Images by Jeff Skeirik/Rawtographer

It was 2006 when we first heard something really bad was happening to bees, yet no one could agree on what was causing their populations to decline so rapidly. By fortunate chance one thing did work in their favor: The concept of urban beekeeping had begun to take off. Suddenly, honeybees became part of the urban landscape.  New York City legalized beekeeping, followed by other cities across the nation. In 2014, LA legislators voted to conduct a study on legalizing urban beekeeping in the city and they are currently making their way towards a vote to legalize the practice.

In Los Angeles, a beekeeper named Kirk Anderson had been rescuing wild hives and taking care of them without chemicals. He had been successful in harvesting all the honey he could use and then some. Word spread and soon Los Angeles had a new beekeeper club, The Backwards Beekeepers (of which Anderson is “Yoda-in-Chief”). They were backwards first because they did not use the chemicals modern commercial beekeepers use in the hives and second they tried to keep their hives as close to the natural environment bees would choose for themselves. Anderson had no formal training in beekeeping, but he did have a passion for bees along with an excellent and patient eye for observation. Backwards Beekeeping spread via an enthusiastic corps of new-bee beekeepers.

The really bad thing happening to bees was the sudden and mysterious arrival of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Hives would appear to be industrious and thriving in the morning but would be vacated by early afternoon—all the adult bees vanished, no workers, no drones, no queen, only larvae, which cannot fly, left to die in the hive with supplies of untouched honey. Losses as high as 60% in many beekeeping operations were seen in professional and amateur hives alike. Beekeepers made new hives which ameliorated the losses, but from 2006, the losses have continued to range from 30 to 60% annually across the nation. A May, 2014, USDA survey reports that losses at this rate in the bee populations will eventually result in the demise of the honeybee.

What was causing Colony Collapse Disorder? Theories were rampant. Cell phones. Cell phone towers. Insecticides. Round Up. Beekeeping, following in the industrial agricultural model had adopted the use of miticides and fungicides to help the bees cope with some of their natural enemies. Scientific studies came to opposite conclusions. Yet, urban beekeepers had some losses but demonstrably fewer than rural operations.

The actual causes finally seem to be coming into focus. Scientists have learned that the pesticides we used on the bees to help them fight their natural predators might be a large part of the problem, justifying Kirk Anderson’s natural beekeeping methods. Furthermore, a new class of pesticide, with the practically unpronounceable name of neonicotinoids (we call them neonics), probably has a lot more to do with the bee’s demise than any one other thing. Italy recently banned the use of neionics in their country. This is only the second year of the ban, so results are not in yet, but a lot of bee enthusiasts are watching how this will play out.

It may be the urban beekeepers that save the honeybee from total collapse. Certainly many urban beekeepers will cite this as one of the top 10 reasons to become a beekeeper, along with comments about the relaxing nature of the work: A beekeeper doesn’t want to fight with the bees and so needs to adopt a calm and purposeful attitude with the open hive. Causing as little disruption as possible while working requires an attention to the hive and the thousands of bees there. This work is often described as a meditation.

Considering all of this, Kirk Anderson comes off as a genius. He was teaching nascent beekeepers to find a feral hive, adopt it, put it in a box, skip the chemicals, and just work with the bees the way the bees would to do it on their own. Bees in the city are not subjected to the mass spraying of pesticides like the ones in rural sites, and many of the agricultural chemicals sprayed are known to kill bees. Even if a homeowner in the city sprays his lot, the lot next door is not sprayed—it’s a matter of square feet, not square miles—and many homeowners will not spray at all (especially in Los Angeles where the malathion spraying in the 1990s made such headlines).

Natural beekeeping practices are essential to our ecosystem since honeybees are essential to our modern food production. Not native to America, the honeybee was brought to the continent by the Europeans. Native American bees are numerous, but do not produce honey and do not live in colonies like those species that make honey. It is the honeybee’s way of working, however, that connects her (because all the worker bees are female) most closely to our way of farming.

