Gardening

Here you’ll find resources that will help you grow food for yourself, your family, or a whole community. Many perspectives are represented, but we strive for bio-intensive, chemical free, sustainable gardening. We love fruit trees, and are located in Pasadena California and best understand our micro-climates.

• Soil, compost, mulch and the organisms that live there is where we start.   John Jeavons is helping the world feed itself.  He has a few great books, videos, and his organization has published a free book, the Biointensive Self-Teaching Handbook which we encourage all workshop participants to download and study.
• We teach the UCCE Victory Garden class in October and April and use a text you can download for free from here  or here in Spanish.
• We teach Garden Enhanced Nutrition Education (GENE), collaboratively built by Life Lab in Santa Cruz, The Center for EcoLiteracy, and the California School Garden Network and offered by organizations across the state (calendar).
• We are also big fans of Elaine Ingham, a soil food web guru who inspired the Soil Food Web model at USDA .  Also here is our blog post on soil composition and testing.
• In terms of building soil we see Worm Composting as one of the best ways to get the good stuff.  We like local vender Urban Worms and their beginners guide.
• Southern California seasonal and monthly gardening checklists. These are from the Master Gardeners (MG) and the seasonal (summer and winter) documents are great resources.
• University of California integrated pest management page for edibles (UC IPM). A great site with plant specific information appropriate to our location, and the top tier of our state ag information system, the UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE) also offers a lot of information for people starting a vegetable garden.
• A now old favorite is Infonet Biovision, a swiss organization collecting best practices for African organic farmers. I found solutions for a pest at my community garden here when there was nothing at the UC IPM website…  Lots of outsider information on the veggie information page.
• LA City offers a green waste product that has been sorted, chipped, cleaned, composted, turned, and composted again. Pasadena Learning Gardens’ used to get truckloads of this product, but with the downturn in the economy and increase in home gardens it is all they can do to supply their free giveaway locations.
• Peaceful Valley is a Farm and Garden supply company in Northern California. They have great information for organic gardeners and their catalog is used by David King as a text for his soil class and has extended discussions of organic fertilizer, pesticides, and soil tests. You can view it on-line as a PDF or order a copy here.
• LA County is blessed with a thriving community of Master Gardeners.  The master gardeners are connected to the county, the University of California, and the US Dept. of Agriculture. They have an online guide to starting a community garden or a school garden.
• The former director of the LA Master Gardener program, Yvonne Savio, maintains a information-packed website with gardening content, jobs, and events.
• And finally the Master Gardener’s have a help line where Master Gardeners will answer your specific questions at (626) 586-1988 or email  mglosangeleshelpline@ucdavis.edu