Prickly Pear Jelly Recipe

...d beer of the Papagos Indians of central Mexico (usually made with saguaro fruit but prickly pear fruit will do in a pinch). This August we’re making jelly. Here’s how to do it: 1. Taking reader Steven’s (of the fine blog Dirt Sun Rain) suggestion, burn off the nasty spines by holding the fruit over a burner on the stove for a few seconds. Using the non-cutting edge of a knife held at a 90º angle to the fruit, scrape off what remains of the spines...

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Fruit Tree Pruning Workshop in Silver Lake this Weekend

...and knowledge to raise money for this great cause. I need to prune my own fruit trees this weekend, so why not make it a workshop?! This Sunday, April 8th from 1pm-3:00 pm in HaFo SaFo (Echo Park/Silver Lake) I have taught fruit tree pruning classes at botanical gardens including The Huntington and I will adapt the same handouts I’ve used for this workshop. We will prune 1 peach, 1 apple and 1 lemon tree so that we can discuss the three most comm...

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How to Deal With Thrips on Stone Fruit

...to our thrip problem. And perhaps some mulch and weeding around the base of the tree is in order. UC Davis goes on to suggest monitoring methods as well as organic controls if that’s your cup of tea. The scarred fruit gets rotten on the tree and is unappetizing. We did get some unblemished fruit, but there was enough of a thrip problem to warrant monitoring next year. Did you have thrip problems this season?...

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What’s the Most Squirrel-Proof Fruit?

.... Perhaps it would be informative to see what trays in the buffet have any fruit left for the resident hominids. Towards that end, I’ve created an annoying, animated emoticon scale ranging from one to five squirrels with five being the most favored fruits and one being the least favored. In the give up all hope category: Figs: Everyone loves figs. Raccoons, squirrels, rats and even Roman emperors. I’ve even seen raccoons, in the middle of the day,...

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Urban Chicken Enthusiasts Unite!

...hicken keepers. And we often meet people who would like to know more about urban poultry. So I’ve decided to create a group of L.A. urban chicken enthusiasts. I used meetup.com to create the L.A. Urban Chicken Enthusiasts group. I like Meetup because the point is to organize face to face meetings. Our group will get together every month or so, eat eggs dishes and talk about raising chickens, local food and sustainability. The L.A. Urban Chicken En...

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