The honeybee worker daily gathers pollen and nectar for the hive’s food, staying on whatever flower variety she visits first until she can find no more, so if her day starts with a plum flower, she will continue to visit plum flowers until she runs out of those flowers to visit. This makes them pollination powerhouses. Compared to the American bees who do not produce honey, the honeybee is miraculous. In contrast, a native American orchard bee will gather from everything without regard to species. The orchard bee will start with a mustard flower and go to a sage, hang out with the plum tree and go off a rose. This is not the efficiency that is loved by orchard owners. Furthermore, because the honeybee lives in a hive, when bees return to the hive in the evening, they can be sealed inside, and the entire colony (or many colonies) can be sent from orchard to orchard depending on the flower’s bloom time.

In Los Angeles, beekeeping is a gray area. There are no laws against it, but no laws for it. While Santa Monica has legalized beekeeping and regulated it, LA has moved much more slowly. HoneyLove, the honey-loving efforts of Rob and Chelsea McFarland, has greatly advanced the call to legalize beekeeping in Los Angeles. The couple has become one the leading proponents for Kirk Anderson’s type of beekeeping. Rob has taught a number of workshops and continues to teach the science and art of beekeeping. Most of their hives are in more rural areas of the county, which provide space for students and bees to congregate together and learn.

Between Kirk Anderson, his many students, and advocates Rob and Chelsea McFarland, many more Angelenos are keeping bees. A kept bee, versus a feral bee, has a much smaller chance of running afoul of humans. Bees in boxes maintained by a beekeeper will be provided a safe home and a supply of water since water, of all the things bees need, tends to be in the shortest supply. Bees end up trying to get a drink from a swimming pool—often losing their lives in the attempt. A beekeeper makes certain their hives have their own access to clean, fresh water, which is important since water is the place where most negative interactions between humans and bees occur.

Honeybees are fascinating. They’re not really kept as pets—they lack the cuddliness of a puppy or kitten—but as a part of our ecology, they teach and fascinate. They make our fruit and nut trees more productive. When we abdicated control over how what we eat is grown, we did not have a clue that we were going to treat that food with a saturation of chemical goo and create questionable foods that nature did not make, just to profit on our need to eat. Now, we have begun to wake up, shorten the length of the journey from creation to table, becoming much more intimately involved with what eat and the nature that flows through our food and our city.
Like a meditation, our interactions with the plants and creatures that live around us push us gently toward an understanding of what we eat. People decry the city for the lack of nature and while it may not be a truly natural environment nature is resourceful and you can see nature somewhere today (wherever you are) by finding a honeybee on a rosemary flower ignoring you and doing the work she knows to do.

Plus, you get honey.

David King draws upon 50 years of gardening experience and his love of plants and food for all he does. He is the Gardenmaster of the Learning Garden on the grounds of Venice High School, he teaches growing food for UCLA and UC Extension and is the founding chair of the Seed Library of Los Angeles. His first book, Growing Food in Southern California (and other Mediterranean Climates) is expected out some time before our grandchildren leave college. thelearninggarden.org; slola.org; lagardenblog.com

David King

The post Plus, you get honey appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

M.C. Byles didn’t start out saving seeds. He went to work picking cotton when he was four years old. He didn’t have an education; he didn’t even attend third grade. Through wily inquisitiveness, he ended up as a truck mechanic at the base of a massive mountain in West Virginia where heavy-duty mining and logging trucks constantly blew out their radiators in the summer heat. Once the radiator lost its cooling, the trucks would roll back down the mountain to Mr. Byles’ shop where he became known as ‘Radiator Charlie.’

When not fixing trucks, Mr. Byles turned his attention to his backyard garden. He planted German Johnson tomato, famous for its fine flavor and good production. He then bought seeds of the largest tomatoes he could find and sowed them in a circle around his prize. Using rudimentary tools, Charlie used the pollen on the big tomatoes to fertilize his named variety (still available today) over a period of seven summers. Then he began selling tomato seedlings for a buck apiece to his neighbors—who knew his large and tasty tomato. Charlie sold enough plants to pay off the mortgage on his house. A legend was born and so was the tomato variety you can still buy today: Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter.

All the food produced in the world prior to 1950 was almost exclusively the work of men and women who were not professional plant breeders, but were folks much less educated than an average high school graduate. And yet, the wealth of food we enjoy today rests on their work and imagination. Scores of grandmothers and grandfathers handed down seeds to the coming generations: seeds more valuable than land. These became ‘heirloom seeds’ and have stood the test of time in flavor and other benefits for the home gardener. These varieties of vegetables (and herbs and flowers) represent years of selection by generations who cared about passing on the best they could give to their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Each of these seeds has a story not unlike Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter.

