Freshly Picked:
End of Week Detours

My life is a series of deadlines and I’m always late or catching up. Except when it comes to Master Gardener training.

It’s not always pretty. First day of training - 8 a.m. sans make-up. Can you guess where I’m from? Repping We Love Long Beach.


Thank you to the National Wildlife Federation for including me in their post Celebrate Plant a Flower Day. Read the article here.

Cultivate
Tomatoes are the darling of spring. Learn to grow them from the best.
What: Basic Tomato 101 by “Tomato King” Steve Goto
Why: Just Goto go!
When: Sunday, March 14 from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Where: Blue Hills Garden Center, 16440 East Whittier Boulevard, Whittier, CA 90603
(562-947-2013) www.bluehills.com

More Steve Goto seminars and plant sales here. Did I mention I grow 7 foot tomatoes? Check it.

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Weekend Guide is Back!

I’ll be at my first Master Gardener training class on Saturday but I will be at the Hollywood Farmers Market on Sunday. Looking forward to Taste of Life and Delilah’s demos. LA, come through!

Stand and Contribute
Fundraiser for Stand and Deliver’s Jaime Escalante
What: Raising money for famed teacher stricken with bladder cancer.
Why: Face it, you’d be an “at risk adult” without teachers like him. Thank you Mrs. Olona!
When: Saturday, March 6 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: Garfield High School, 5101 East Sixth Street, Los Angeles, CA 90022

**Can’t donate in person? Contributions can be sent to “Friends of Jaime,” C/O FASE, 236 West Mountain Street, Suite 105, Pasadena, CA 91103. Call 626-793-5300 for information.

Live Cans!
What: Delilah Snell, Patchwork Indie Arts & Crafts co-founder, eco store owner, The Road Less Traveled, & master food preserver will teach you how to can, pickle & preserve.
Why: Laura Ingalls Wilder has nothing on you.
When: Sunday, March 7 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Where: Hollywood Farmers Market, 1600 Ivar Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90028

Sleeping off a hangover? No prob. Delilah is teaching a second class.
 
What: Pickles and more – preparation, food safety, equipment operation, recipes and samples!
Why: Um, hello?
When: Sunday, March 7 from 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Where: KTCHN 105, 1250 Long Beach Ave #105, Los Angeles, CA 90021. P: 714-720-2260

**More classes here.

PS, high five to Lindsay William-Ross of the LA Weekly Squid Ink blog for visiting me in Long Beach. Read the kick ass story here

LA Weekly Squid Ink Blog - Punk Rock + Pruners = Long Beach's Anarchy in the Garden (March 1, 2010)

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Lexicon. Rebel.

I’m not a wordsmith like Darby Crash but I did manage to scribe two articles for the March Home & Garden issue of Long Beach Magazine. Both topics are near and dear to my heart but I am especially proud of the Long Beach City Horticulture Program story.

The Horticulture Program at LBCC offers a Certificate [...]

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What’s in a name? That which we call a rose…

Sansevieria trifasciata should be so lucky. It’s dubbed Mother-In-Law’s Tongue or Snake Plant. Lanky, stiff and with a formidable appearance it has been one of my least favorite plants. Until today.
This morning the Long Beach City College Horticulture Landscape Maintenance class mass planted an assortment of Sansevieria species in front of the Aviation and Automotive Technology [...]

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Garden Mash Up – No Rhyme or Reason

No sooner that I declared a new feature, Weekend Guide to Doing Stuff, I go and miss a weekend. I blame it on Herbaceous Plant ID class. Aeonium arboreum Atropurpureum – Identify it and spell it. That’s an easy one.  
But it hasn’t been all fun and Latin. I mass sowed hundreds of seeds including [...]

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For the Love of Compost – A Tale of Roses and Horse Manure

From botrytis blight to thrips roses get a bum rap and rightly so. They’re susceptible to all sorts of gnarly fungal diseases and house unwelcome guests. Currently, my sole Chris Evert rose bush suffers from rust. If I’m lucky I get a few blooms and efflorescence is always staggered. Hmpf.
The secret to the beautiful blooms [...]

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