Garden

Cheat Sheet

If 2020 seemed like a daily flat tire, begin the New Year with a nutritious edible garden and exercise. Gardening is Mother Nature’s Peloton. Who needs Jenny Craig when homegrown fresh produce is stuffed with healthy low-calorie options?

Growing the right foods may even save or extend your life. Fred Hoffman, Sacramento’s highest-profile gardener, confronted a life-threatening health crisis in 2012. He discovered he had Type 2 diabetes while preparing for quadruple-bypass heart surgery.

It was an abrupt life-or-death wakeup call for the producer/host of the “Garden Basics with Farmer Fred” podcast and radio programs, “The KFBK Garden Show” and “Get Growing with Farmer Fred” on Talk 650 KSTE.

Tool Time

Wacky gardening tools are lurking in dark corners of garages, kitchen drawers, yard sales and local stores. The tool arsenal is more than pricey pruners, digging forks and hand trowels.

One fine morning I stopped at a yard sale in East Sacramento. I spotted two old school metal mailboxes, the type with the red flag that signifies outgoing mail. Both were purchased for a grand total of $5. They are extremely useful for tool storage in a main garden area and will save countless trips back to the house, shed or garage for a needed tool. Mount them on a post for the true postal experience. Stow gloves, hand pruners, and other small gear and accessories.

It’s Personal

Gardening holds hands with serotonin levels. It’s an organic neurotransmitter, relaying a sense of well-being after a few snips of hand pruners. During the darkness of pandemic and politics, we can discover peace among plants, solace in soil.

What personal enjoyment do you harvest from time spent in the garden? Well, it’s personal, but a few folks opened their hearts.

Growing Together

Weathered, wrinkled and wrapped in a headscarf, the face was all smiles. Cupped in outstretched hands were three cucumbers. “You?” she asked. How could I refuse?

Thanking her, I felt a twinge of guilt for not being able to match her generosity. A language barrier limited communication, but I knew from past growing seasons that she coveted the cantaloupes growing a few feet away in my community garden plot. None were ripe that day, but there would be cantaloupes to share in days to come.

Fall Forward

Fall Forward Gardeners get busy when seasons change By Dan Vierria September 2020 Fall arrives without warning, like flashing lights and sirens in the rear-view mirror. One day, we are bobbing in the pool. The next day, leaves are crimson and shelves...

Farm Fresh

Locking onto a snail with laser-guidance precision, Randy Paragary delivers a lightning strike on the gluttonous gastropod. “He died during the journey,” he says. With apologies to escargot, snails would be wise to steer clear of this backyard vegetable garden.

Paragary, his wife Stacy and executive chef-business partner Kurt Spataro have kept Sacramentans well fed and entertained for decades. While retaining his local dining and entertainment venues, Paragary has evolved his interests in recent years to include Midtown’s new Fort Sutter Hotel and (drumroll, please) his backyard tomatoes and other edibles.