Today, with the advent of genetically modified organisms (GMOs or genetically engineered, GE) many people are concerned about our food system and the apparent lack of will on the part of our government to look out for the average citizen’s well-being. When governments from both parties are composed of senior officials of some of the companies that have vested interests in GMOs, many feel powerless to ensure that their food is as safe and clean as it can be.

Saving heirloom seeds is one way a conscious person can become more responsible for the food they eat and feed their children. But to ensure these seeds are available year after year, a lot of those same people are saving the seeds from the past and growing them out again in the years ahead.

Saving seeds takes very little knowledge, although a few important bits of data are essential. It requires more mindfulness about your garden – which of course is not a curse; though it often does involve an uncomfortable learning curve. Beyond the seeds themselves, some of the value of saving seeds includes the additional wildlife that will become part of the woof and warp of your garden, the masses of flowers that you’ll enjoy as some of your plants advance to seed-bearing stage and a whole new way of relating to your garden and the nature it embodies.

It is important to note: don’t try to save seeds from fruits and vegetables you purchase at the supermarket. Although the fruit might taste good, those seeds are probably from a commercial hybrid that might have been grown thousands of miles away and may dislike our climate. If you want to open up a melon or a winter squash and scoop out the seeds to plant in your garden, you will have a better shot with those purchased at a farmers’ market. They will have been grown closer to home (hopefully) and you can ask the seller, “Is this a hybrid?”

If the answer to that question is no, you have a real good candidate for seed-saving. If yes, pass because it won’t bear a duplicate fruit in the coming season. If she hedges, assume it’s a hybrid and don’t bother with it. Another consideration when seed saving: The fruits for sale from most plants in commercial production have not been left on the plant long enough to allow the seeds to fully form. I like to start with seeds from a seed company and grow them  out, marking my plants in the field and in a notebook so I’m sure of what I am saving. Another good source for seeds are gardening friends or neighbors.

Start with the easy ones: tomatoes and beans in the summer garden are some of the easiest and most satisfying to grow and save. They have self-pollinating flowers and so it is highly likely that the seeds you save will produce plants you might expect; unless you have desperate bees in your garden that pry these flowers open and pollinate them, these will be a sure-fire easy-peasy way to start.

Bean seed is inside the pod you eat; that’s easy to see. You can buy bean seeds in the bulk food section of your neighborhood co-op. They should germinate just fine. Allow a few beans on several plants to stay there until they begin to dry up. Once you’ve picked them, dry them some more and then package with a label (you must label, as you may not remember the seeds’ identity later) and store in a cool dry place. The refrigerator is one of those places. Seeds of all types last the longest in cool, dry environments.

It is the same for tomatoes, you will leave a couple of fruits on the vine longer than you would like if you were going to eat it. This insures the seed inside has fully matured. Carefully harvest your over-ripe tomato from the vine. Imagine that the stem end is the North Pole and the blossom end is the South Pole. Cut your tomato across the ‘equator.’ Squeeze the seeds and accompanying gel into a shallow bowl. You can do several tomatoes in a small bowl, but keep the varieties separate.

Add a couple tablespoons of water per tomato and set out covered in a warm place where you can’t smell it. It will stink.

In a day or two, a scum will form on top. This will vary depending on many conditions, but will be about several days. Once the scum has formed, strain the seeds under cool water and wash off the scum. Dry on a paper towel or a coffee filter for a few days, then put in an envelope, label, and save for next year. The scum forming on top breaks down a covering on the seed that inhibits sprouting and helps your growing next year.

Other seeds require a little more attention. Lettuce is self-pollinating, but it dries in an odd pattern which you will discern by careful observation a lot faster than I can describe it here. Suffice it to say, each flower gets ripe at its own pace and so requires many visits to see which ones are ripe (very brown and dried) in order to get it all – if you simply let the seed fall to the ground, it will sprout in the appropriate season and you can move the baby plants to where you want them. Arugula and cilantro are two other plants this works well with. For a lot of gardeners this is the extent of their seed saving.

Peppers and eggplants are two others that are more or less easy to save, although they are pollinated by bees and other insects. If you grow only one variety of pepper or eggplant at a time, you have nothing to fear for the most part – unless you are growing in a community where a lot of other plants abound; then you’ll need to be pro-active.

