name is Oliver Stouffer. I am 17 years old and a Senior at Encinal High School. I have lived in...Continue reading→
Compost Happens and It Matters
Alameda Sun – Tuesday, February 8, 2022 by Alison Limoges, Board member of Alameda Backyard Growers and Master Gardener As humans, we all eat. Some of us grow our own food, but mostly we buy, prepare food, and then dispose of the leftovers. Unless we have pigs or goats to consume our scraps the best-case...Continue reading→
Growing Asparagus
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 will produce harvests for up...Continue reading→