Editor’s note: This story is part of Good Times’ annual Home & Garden 2019 magazine. Read the full issue here. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands? After 20 years in business, Refugio Ortega isn’t sure exactly how many succulents, cacti, flowers, herbs and other plants are currently growing at his overflowing namesake Watsonville nursery. What the patriarch…
Posts Tagged: home & garden
Yuzu and Rose Updates Ancient Indigo Dyeing
Editor’s note: This story is part of Good Times’ annual Home & Garden 2019 magazine. Read the full issue here. Kaitlin Bonifacio stumbled upon indigo dyeing on a trip to Japan. Originally planning to tour a sake brewery, she found herself in very different company—a group of longtime textile dyers a short distance away. “I went…
A Guide to Upside-Down Gardening
Editor’s note: This story is part of Good Times’ annual Home & Garden 2019 magazine. Read the full issue here. I am never going back to right-side-up gardening ever again. There’s no reason why I should. When I planted my tomatoes upside down a month ago, I knew they would die. I felt guilty even attempting…
Alibi Interiors Reinvents Repurposed Wood
Editor’s note: This story is part of Good Times’ annual Home & Garden 2019 magazine. Read the full issue here. Moss and lichen on a picture frame are the kind of details I never knew I wanted. This was probably also true for local husband-and-wife makers Chris and Paige Curtis, who started Alibi Interiors seven years ago.…
How to Savor the Strangeness of Succulents
Succulent. The name says a lot. But it doesn’t reveal everything about these wildly compelling botanicals that surrender to even the least-green thumb. Thick-skinned and juicy, these intriguing plants sit somewhere on the sliding botanical scale between dry, spiky cacti and delicate leaf-bearing flora. Succulents love to preserve moisture deep inside their curious, pliant bodies.…
Garden-Inspired Home Fermentation
One Saturday, when the chill had not quite worn off the morning and it was still likely that rain might ruin the weekend, my boyfriend Mike and I started planning what to plant in our garden. He’s the one with all of the know-how and experience, so I just put in requests. We knew he…
Collective Soul: Soquel’s Craftsmen Collective
Anyone who has worked extensively as an artist or maker is probably familiar with long hours spent alone in a workspace with just a dream and maybe a pet or ficus plant for company. Whole days can pass without human contact, and if the mailman or a UPS driver happens by, the eye contact and…
Tiny Home Makeover
I was born in the deep south—Bakersfield, California. The first RV I ever saw had a bumper sticker that said, “Don’t Tailgate Me or I Will Flush.” This early impression of the RV/trailer crowd made me wonder, “Why do space aliens land in trailer parks?” Years later, I’m sitting here in my retrofitted Airstream trailer,…
How Dig Gardens became Santa Cruz County’s hip gardening hub
Come for the ferns, stay for the cheese boards. Dig Gardens is a little slice of paradise that will have gardening geeks leaving their worries and wallet at the door. Whether they get lost in the outdoor succulent paradise, or don’t even make it past the Paddywax scented candles and bath salts, Dig has something…
Home & Garden Events 2018 Calendar
A round-up of home and gardening events happening in Santa Cruz County this year… Saturday, 4/14 UCSC Arboretum Spring Plant Sale The Arboretum’s spring plant sale offers hundreds of varieties of water-wise plants, succulents and small trees from California, Australia and South Africa that are ideal for the Central Coast climate. Get there early for…