If you have gardening neighbors or you garden in a community garden, you’ll need to try to grow your plants out somewhat later than your neighbors. You can control the pollination, but there is more to that process than can be covered here.

This advice also relates to squashes, cucumbers and melons, which are the most ‘promiscuous’ of the vegetable garden. They are pollinated by bees who are not particular as to variety. Ms Bee will happily go from squash to squash crossing between different varieties. Not all squashes will cross, but enough of them will to make you crazy. A gardener ends up with zucchinis crossing with crooknecks and in the next year’s garden, those seeds produce zuccanecks or crookinis. They might taste fine. They might not. Either way, they will occupy a lot of space in your garden.

Almost all cucumbers will cross with other cucumbers – the exception is the Armenian cucumber which is actually its own species and so can be saved very much like tomato seeds and without worry of cross-pollination.

For seed saving, the fruit has to be ripe beyond the good eating stage, so select which one to save and allow it to get really ripe on the vine. That plant will stop producing more cukes, so grow more than one plant. Split the chosen cuke open and remove the seeds. These can be washed and dried at once, without the fermenting step. Remove all the pulp. It will rot if it remains. If you only have one variety of the other cucumbers growing in your garden, or a neighbor’s, you can save seeds from those too.

Pumpkins are a squash, but because they fruit so late and most other squashes are finished by then, we can usually save them and they’ll reproduce nicely. Besides, if you only grow them for Halloween, you may not be concerned if they don’t maintain good pie-making quality.

Once you have begun, you’ll soon be hooked on seed saving and, like any greater understanding of a new adventure, will find your appreciation enhanced for your garden and the plants in it. Over time you will enjoy the more life in your garden and feel a sense of kinship for your ancestors and your place as one of the guiding generations for the children that are yet to come.

David King is the Gardenmaster at The Learning Garden, on the grounds of Venice High School, for the last ten years. The Founding Chair of the Seed Library of Los Angeles, he teaches gardening and sustainability for gardeners at UCLA Extension.

SLOLA – The Seed Library of Los Angeles

Saving seeds in a group or community has advantages. The Seed Library of Los Angeles, housed at The Learning Garden on the grounds of Venice High School, maintains about 160 different varieties of vegetable seeds for members to check out. Members ($10 for a lifetime membership) grow the plants and return at least as much as they took for others to check out next year.

Through the years, varieties become more adapted to our climate and our soil. The seeds themselves are cost-free and non-GMO. Seed libraries work for greater food justice enabling individuals to make a clear statement about what we want in our food supply. It also allows us to maintain ownership of seeds and our food.

SLOLA meets on the third Saturday of each month. Lifetime dues are $10. Seeds are checked out for free on the promise that you will return an equal or greater amount of seed after harvest. They teach you how: slola.org

David King

The post The Value of Saving Seeds appeared first on LA Yoga Magazine - Ayurveda & Health.

NOTHING COMPARES WITH THE TASTE of freshly picked, vine-ripened, home-grown tomatoes. Sweet, juicy, delicious, colorful, bursting, it’s something special. Even the most organically grown, farm fresh produce isn’t quite the same as the loving care we take with growing our own food. While we may long to grow our own, we may feel constrained by apartment or urban living. By thinking out of the container a little bit, it’s possible to grow food in a very small space, even a patio or balcony. If we are creative about it, it can be an exercise in artistic living. It’s time to scrap the old mentality that has food production in containers looking like little mini-farms with Roundup-clean fields. We can cultivate containers filled with edible plants that are as glorious to look at as they are to eat.

Growing food is a project with a time commitment that gets stretched out over several months. Before beginning, it’s a good idea to meditate on why this is important in order to prevent (or minimize) any potential for the spirit to start flagging midstream.

Some popular reasons to grow your food include:

• A feeling of freedom from the food grid.
• Knowing this food was grown without chemicals. • Making an ecological statement that the current methods of peroleum-based food production and shipping miles before consumption is a precipice built on cheap and abundant fossil fuels.
• And, dare we say it, love.
• Plants nourish us in so many ways, yet our modern society has attempted to reduce all life to a soulless materialism based on constant consumption. A focus on growing our own food breaks the societal patterns which pull our heads in a million directions with constant messages about spending and conforming. Actually growing food is at odds with the consumptive mindset. This can force some uncomfortable decisions. When the plants need attention, do we dare choose the silence and peace of growing plants over the glitter of a night at the movies? It is important to remember the benefits of having your own garden: the taste of freshly-grown produce, and the connection with the earth and the cycles of life. These benefits are motivations to water your plants before you fall into bed countering the temptation to neglect our garden, especially after coming home exhausted after a rough day.

