Garden tour of my brother’s backyard orchard and garden. Ontario, CA USDA Zone 10a

Tropical fruit trees and plants: Logan, guava, passion fruit, pineapple, sapote, banana.
Fruit plants: Blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, pricky pear, dragon fruit.
Fruit trees: Lamb Haas & Reed avocado, figs, white mulberry, loquat
Citrus: Moro blood orange, Washington Navel orange, Cara Cara orange, Eureka lemon, Bearss lime, Kumquat, Honey Mandarin orange
Stone fruit: Red Baron peach, Royal Blenhiem apricot, Santa Rosa & Italian plum
Vegetables and herbs: East Indian lemon grass, elephant ear (bac ha), California Wonder bellpepper, shishito & bird eye pepper, purple shiso, Vietnamese coriander (rau ma), penny wort, mint, piper lolot, winter melon, dwarf blue kale, green onion

and more…

With red potatoes from a recent harvest, we turn them into a delicious potato salad with skin on. This recipe is a little special. It came by way of our Instagram friend, @lola_hoya.

Red potatoes have a low starch content. This quality in turn helps cooked potato hold their form better. As such, they are perfect for making potato salad with because the mixing in the preparation can sometimes turn many other types of potato into mush.

Recipe by @lola_hoya (IG)
6 regular medium size of your favorite potatoes, boiled and cubed. 8 boiled eggs, chopped.
1/2 cup diced Maui or sweet onions.
1 heaping teaspoon wasabi. (More if you prefer it hot)
1 cup mayonnaise (adjust the volume according to your liking) salt and pepper to taste.
Optional: a hint of whole grain mustard.
Mix together, chill and Bon appetite!!!

The right tool for the job can mean the difference between a chore or an activity. There are many tools available to fit every need and personality. These 3 tools are what I would recommend to my younger self and others new to gardening.

If I were to buy online, here are the links:

Tiller mattock: https://www.amazon.com/Flexrake-CLA105-Classic-Flower-Vegetable/dp/B001IKYV7Y/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1471671763&sr=8-2&keywords=tiller+mattock

Spade shovel with D-handle: http://amzn.to/2bB0UxX

Bypass pruner: http://amzn.to/2b6QGnn

In the Permaculture / Resort Garden, the early setting dragon fruit or pitaya is fruiting along nicely. What looked like a bad dragon fruit year has turned into a pretty good one with the showing of additional fruit buds. This and a few other updates…

It’s that time of year when the tomatoes you’ve waited all year on has finally ripen. Before you enjoy them all, it is important to save some seeds to plant next year or to share. Here’s a seed saving process that I just learned and used thanks to viewers like you. If you will like more information on this fermentation method of tomato seed saving and cleaning, follow the this link:

How to Save Tomato Seeds

Holy basil or tulsi is a generic term for the four types that make up this group. Those four types are: Rama, Krishna, Kapoor, and Vana.

The culinary quest to make a more authentic version of a Kra Prao Gai (Thai Chicken & Basil) dish turned into a botanical quest to seek out and grow the correct holy basil.

This video is an update to an earlier video. To also see how the seedlings are transplanted, see that earlier video here: https://youtu.be/IIYxQB2_Dis

Potatoes are relative inexpensive and available pretty much all year round. They are not very exciting plants to grow as a result. Especially when there is limited growing area in the garden.

On the flip side, potatoes can be grown with minimum effort. They have been incorporated into the front yard landscape and grown along the side walk. Planted and walking away until the plants dry, they have yielded humble amounts of potato.

One of the curiosities that I wanted to satisfy was to see how big and how many potatoes would be returned if a little more effort was put into growing them. The only effort that I was willing to spare was the labor of mounding the plants as they grow.

From a frugal and practical stand point, to fertilize or purchase amendment would likely cost more in the end than purchasing potatoes from the market.

These red potatoes were grown from potatoes that were originally purchased from the market.

The root cutting (Russian Comfrey Bocking #14) of almost an inch was planted July 16th. Two weeks later, we see its sprouts!

As a practical / frugal / permaculture gardener, comfrey is being sought out a source of low cost fertilizer. In addition, one hopes that with its deep tap roots; comfrey can mine the minerals that most crop plants would not otherwise be able to get to.

Comfrey is reported to have many special properties. It has been used for centuries as an herbal remedy. However, the property we are most interested as gardeners is its “green manure” attribute. Unlike most compost material, comfrey works pretty much right away to improve soil. With most green and brown waste, they draw nitrogen from the soil as they break down; and the breaking down process can take weeks.

The garden is still going through another transition so there is not too many exciting things going on. By transition, we mean that the next crop of plants are just starting to grow. Plants like: Dorinny Sweet corn, Moon & Stars watermelon, Chantais (cantaloupe) melon, Ha Ogen melon, Cherokee Purple and Aunt Ruby’s German Green tomatoes.