Growing your own fruits and vegetables is a growing trend. Eye on L.A. teamed-up with Sunset Magazine for a beginner's guide on creating your own edible garden. To get our lesson started, Sunset Magazine Editor-in-Chief Katie Tamony turned to Conor Fitzpatrick, a local gardener who created Mini Farm Box, a raised planting bed perfect for beginner gardeners.
For more information about Mini Farm Box or to buy one, visit: www.minifarmbox.com/mfb/homebox.html
Conor Fitzpatrick shared a clever and all-natural tip on how to keep pets out of your fruits and vegetables garden:
- Take four habanera peppers and four cloves of garlic, and boil them in a pint of water.
- When it cools, drain the water.
- Then add a tablespoon of dish soap, mix it up, add some water and spray it on the soil of your planting area.
What happens is that if a pet goes in the planting box, this solution will get on their paws, they will lick their paws and it will sting their mouth, sending the message to not go into your gardening box again.
Katie and Conor showed us how to create a simple salsa garden in about an hour. Now, once you've created your own salsa garden, here are some great salsa recipes from Sunset Magazine:
Classic salsa verde
Roasted tomato and three-chile salsa recipe
The editors of Sunset magazine have also created an essential, all-in-one guide to growing vegetables, fruits, and herbs in your own backyard. It's the "Western Garden Book of Edibles." This book is available at all major bookstores and Costco.
Web extra: Keeping pets out of your garden
Web extra: 'No such thing as a black thumb'
