The California Garden Web is another great resource for gardeners. Go here for their advice on growing raspberries.
UC Berkeley’s Botanical Garden has a great website. Features include their calendar and their interactive map.
Siamack Sioshansi and his merry band of volunteer gleaners from Urban Farmers has struck again. Lamorinda Weekly reports that over two weekends in August, they harvested nearly 1,000 pounds of pears from private gardens across Lafayette. Siamack said:
70 percent of the weight of a fruit tree is made of carbon that the tree extracted from our polluted atmosphere,” he explains, “after a few years it will feed those who planted it, then it will continue to grow and feed a community. Long after those who planted it are gone, it continues to give plentifully if it is taken care of. Fruit trees are a perfect metaphor for life at its best on our planet.
Read more here.
Check out the video here.
Gleaners!
This morning, KQED had a great story about Dixon Ridge Farms and their organically grown Walnuts.
Russ Lester, the owner of Dixon Ridge Farms, has been leading the charge to get the rules changed. He has gone to extraordinary lengths to shrink the carbon footprint of his organic walnut farm and processing plant in Yolo County.
Read more.
Edible East Bay writes about:
Sharing has made a comeback. East Bay residents are now bartering, trading, exchanging, swapping, or simply giving away an abundance of homegrown produce or homemade food in a variety of creative ways. Of course, gardeners who grow their own veggies have always doled out surplus squash and spinach to neighbors (or as the San Francisco Chronicle recently wisecracked, arugula and cilantro, the Berkeley equivalent of summer’s backyard bounty).
Read more.
In the Contra Costa Times, you can read about:
Alameda County Master Gardeners, through an agreement with the East Bay Regional Park District, are developing a demonstration garden in the Quarry Lakes Regional Recreation Area in Fremont. We also work in cooperation with the Alameda County Water District.
Although the garden originally was conceived to introduce the community to the use of plants that tolerate our dry summers with little or no additional water, our approach necessarily broadened to creating an environmentally sustainable garden.
Can you say compacted soil? Read the whole thing here.