Ahhh, long hot days, coolish nights and the plump, fragrant flesh of tomatoes. August is the iridescent shimmer of sunshine along the edge of the scented foliage of exuberant tomato plants – running wild in the vegetable garden. It is the salads and soups and sandwiches made of this most anticipated summer fruit/vegetable. Photo: Fragrant tomato leaf glistening in the early morning sun.

Photo: The wide variety of tomatoes in my garden this year - seedlings of which I got from Brian Marshall and Nancy Heinzel of Sawmill Creek Farms in Paradise (marshall-n@sbcglobal.net) - if you ask me, the little purple red ones are the very best - Black Plum, they’re called. (more…)

Over the past few weeks I have had several in-depth conversations about plant names. Specifically, why I chose to include scientific plant names across the front of Jewellgarden’s new note cards and how these names are determined - why are they so confusing? All of these conversations got me thinking about plant names - what purpose they serve, why it is important to me to learn them and thus why they proudly embellishing my new cards. Photo: A black and white note card depicting the California black oak acorn (Quercus kelloggii) from my Natives in the Garden series. (more…)

It’s mid- February and even in the colder sections of the North State the time is now for planning and even planting your spring and summer vegetable seeds and starts – inside and out. On Monday evening February 15th, I hosted a special edition of I-5 LIVE on Northstate Public Radio (91.7 fm KCHO in Chico and 88.9 fm in Redding) from 8 to 9 pm to chat about edible gardening and getting ready for the spring vegetable garden.

My guests for the evening were David Grau, owner of Valley Oak Tool, former market gardener and organizer of the Chico Organic Gardening Series; also, Wayne Kessler, co-owner with his wife Laurel, of Shambani Organics, a specialty herb and vegetable start grower based in Shingletown, California.
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