Plant Profile: Strawberries

If there's one thing that makes me think of summer, it's a juicy, fresh strawberry. I guess that and sun warmed tomatoes. Throughout the spring, summer, and fall months, we are always eating strawberries, as the season is just that long here in California. Sorry. Not sorry.


When you grow them yourself, they are at least 10 times better. It took me two tries, and four different varieties to finally get it right, but man oh man, when you grow your own strawberries, it's a whole new world of wow. Eating sun warmed strawberries, just picked, is like nothing you can get at your farmers market, let alone the grocery store. When I finally had the right mix, it was like eating Jolly Ranchers, no joke.

And strawberries are not just a delicious, fruit bearing plant, they are also a functional element in your garden. While most plants are low growing, bushy plant, depending on the variety, they can serve as an excellent ground cover and underplanting or as a repeated accent plant.

Garden Recipe: Strawberry Soil

The start to almost any happy plant is in the its soil, and that's no exception with strawberries. And strawberries, despite their reputation of being an "easy" plant to grow, they do have specific fertilizer requirements.

Garden Update and Recipe: Removing Ivy (And Triming Wisteria)

When we started, our garden was a bit of a jungle of ivy divided by a wall of wisteria. While cozy, private, and green, it wasn't the garden we wanted. We wanted a light, open space where we could grow delicious food, host friends, and enjoy the sun. So we started the process of bringing the garden back to it's bones (ie trimming overgrown plants and removing unwanted ones) so we could get to the hardscaping details.

I think this is a process that every gardener new to a space goes through in some way, and it was a process of discovery for us. Not only did we discover a beautiful arbor underneath all the ivy and the full potential for sun in our yard (look at it! And that's in January!), but we also found Cala Lily's being strangled by ivy (we saved the Cala's, obvs), a white camellia (also being strangled by ivy), and even a few glass marbles. 

Hello 2016! New Year, New Goals

I started this blog way back in 2013 as a way to chronicle projects I was working on in the garden and in our house, mostly for myself and slightly for my parents so they could stay up to date from afar. As the years have gone by and as my garden projects have grown more ambitious, I want to do more with what I write on my blog. So with the new year now upon us--and the garden in its hibernation season--I have some goals for this year both for this blog and for our garden.

Introducing MeadeHouse Manor

When last I wrote, we were moving out of our Temescal home and I alluded to our finding our new home; well, here it is! I'm excited to give you a preview of our forever home: MeadeHouse Manor. 

Our new home is located in Alameda, a "man made" island between Oakland and San Francisco. While I'm never a fan of unnecessary quotes, calling the island man made is a bit of a misnomer. Let me explain. When people in the Bay Area hear Alameda, the man made island, they assume the whole island is landfill and will fall into the Bay when the next Big One comes. This belief isn't true, however. Alameda was once a part of the Oakland landmass but a canal was dredged in 1902 to provide better access to the expanding Port of Oakland. So yes, the island is "man made" but not in the way that people traditionally think.