The holiday season is here and time is running out to get the gardener on your list the perfect gift.  Despite the extra week of shopping preparation, the window is quickly closing.  Below is a list that gardeners from novice to expert are sure to love.  These are not the novelty items that they will use once every three months, but tools they will find indispensable.  All links go to Amazon for the sake of ease, but many of the items can be found at your local nursery!

Farmscape is seeking a part-time urban farmer for coastal Los Angeles south of the 10 freeway. We anticipate the position will grow to full-time work within a year. 

Farmscape is an urban farming company in Los Angeles.  We set up and tend intensive organic vegetable gardens, providing residents, restaurants and schools with the materials and ongoing support necessary for their garden to flourish. We are turning the city back into a farm one yard at a time.

Don’t get me wrong, I love trees. In fact I adore trees. Oak, Sycamore, Ficus, Juniper, Jacaranda, Magnolia, and of course the glorious Pine. There is no sweeter sound than the breeze through the pines. When that gentle whistle is audible, it is a good signifier that you are in the right place. 

Despite my love and respect for all varieties of the stoic giants, I will go to war with their roots, ripping and tearing through them with a ferocious anger. In the urban farming setting trees can be one of my worst combatants. On the simplest level, the shade they throw about can stunt and stifle the best effort to grow food. But underneath the surface is where the creeping beast dwells, waiting to attack and suck the life out of months of work. This is the long reaching and relentless monster of tree roots. 

As the heat wave showed its first signs of breaking this week, all around Los Angeles you can finally feel Fall starting to creep in. And with that transition we start to say goodbye to our favorite Summer crops and begin to prepare for the new season.

The Summer of 2012 was a strange one not just here but all over the nation. It led to many crops performing a little worse than they have in the past but that’s the spirit of working in harmony with nature, sometimes she makes it a little harder for you

I keep seeing news about urban agriculture concepts, and even financed projects, that are enormous. Big ten-acre lots for a closed-loop super-farm. Hydroponic mega-greenhouses across entire warehouse rooftops. Indoor warehouse farms with enough grow lights to require a hectare of solar panels. Big rotating tumblers of plants around aeroponic misters. The next vertical innovation, some foodscraper using a masterful system of mirrors to redirect all sunlight in a half mile radius to a thirty-story stack of aquaponic tanks. Alright, some of these are hyperbolic, but just a little.

In truth, most of these projects might be feasible, horticulturally or even financially. But when I think about the goal of the Urban Farming Movement -- bringing food production to the city to create a more local, or a more transparent food supply, grown using socially and environmentally conscientious practices, and hopefully producing a fresher, tastier product -- well I don’t picture a Zipper carnival ride or anything the size of Sams Club. I think small.