About 10 years ago, my next-door neighbor and I were commiserating that we didn’t have enough sunny space in our yards to grow as many tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant as we could eat.

There was a time in my past when I had to concede that my home was a hospice for the unfortunate plants that caught my eye and came home with me. I never intended for them to have such a short lifespan, but I just didn’t have a good plan for their continued prosperity.

Alameda Backyard Growers (ABG) invited a youth at Farm2Market to share their perspective on gardening. Oliver Stouffer, a 17-year-old senior at Encinal High School, accepted their offer.

As humans, we all eat. Some of us grow our own food, but mostly we buy, prepare food, and then dispose of the leftovers.

Fruit trees can be planted in fall, winter, or spring, but only in winter are bare root trees available.

There are many ways to make attractive, decorative wreaths year-round. The variety of possible shapes, sizes, backings, decorations, and attachment methods allow for great creativity. Wreath making provides excellent opportunities to recycle and reuse man-made items and natural objects.

Like every other community organization in Alameda, Alameda Backyard Growers’ (ABG) Project Pick faced a dilemma when COVID-19 shut down the Bay Area back in March. How could volunteers continue to meet in large groups to pick backyard fruit trees at several locations?

Harvest. In our supermarket-surrounded and 24-hour mini-mart available lives, many of us have lost the concept of what this word once meant. My grandfather, however, was thrilled when as a teenager a century ago he and his brother worked with a crew on a gas-powered hay baler.

Alameda Backyard Growers (ABG) was founded 10 years ago by Amanda MacLean Bruemmer and Janice Edwards in response to the economic meltdown as a way to build community, learn about growing food and give back to those in the community in need.

Just like humans, plants have friends and foes and can thrive or fail when planted in close proximity to one another. By definition, planting one or more types of plants together in a beneficial relationship is called companion planting.