This week By PJ Bremier, Lifestyle Correspondent of the Marin Independent Journal wrote an article about the Lakritz Farm.
Take a look and read about how it all began.

This week By PJ Bremier, Lifestyle Correspondent of the Marin Independent Journal wrote an article about the Lakritz Farm.
Take a look and read about how it all began.
This week is technically my Spring Break and school has been out for the previous two weeks because of the virus outbreak. Thankfully, I have the Lakritz Farm to work in each day. This week I discovered our nasturtium patch is a Hummingbird Feeder!
Check out a short video of the here: Hummingbird Feeder!
A hummingbird feeds on the nasturtium at the Lakritz Farm this week.
Spring Carrots – 2020
Volunteer Heirloom Tomato Sprout
Snap Pea Starts
Fuji Apple Blossoms
Tonight we had salmon for dinner with roasted potatoes and squash from the farm. We also had fresh cucumber appetizer. These are the best tasting cucumbers we’ve grown. It’s amazing that we have the opportunity to eat something we’ve grown pretty much every day now.
Summer 2017 is almost here. We are still ramping up for the summer growing season even as we are harvesting the end of spring crops like raspberries. Here are two views of the Lakritz Farm. One view is from the beginning and the second one is today — two and a half years later).
Here are a few recent shots from my Instagram feed.
Edible Education – “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
It’s amazing to think we’ve been farming our front yard for two years now. Here is what the space was like just a few years ago. The first thing we did was remove all the lava rock, the plants, and several trees. That was a huge job that took several people a week to do.
The next step was to bring in truckloads of wood chips that have been settling there for about four years. Two years later we began building out the growing space. We started with a fence and then build the raised beds. We filled the beds with soil and compost and started planting.
Spring 2015
When we started growing stuff it was incredible to see the results of our efforts. Now we eat out of there every week!
Today, I find it difficult to spend much time blogging about the Lakritz Farm so I focus on posting regular images and information on Instagram. You can follow me there to see what’s up on the Lakritz Farm.
Happy Urban Farming Everybody!
Winter crops were abundant this year. Kale and broccoli grew well and the cabbage and radish crops were excellent. It’s interesting to note that the cabbage did not grow as well in the summer last year. We will definitely grow more cabbage in the winter next year.
We are using Instagram to publish images from the Lakritz Farm. Follow us there to see more frequent updates on the farm!
The newly planted fig tree has fruit!
Radish!
The Lakritz Family has been picking oranges for a very long time.
Growing up in a small town in California’s Central Valley, we lived among the crops. Although we weren’t farmers, we did have our own fruit trees growing in the backyard.
The family purchased the house shortly after I was born and we owned it for about 50 years. Most of that time we enjoyed the annual citrus harvest from one orange tree, one grapefruit tree, and a tangerine tree.
As my Dad grew older and my own family grew, we started bringing our children to town each Winter to help pick the fruit. It became an annual ritual that included a BBQ to celebrate the bountiful harvest. Amazingly, in a good year each tree would yield as many as 700 pieces of fruit!
This is a picture of the fruit we picked in the 2000 harvest, which was a down year.
Today, the Lakritz Farm has five trees including a plum, apple, and orange tree. This year we added a lemon and fig tree. Over the past 15 years we’ve been successful in getting a small harvest each year out of the orange tree.
Typically we have to wait until late March or early April to pick the fruit because it doesn’t get ripe until then. We aren’t sure whether this is due to the Northern California climate or global warming, but we do the best we can and enjoy what we get.
I decided this year to harvest the fruit earlier than usual. The oranges seemed pretty ripe and full of water as it’s been a wet Winter so far. I chose to pick the fruit earlier this year to encourage blossoms now. The idea is to generate blossoms earlier so the fruit will ripen earlier next year. We won’t know if it works until then but I’m hoping for the best.
Meanwhile we did get a decent amount of fruit. I’m guessing it’s about 150 pieces. Although the oranges are small, we’ll give them a week or two off the tree to ripen and get sweet. Then we’ll see how they are sliced or squeeze for juice.
Stay tuned for more fruit fun on the Lakritz Farm.
Happy Urban Farming to you all!
Recent photos from the Lakritz Farm
About a year ago we decided to begin using Instagram to publish images from the Lakritz Farm. We use Instagram as a simple way to share news form the Farm.
Follow us to see more frequent updates on the farm!