Dear Garden Club,
It was great to see many of you last week and I enjoyed the new format to chat with everyone about their gardens. We learned a lot from each other!
For those of you who couldn’t make it, I wanted to recommend a gardening book which keeps our climate in mind. Most gardening books are written for regions which have a “killing frost” and are covered in snow for a few months of the year. However, as you noticed, the San Fernando Valley has a Mediterranean climate which has mild winters but very hot summers. Many plants that are classified as spring vegetables (peas, spinach, broccoli) are actually better started in the winter here so they will have enough time to reach maturity before the scorching weather comes through.
Pat Welsh’s Southern California Organic Gardening (3rd Edition): Month by Month.
This week we are moving the Gardening Club to Friday as a test and also because we want to harvest our carrots! Come by at 9:30AM Friday, and we’ll start with a craft for the first 30 minutes while everyone arrives, then start the harvest at 10. Then we’ll pick some stray peas, grab some arugula, radish, and lettuce and head on inside to make a simple salad. The kids can try the vegetables directly out of the garden! While I can’t guarantee that this will change your child into a veggie eater, you can count this as an exposure experience–sometimes kids need to be exposed to a food 15 to 20 times before they accept it as “normal.”
Hope to see you on Friday!
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ELC Mom, Master Gardener, Parent Ambassador & Garden Club Coordinator