Felicia Friesema

It's that lateral-management time of year. But unless you're an apple or pear farmer, this is about as important to you as doing your taxes early. All you need to know is that proper lateral management ensures efficient fruit production, focusing a tree's energy where it counts -- building strong......

Farmers markets are locavore magnets, true. And we have these absurdly expansive seasons complete with weather-defying microclimates tucked into coastal hillsides. They're like little agricultural Brigadoons, weaving their misty trickery to bring us year-round local blueberries, asparagus and artichokes. So even though it tweaks our seasonal sensibilities when we hear......

You can time the passing of winter in Southern California by watching the citrus timeline at your local market. December starts us off with small tangerines and mandarins, just in time for a holiday table, weather permitting. Then in January, you make room in the market bag for gravid pomelos......

Sad news for tomato tartare lovers in Pasadena -- chef-owner Onil Chibas announced on Facebook yesterday that his 2-year-old Pasadena Playhouse-adjacent restaurant Elements Kitchen was closing for good, mere days after the restaurant reopened following a weeklong winter break......

Somewhere in a back alley outside of Paris, $30,000 worth of black European truffles is changing hands. Asking the seller about the truffles' origins could send them packing to another less inquisitive buyer, so the buyer ponies up quietly and hauls off the heavily perfumed, cloth-lined crate while the seller......

Farmers markets and the vendors who populate them with table-bending piles of bumper crops and hard-to-find seasonal produce rarely sell every last item before it's time to collapse the pop-up tents and head home. Portlandian pickle jokes aside, what do farmers do with all those extra berries, tomatoes and apples?......

"This lemon will cure that cough of yours," advised a fellow market-goer. It turned out that her motherly advice wasn't simply anecdotal. The Sweet Lemon, or Sweet Lime depending on who you talk to, is incredibly high in Vitamin C and has been a favorite of Mediterranean and Persian cultures......

It feels a little early to be sorting through some of the subtropical lovelies from Rancho Santa Cecilia (Carpinteria). Along with their multiple varieties of avocados, guavas, and sapote, we've been enjoying a parade of cherimoya varieties. We usually associate March with a mouthful of the banana and mango flavors......

The Witchita pecan, developed in Texas back in the 1940s for more arid climate production, is one of a handful of pecan varieties that actually do well in California (it usually like a moister climate). K&K Ranch grows the Witchita and has had the nuts -- still in the shell......

Jeanne Davis owns a small orchard out in Fallbrook (formerly known as Coyote Growers) where she grows a variety of citrus trees. But none that garners the attention that her grove of 85 Seedless Kishu mandarin trees does. She started offering the small, walnut-sized fruit about four years ago, at......