Jeremy and I are in the middle of making a video on our garden, showing what different fruits, vegetables and trees we have in our garden, we’re also trying to find out what type of chickens ours are, we had finished the video but we made a mistake on the subject we are supposed to do it on, so… yeah we started again.

Should be up soon,

Bailey

Edible vegetables, fruits and herbs are my favorite things to grow. In fact, that’s my whole focus. I have pear, apple, cherry, plum, persimmon, peach, nectarine, gooseberry, red and black currants, jostaberry, rhubarb, asparagus, Grecian bay laurel, kiwi, various table grapes, lingonberry, huckleberry, blueberry, cranberry, raspberry, feijoa, pomegranate, artichoke, cardoon, hops, viburnum, elderberry, aronia, goji berry, fig, olive and strawberry, rosemary, bee balm, lemon balm, mint, self-heal, sorrel, lovage, lavender, thyme, chives, stevia, oregano, and annual spring/summer and fall/winter vegetables, including tomato, all kinds of sweet and especially hot peppers, squash, pole and bush beans, tomatillo, peas, eggplant, Bolivian sunroot, pumpkins and gourds, watermelon and other melons, cucumber, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, lettuce, all kinds of onions and garlic, cabbage, kale, carrots, beets, corn, potatoes, chard, radishes, and probably a few things I’ve forgotten! Right now I’m beginning a project to create a food forest, which involves basically building a forest out of edible trees, bushes, and herbs.

I like to share my garden bounty with my neighbors and family, and with food banks and soup kitchens in my county through a Plant-A-Row program (http://www.par-edc.org).

About every year the plant we grow we harvest and plant them
again. Often we try planting different plants that we have never planted before sometimes they are a success and grow, but never they never reach the point where they have adapted fully to the environment we plant them in. Some of the biggest successes in our garden are probably Cabbage, Strawberry, silverbeat, Carrot, Pumkin and Lettuce.

Zack,
Do you grow any fruits or vegetables in your garden and if, what plants, and why?

Nice video! A lot of the plants around your school look a lot like plants that can grow where I live in California. Many even look like plants that I have in my garden or forest. Around here many perennial plants (figs, blueberries, gooseberries, jostaberries, red and black currants, nectarines, etc.) lose all their leaves or die back to the ground in the winter. It’s winter now, so it’s right around 41 degrees Fahrenheit (5 Celsius) during the day, and drops down to 28 degrees F (-2 Celsius) overnight, with frost on the ground, and my garden looks pretty bare. Most of the trees in my small forest – different kinds of pines and cedars and live oaks – are evergreen, so they keep their leaves year round, while others – madrones and black oaks – are bare, and won’t be in leaf again until spring (March/April).

The plants in your video that look like palms might not live here, as it might be too cold for them. I have to cover some plants with a lot of mulch to help to keep them from freezing in the winter!

That depends on the illness (and on the plant). Plants that are healthy – that have the right amount of water, the right soil, the right sun – are better able to repel pests and diseases. For example, a plant that is getting too much water might develop blight or rot or some other fungal or bacterial disease, but changing the watering schedule might help the plant fight off the disease and return to health.

A variety of other things can help sick plants, again depending on the kind of plant and what exactly is wrong with it. For instance, sulfur powder can help rid plant leaves of powdery mildew. Some plant diseases can actually be cured with antibiotics!

How do you cure a sick plant.

From Tali and Nicky

“A weed is just a plant growing in the wrong place.”

What we think of as weeds are actually pretty amazing plants. They are typically very tough, and able to live in conditions that would kill other plants. Many have adapted to grow in very poor soils, with little water, and in the heat of full sun.

Weeds are usually very good at spreading themselves around, and quickly taking advantage of disturbed soils. They often produce huge numbers of seeds, or specially adapted seeds that disperse readily, via wind or by sticking to the coats of animals, for instance.

Invasive weeds are weeds that spread (by lots of different means) from their natural range to other states or even countries. There, they often take over and crowd out native species, and can be very difficult to control, as their natural controls (for example, insects that feed upon them, or diseases that keep them in check) are not found in their new home. In California, Yellow starthistle is one such invasive weed, and it’s a big problem, choking out native plants on grazing lands, and making horses sick!