The Green Gardener: Vermiculture for Beginners (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?)

a flickr photo by net efekt

Welcome to everything I know about worms and composting (not much!). Feel free to correct or add to this info!

• The care and management of composting worms is called "Vermiculture"
• Red Wigglers are supposed to be good compost makers.
• A 1/2 pound of Red Wigglers = about 500 worms
• Those 500 worms will eat about 1/4 pound of green waste per day, or 1/2 their weight
• Worm poop is called "castings"
• Worms can be housed in something fancy, but a plastic tub and a lid will also do.
• Worms can tolerate temperature extremes for short periods, but do best between 60 - 80 degrees.
• Here's a link to the red wiggler farmer I met at a Sacramento plant sale, VermiDragon Farm . They deliver in the Sacramento area, but can also ship those wormies to you!

Whether you need garden design, coaching, seasonal maintenance or planting, Geno's Garden can help! Call me at (916) 764-5243, or email hansonja@aol.com. For more information on our services, click here.

The Green Gardener: A CSA Box from Farm Fresh to You

I received my first box of mixed fruits and vegetables from Farm Fresh To You today!

...apples, mandarin oranges, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, broccoli rabe, kale lancinato, butter lettuce. All organic, all fresh-picked from the farm...

It's going to be a bit of a culinary adventure. I've only just discovered greens, and I never eat sweet potatoes or even butternut squash. But, now I shall...

For more information about the Community Supported Agriculture, check out Monday's blog post, the Romance of the Farm. To try Farm Fresh To You's program, go to their website (link above) and use the promo code 6164 for a $5 credit on your first delivery. Let them know you were referred by Geno's Garden!

Whether you need garden design, coaching, seasonal maintenance or planting, Geno's Garden can help! Call me at (916) 764-5243, or email hansonja@aol.com. For more information on our services, click here.

The Green Gardener: Hummingbirds in Your Garden

flickr photo by tiny froglet

Do you love the idea of hummingbirds in your garden? You're not alone. When I'm talking to new clients about their gardens, they always light up on the subject! Luckily, besides being delightful, hummingbirds also add to a healthy garden. Those busy beauties help with pollination and do insect patrol as well. Hey...they're green!

According to the Oregon State University, "Hummingbirds are especially attracted to the color red. Good choices are plants with red or orange tubular flowers, such as fuschias, red-flowering currant, columbines, coral bells, salvias and penstemons. They also love bush and vine honeysuckles, hollyhocks, nasturtiums and petunias as well as blossoms from black locust, flowering crab apple and hawthorn. Provide a succession of nectar plants that will bloom from spring to fall, giving hummingbirds a continual source of food through the seasons." To read more, click here. Additionally, here's a list of California natives that attract hummingbirds, courtesy of the California Native Plant Society.

Whether you need garden design, coaching, seasonal maintenance or planting, Geno's Garden can help! Call me at (916) 764-5243, or email hansonja@aol.com. For more information on our services, click here.

The Green Gardener: Water-Wise Gardening

Here's a great resource for all of us, produced by our local (Sacramento area) RWA (Regional Water Authority), Rules of Thumb for Water-Wise Gardening. While you're on the site, explore a bit...it's got some great info!

Whether you need garden design, coaching, seasonal maintenance or planting, Geno's Garden can help! Call me at (916) 764-5243, or email hansonja@aol.com. For more information on our services, click here.

The Green Gardener: the romance of the farm

I'm very excited to be signing up with a CSA program. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and there are farms all across the country that participate. The program I'm newly enrolled in (as of 15 minutes ago!) is Farm Fresh To You (FFTY), an organic farm located in the foothills of the Sacramento Valley in an area called Capay Valley.

There are many fine CSA's in my area...what made me pick FFTY was I could start, stop, skip or double up on a scheduled delivery whenever I wanted. And, they delivered to my home!

For my first delivery ($25 for a small box of mixed fruits & vegetables), I'll be receiving:
2 lb FFTY Satsuma Mandarin Orange
2 lb Washington Braeburn Apple
2 lb FFTY Butternut Squash, winter
1.5 lb Fresno Sweet Potato
1 cnt FFTY Lacinato / Dino Kale
1 bu FFTY Broccoli Rabe Rapini
1 cnt FFTY Romaine, green Lettuce

I have a veggie garden myself, and also grow several types of citrus, but I still am jazzed about the idea of someone delivering a box of produce to my front door! Makes me feel connected up with these farm folk...part of the community that's supporting local agriculture ... local organic agriculture!

I should have been a farm girl. Then maybe I'd say, "hey, it's not all romance!" But, I grew up in the suburbs and most of what I know about farming is from books and movies ... Oklahoma, Gone With the Wind, The Grapes of Wrath! Still, I feel a bond with my Irish farming ancestors, despite my grandmother's response when I asked, "we're Irish, aren't we?", "if it was that great, we wouldn't have left."

Maybe you, too, have romantic notions about farms or maybe you want to eat more healthily. Perhaps you simply want packages delivered to your door step (yea!) ... know that you'll be helping local small farms at the same time. To find a CSA in your area, go to Local Harvest.

Whether you need garden design, coaching, seasonal maintenance or planting, Geno's Garden can help! Call me at (916) 764-5243, or email hansonja@aol.com. For more information on our services, click here.

The Green Gardener: Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - November 2009

These are sages and they grow in my backyard. Sages typically bloom late in the season...I guess November qualifies! The red one is Pineapple Sage, Salvia elegans. The leaves smell heavenly, like pineapple, and can be used in cool drinks. The purple one is Mexican Bush Sage, or Salvia leucantha. Its velvety flowers last for-evah.
These two are examples of the "right plant in the right place". Now, if I lived in N. Dakota, it would be a different story, and a different plant. Visit Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day to get some ideas of what you could grow in your garden, wherever you are.

Whether you need garden design, coaching, seasonal maintenance or planting, Geno's Garden can help! Call me at (916) 764-5243, or email hansonja@aol.com. For more information on our services, click here.

The Green Gardener: Farm City, The Education of an Urban Farmer

Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City, The Education of an Urban Farmer, is coming to town! Two events next Saturday (Nov. 21) for us (sub)urban farm/gardeny folk: Raising Chickens in Your Backyard at Soil Born Farms in Rancho Cordova from 10 - 1, where she'll be talking about, duh..., and Farm City, An Evening with Novella Carpenter, at 5 pm at the Sacramento Food Co-Op.

Novella's book looks intriguing. From her publisher, "Urban and rural collide in this wry, inspiring memoir of a woman who turned a vacant lot in downtown Oakland into a thriving farm. Novella Carpenter loves cities—the culture, the crowds, the energy. At the same time, she can’t shake the fact that she is the daughter of two back-to-the-land hippies who taught her to love nature and eat vegetables. Ambivalent about repeating her parents’ disastrous mistakes, yet drawn to the idea of backyard self-sufficiency, Carpenter decided that it might be possible to have it both ways..." read more

Whether you need garden design, coaching, seasonal maintenance or planting, Geno's Garden can help! Call me at (916) 764-5243, or email hansonja@aol.com. For more information on our services, click here.