Organic Gardening

The cubes and quadrangles of this tiny backyard don't look like a hotbed of revolution. Not to George Gutekunst. A non-practicing lawyer and retired longshoreman, Gutekunst says all he did was transform the arid sliver of earth behind his Richmond district apartment into a thriving, pint-size farm. But this is a city where little things like riding a bike, boycotting grapes or drinking shade-grown coffee can equal civil disobedience.

California Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin is promoting a marvelous idea: A garden in every school. As coordinator of the Naturalist Academy at North Hollywood High School, I have had the opportunity to see the educational effects of ecological horticulture, a.k.a. organic gardening, on our students. If, in fact, we cannot build schools for the children of Los Angeles, let's tear up the concrete and the asphalt and grow gardens!

BOOKS Mix it up: There are plenty of home health remedies for your body; there are also more than a few for your garden. Joan Benjamin and Deborah L. Martin's "Great Garden Formulas" ($28, Rodale Press, 1999) lists hundreds of easy concoctions for fighting pests, weeds and disease, as well as how to make compost and fertilizer. The Rodale Press is known for its books and magazines on organic gardening, and this 342-page book follows that path.

Things to do this week: * The Late Show. Many annuals planted now will bloom into fall, so don't feel the opportunity has passed. You can even use annuals to fill holes in the perennial garden, where spring-blooming plants have died or been cut back. Two of my favorites for this job are gloriosa daisies and the petunia labeled Butter Cream. This petunia has smaller cream-colored flowers that shade toward pale chartreuse at the center.

Farmer Ford: Ben Ford, former chef at the Farm of Beverly Hills, has been working on opening his own restaurant. He plans to call it Chadwick, after organic gardening guru Alan Chadwick, who taught the French Intensive method of gardening through his garden project at UC Santa Cruz from 1967 to 1972.

Lili Singer is different from you and me. She knows what a redgum lerp psyllid is, and we don't. Actually, anyone who reads the current issue of Singer's newsletter, "The Southern California Gardener," will discover that the redgum lerp psyllid is an insect with piercing, sucking mouthparts that weaken "one of our grandest and most popular trees," the red gum.

My friend Ippy Patterson stopped going to the gym when she discovered that the gardening she'd been doing at her new country home was providing all the exercise she needed. "Sawing down trash trees, digging holes and pitching mulch give you a wonderful aerobic workout and also build upper-body strength," says Patterson, a Hillsborough, N.C., artist who had been a gym regular until she started her landscaping workout.

Dome Village for the Homeless in downtown Los Angeles will host organic gardening workshops on the last Saturday of each month, beginning July 27. Noted organic gardener Andy Lopez will teach the six-hour courses in the center's food gardens, starting at 10 a.m. The workshops are fund-raising events. The proceeds benefit this one-of-a-kind transitional housing complex for homeless individuals.