   

  There’s an affirmation here, though, growing your own food, even if it’s a small portion of what you eat, makes a very direct statement, to you and to the world, of your intentional love of yourself. By enjoying food cared for with love and intention, you express your love for the planet so many people call home.

  Sunlight

  Once you have decided to grow some food, you need to realistically appraise your site. Light, of course, is very important as plants utilize the energy from sunlight to grow. The city presents some opportunities an urban farmer can exploit due to the abundance of reflective surfaces. We are told that food plants must have a minimum of six hours of sunlight per day, but that figure doesn’t take into account the massive amount of reflected sunlight that shines all around us.

  North, South, East or West?

  First, determine which direction the open side of your growing area faces. If your site faces north, your choices will be the most limited as your growing area will likely fall in the shade of a building most or all of the day. But look around, since a light-colored wall that gets plenty of sunshine and happens to face your growing area can reflect sunlight back onto the plants.

  East-facing sites are the next most challenging. In these cases, again, look for reflective surfaces and an increase in the available light in the form of a bright building, a street or another large light-colored object.

  West-facing usually makes for abundant sunlight. The South-facing direction, though, is the cream of the directional crop. However, in some city situations, West or South, combined with lots of reflective surfaces can be too hot. Still, too much sun can be solved more easily than too little sun.

  Have Hope And Begin

  Plants are more willing to grow if there’s hope. And the situation might not be as bleak as perceived; there may be windows of light here and there that are not readily apparent to a human (non-plant) eye. If in doubt, start your container garden with some perennial herbs like rosemary, oregano, thyme or marjoram. If these hardy plants do poorly for lack of sun, it may be time to stand in line for a community garden plot.

  However, if you successfully cultivate some sprigs of fresh thyme or oregano to add prana (life-force) to your cooking, then you can move on to something a little more challenging. Different plants have different light demands.

   

  The Light Continuum

  Most light-intensive

  Grains: corn, wheat, rice, barley

  Legumes: beans, lentils, peas

  Sunflowers

  Fruits: eggplant, tomatoes, peppers

  Least light-intensive

  Edible leaves: parsley, lettuce, cabbage

  Edible flowers: broccoli, artichokes

  Edible roots: carrots, beets, radishes

  Start with leaves and roots and give it a whirl. Allow the plants to talk to you in a way that informs you of their needs for sun and water.

  Equipping Your Space

  You will find there is not as much to buy as the gardening magazines tell you. And of the things you do need, make the conscious decision to invest in them. Tools are not the most important thing to consider. However, the container itself and soil you put in the container are both very important.

  Containers

  Plastic permeates our lives today. It is not sustainable and is a blight on the Earth. Use it if you must (because of weight), but do so understanding that it is not ideal. There are lightweight paper pots sold in most nurseries and big box stores that durable for three years. They eventually rot out, but they are about as fossil-free as anything else is today. And they come in a variety of sizes from small to those able to hold a large artichoke.

  Found objects make great pots. The two requirements for any found object are: it can hold soil and it has a hole in the bottom to allow excess water to drain. (Drainage is necessary; please don’t kill your plants by drowning.) If the container doesn’t allow for drainage, it is not an acceptable choice. Cover the bottom hole with a piece of screen – readily available at hardware or other stores. A lifetime supply will cost about five dollars and only needs to be large enough to amply cover the hole. Do not use a broken piece of pottery, called a ‘shard,’ to cover the hole, as shards make a lovely home for snails, slugs and other plant-eating critters. The screen is a marvelous improvement.

  In Southern California and many urban areas, thick containers are almost essential – like those made from wood or pottery. The sun that beats down here can raise the soil temperature in a plastic pot to a temperature very uncomfortable for plant roots. Black plastic, often found in nurseries, has killed more plants than the so-called ‘black thumb.’ Terra cotta is a beautiful and practical choice for Southern California – the properties of breathing (terra cotta isn’t completely sealed and there is moisture and air exchange that closely resembles a more normal environment for plant roots), beauty and variety of form makes it a good choice for our homes. It is breakable, of course, and for people with overactive children or animals, another choice might be more intelligent. Wood also has many of these same characteristics, but it does tend to rot over time (if it’s treated to not rot, it’s not fit to grow food!)

