End of Season Tomato Review

Homegrown Evolution had ambitious plans to review each and every tomato variety out of the garden this year, but alas, we fell behind in our bloggulating duties and planted way too many tomatoes. So here, as “winter” appears in Southern California (it’s raining, that’s how you tell), we’ll review what worked and what didn’t work. The tastiest tomato award goes to the Pineapple variety pictured above. Not only did this heirloom tomato have the bes...

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A Purple Dragon Carrot

...purple, it’s fairly tasty and it came from Seeds of Change. [Please note, Homegrown Evolution Reader Jeremy comments: “Seeds of Change, those super-friendly people who are owned by the Mars Corporation, who tried to shut down the HDRA’s Heritage Seed Library, and who registered am ancient Hopi “mandala” as their trade-mark? Enjoy.” Thanks Jeremy, we’ll be doing some research on this one.] According to the seed package it was bred by someone named...

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Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima)

...nd grows just about everywhere–hot, cold, humid, dry–with the exception of Homegrown Evolution’s temporary residence in the Swedish Arctic. Odds are you’ve got one of these supertrees busting up through some nearby broken asphalt. One of my hosts, Swedish artist Ingo Vetter, is a member of a unique artists collective, the Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop, that has experimented with using the wood of this abundant tree. While not easy to work with (...

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On the Many Frustrations of Gardening: Pierce’s Disease

...how up someday. Might as well get ready. Gardening is a humbling lesson in evolutionary biology. It’s all about survival of the fittest. Work with evolution by selecting for immunity to pests and disease and you’ll harvest the rewards. Resistance is futile. More info at piercesdisease.org. If any of you readers know of a comprehensive list of resistant varieites for California please leave a link in the comments! So far I’ve been able to find list...

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