Everyone's posts

I never have good results growing beans here (SoCal, not too far from the high desert). Few ever sprout. Those that do never grow above 4-6" high and product 1-3 podseach, if they live long enough. (Note - I use legume inoculant on most, but not all, seeds of each type of bean. I …

My raspberry are flowering!

Anyone whose english pea plants yield spherical peas must be a saint. I only get spherical peas if I miss a pod. In the evening I sit out in the garden and eat peas until there is nothing worth eating left on the plant. Then I am do…

I'm buying a house with a big lawn and basically no other plantings. I'm not a fan of lawns and am looking for ideas for killing the grass and something to replace it. The newspaper and mulch method is not a good option as if anything there is too much soil (ie the house is too close to the groun…

I live in a small apartment. I like to have a bit of green around the place, and for the last two years I've not been able to successfully grow much except aloe vera, which is very forgiving and currently thriving! It's grown so much since I got it that I've been thinking it probably needs repott…

I had the first tiny strawberry of the season today! I'm looking forward to many more.

Also, I transplanted a lot of seedlings into the community garden today: 2 cucumbers, 3 green beans, 2 tongue-of-fire beans, an ornamental [sweet potato](/crops/sweet-…

We've just pushed a bunch of new features, so please try them out and let us know what you think!

• Search nearby members: specify distance and units (km/miles) – when you go to "search for nearby members" you will see options to select a distance, where previously it just defaulted to 100 mi…

I think I have tomatoes! Last year we planted four cherry tomato plants from the local nursery/produce stand (one flat worth) and three of them just sort of spindled along, sickly-looking and not growing much, putting out one fruit here and there. The fourth one became The Tomato…

This is a nearly-5-year-old blog post, but i just ran across it and it addresses just about every mistake i've made/had in my little balcony garden. Really useful!

[Ten Mistakes New Herb Gardeners Make (and How to Avoid Them!)](http://skinnygourmet.blogspot.co.uk/2008/05/ten-mistakes-new-herb…

We made a blunder last year and packed the compost layers in too tight. Oh, and the main brown material was straw.

I used to read about people making icehouses in this area with straw packed around the ice blocks and still having ice in July. Now I believe it.

The compost has been mostl…

Our landlords tried to make our rental property's garden low-maintenance by filling it the beds with all kinds of perennial shrubs and small trees. Unfortunately they planted everything really close together and it's caused all kinds of problems – things under trees not getting enough light, th…

It's autumn here.

A couple of weeks ago I was cleaning up brown, dry, dead-ish tomato plants and started by cutting them off a few inches above ground level with the secateurs, meaning to come along later and pull out the root balls and deal with the remainders of the soil in the containers. …

Most of the rest of my seedlings came up last week all together - I had forgotten how violently beens and squash can grow - so I did a bunch of transplanting. All but two of the seeds I started came up, and I think one of the other two is about to - I am gratified! Although if …