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A Gardening Blog for the East Side

The climate of the Eastern Sierra is very different from most of California and so gardening here is different, too! 

Preparing the contents of the pile.

In this blog we examine some of the quirks of gardening on the East Side, and cover horticultural issues that are important locally. Note that if you're visiting our site from the outside our little corner of California, you may find this information may not apply to your area.

Articles are written by local UC Master Gardener volunteers or the local Farm Advisor. 

 
And a website...

The Inyo-Mono Master Gardeners also have a website with local gardening and soil information. Visit it to learn more about our program and gardening.

 

My daughter planted this tomato about 4" deep
Article

Tomato Basics for New Gardeners

April 27th, 2020
By Dustin W Blakey
If you are just planting a garden for the first time you will, no doubt, want to grow tomatoes. Once you tell someone you're putting in a new garden you likely will receive helpful(?) advice from friends and family. No matter where you live there are a lot of funny rules for planting tomatoes.
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Solarizing to kill weeds
Article

A Garden Makeover<br>Part 2: Irrigation Set Up

April 23rd, 2020
The topsoil that had been delivered for our makeover project was not the rich loam that I had imagined it would be, but was the local desert sand. I amended it by digging in three cubic feet of commercial compost to each plot in order to add a modicum of organic matter.
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Initial rough plan.
Article

A Garden Makeover<br>Part 1: Planning and Preparation

April 15th, 2020
During last decade's drought I watched our once green lawn deteriorate into strips of yellowish grass much interspersed with dandelions, infested with Bermuda grass and with occasional eruptions of lantern stinkhorns and morels.
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IMG 4447
Article

Manzanar Gardens

April 8th, 2020
Gardens are many things to people: sources of food, entertainment, places of peace, solace, beauty and purpose. To many of the people forced to live at Manzanar Internment camp during WW2, gardens there were all those things.
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Article

Tomatoes Going Viral!

April 7th, 2020
By Dustin W Blakey
Sure our area is hot and dry for much of the year, but the silver lining is that we have very few fungal diseases to deal with in the garden. I swear in Arkansas you cold hear fungi growing on tomatoes from the heat and humidity. (And on roses, too, but that's a different topic.
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