  The container needs to be large enough to accommodate a plant’s root system – while experience will be the best teacher, a simple look at the size of the plant and its growth pattern will tell you a lot. Root plants (carrots and beets) will need much deeper pots than lettuce or any of the culinary herbs.

  Soil

  One last technical detail and you can plant: Soil. Do not get cheap potting mix and don’t get a potting mix loaded with fertilizer or the new ‘soil polymers.’ These are manufactured ‘beads’ in the soil that are supposed to hold water for a longer period of time – if you dig up soil that had these beads in it a few months ago, they are now gone. “Where did they go?” you might ask. They dissolved into the water around the roots of the plants and went into your food. Are they harmful? Like most new inventions, they’ve never been tested in human food. If that bothers you, make sure your potting soil doesn’t contain them.

  A potting soil labeled ‘organic’ should be somewhat more expensive than the non-organic blend; if it is cheaper than the non-organic mix, be suspicious. Sand, which is a very valuable part of a good potting soil, is heavy and costs more. If the producer has substituted some other ingredient, the soil will not drain sufficiently to keep your plants happy.

  The bag should also be labeled “potting soil.” Planting mix, organic compost and other bagged items are not acceptable for container plants. Soil from the local ground is not acceptable either.

  A plant in a pot is not in a natural environment. Plant roots need water and (surprise!) air to be healthy. Potting soil is a mix of many ingredients that allow the roots to live happily inside the pot. Beginning gardeners will especially benefit from a lot of sand in the potting soil.

  Planting Day

  A tomato is a rather large plant. It needs a deep pot – imagine a five gallon bucket, the ubiquitous white plastic bucket that ships everything from paint to pickles these days. That’s about right for a tomato. But while it wants all that depth for its roots, the tomato will do very little with all the surface area of such a large pot. That space can be used for color and for more food plants. A tomato will grow to be at least four feet tall. Think about filling in the space in the pot around the tomato with something of visual – as well as culinary – interest that can please your eye as you gaze at the tomato. A perfect companion, to the eye as well as the palate, would be basil which could grow to about two-and-a-half feet tall. Then think about another plant that grows closer to the soil and could be planted beneath the basil. Oregano, in this case, would be a wonderful addition. That almost makes a pizza garden!

  One could easily add a small flowered plant as well – in the city, I love to use alyssum, a small white-flowered annual that smells a lot like honey. Usually sold in white, a color which lends itself to blending with all other hues, the scent is heavenly and it is carefree and exuberant in a way that pleases the spirit. Other choices are the little lobelias that come in many different colors although they lack the same alluring aroma.

  Most of us have a mental model of growing food in austere conditions that consist of only one plant surrounded by lots of bare soil. This is the image given to us by a culture divorced from nature. In truth, if you look at the real world of plants, they are all mixed in together – there are a multitude of species happily occupying the same space. Not only is it possible to mix lots of plants together, it is preferable. You will have happier plants and a more pleasing visual atmosphere on your balcony or patio.

  Water

  When asked how often to water, anyone who answers “once a day” or “once a week” isn’t being accurate. That is another holdover from an industrial, mechanized worldview that simply doesn’t apply to living, growing beings. Water your plants when they need it. Stick your finger in soil to the first joint. Is it wet? Hold off. Moist? Add some water. Are you finding yourself having itchy skin because of dryness in the air? Water. Santa Ana winds blazing through the land? Water. By tuning yourself to what is going on around you in the natural world and less to what is on the radio, being able to discern the needs of your plant on a daily basis will become more natural to you.

  Growing even a small portion of your food is not just healthier eating, it is a way to manifest your natural presence in a world of honking horns and concrete. It is satisfying to the soul and brings a peace beyond the simple act of looking at a growing plant. Growing food brings a person into a harmonious circle that resonates with life and nature. No one more than modern ‘civilized’ man needs that blessing.

  David King is the Gardenmaster at The Learning Garden, located on the Venice High School campus. He teaches Southern California gardening at The Learning Garden and for UCLA Extension. His blog is found at: beautifulfoodgarden.com

  By David King

David King

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