Recently in Gardening Category

Two weeks ago, George Orwell started blogging.

Yes, the man who gave voice to the barnyard in the anti-Stalinist "Animal Farm" and created the original Big Brother in "1984" has joined the blogosphere -- even though he died 58 years ago.

The group behind The Orwell Prize, which honors political writing in Great Britain, is resurrecting its namesake's writings in real time, publishing Orwell's domestic and political musings exactly 70 years after they were written.

The blog is a handful of posts into the four years' worth of diary entries. The publication mirror the composition dates; Orwell's Aug. 9, 1938, entry went up on Aug. 9.

Orwell continued the domestic and political journals through October 1942, meaning the blog entries will cease in October 2012.

So far, Orwell has spoken of the weather, catching snakes, picking barley, ripening blackberries and the growth of a Sardinian mouflon sheep and an ass-zebra hybrid. And that's just his domestic fare. The political stuff comes Sept. 7.

And if you see a typo, don't go after the site administrator. The diaries are published exactly as Orwell wrote them, errors and all.

If not, you're in luck, because it's National Pollinator Week. To celebrate, www.pollinator.org has loaded up its Web site with downloadable handouts to educate the masses on the importance of pollinators in our ecosystem and the plight of honey bees. There is a guide for gardeners, a guide for 4th-6th grade teachers and dozens of others. There is also a menu for chefs who might want to whip up an educational dinner party with specific ingredients that honor the work of a variety of pollinators.

If you really want to get into the spirit of the week (and get some free sunflower seeds for your garden), join the research project at www.greatsunflower.org/. This group looks for volunteers to grow a specific variety of sunflower and then record how many bees visit during a specified amount of time. The results will help a formal academic study about bee populations in the southwest.

Pollinator.org's resource page has many links to other projects to help you become actively involved in helping bees in very simple ways.

RELATED POSTS:
Haagen-dazs' campaign to help the honey bees
L.A. Farm Girl on the South Bay's best produce
Sustainable Seafood Suggestions
Find a farmers' market any day in the South Bay
Help scientists look for signs of global warming in the South Bay

Somehow, this city girl caught a farming bug that has become her life's passion. Torrance native Judi Gerber's love of local agriculture has sprouted two blogs where she writes about the virtues of growing your own produce and organic farming and lists a treasure trove of resources for the South Bay gardener.

On L.A. Farm Girl, she lists local farms and farmers markets, and writes about the local agriculture industry.

On The Giving Gardener, Judi is trying to establish a network of local backyard gardeners who would share their extra bounty with charity groups. But she also has a very complete list of South Bay gardening events, local gardens and clubs, educational resources and garden catalogs and nurseries.

As if that weren't enough resource material to keep a gardening fiend going, she answered our questions about the best source in the South Bay to get supplies and plants, and gave her opinion on what we should be growing and what to do with all the tomatoes we're about to be overrun with. And she even told us how to get fresh milk delivered to the door, just like in the good old days.

Here's her bio:

Judi Gerber is an agriculture and garden writer who is a Torrance native. She regularly writes about California farming and organic gardening for various publications including California Tour and Travel, California Farmer, and Organic Producer magazines, and the West's agriculture weekly, Capital Press. She has a monthly garden column that appears in the Palos Verdes Peninsula News and is the author of the upcoming book Farming in Torrance and the South Bay by Arcadia Publishing to be published in September 2008.

She received a bachelor's degree from UC Santa Cruz, and a Master's Of Public Administration from Cal. State Long Beach, and is a University of California Master Gardener and has a certificate in Horticultural Therapy. She has been actively involved as a volunteer at the Torrance Farmers' Market, leads a Senior Gardening Program at the Bartlett Senior Center, and is currently a Library Commissioner for the City of Torrance.