Gardening

Row Cover as an Insect Barrier

Mr. Homegrown
Vegetable Gardening
13 Comments
It ain’t pretty but it works.

As one would expect, cabbage leaf worms love cabbage and nearly every other member of the brassica species.  Which  is why I’ve become a real fan of row cover material as an insect barrier.

The perp in question.

It rarely freezes here so I use the thinnest row cover possible, specifically a product called Agribon-15. If you live in a cooler climate and want to use row cover for frost protection you would use a thicker product such as Agribon-30. Johnny’s Select Seeds carries Agribon row cover in lengths as short as 50 feet–plenty for an urban or suburban garden. I’ve used both PVC pipe and chain link fence tension wire as support. I secure the row cover down with pieces of rebar and bricks to keep out skunks.

What cabbage worms become.

It’s not a plug and play solution, however. If it gets hot I have to remember to pull the row cover off. And the added humidity can cause outbreaks of aphids. But overall, it works great. I’ve found that I just need to use it when tender seedlings are getting established. Once they have a fighting chance against the cabbage worms I can pull it off.

A New and Improved Self Irrigating Pot System

Mr. Homegrown
Self Watering Containers
10 Comments

A very cool improvement on the self irrigating pot (SIP) idea from Larry Hall of Minnesota. Rather than the two bucket system we’ve blogged about in the past (see a roundup of our SIP resources here), Hall uses one long rain gutter to supply water. He’s even got a clever double rain gutter system for growing strawberries that I’m tempted to try on our back patio.

I spotted this video on Inside Urban Green always a good source for SIP related news.

Sources for Interesting Perennial Crops

Mr. Homegrown
Fruit Trees, Gardening, Permaculture
17 Comments

A fruitless search for a fruiting olive tree caused an existential crisis here at the Root Simple compound. With a few exceptions, most nurseries in Los Angeles cater to the mow and blow set. You’re more likely to find parts for your leaf blower and a flat of petunias than anything worth growing. Good luck finding olives.

In the midst of my frustration I stumbled upon a interesting list, put together by the USDA, of retail nurseries and perennial crop resources. You can view that list here. Here’s three sources I found particularly interesting from that list:

Continue reading…

The Fine Art of Worm Grunting

Mr. Homegrown
Vermiculture
4 Comments


For your Monday viewing pleasure we have two videos showing worm grunting in Florida.

Worm grunting is a technique used to lure worms out of the soil to collect as fishing bait. Basically, you take a stick (called a “stob”), pound it into the ground and rub a metal rod (known as a “rooping iron”) against the top of the stob. The deep vibrations are said to mimic the sound of burrowing moles, the natural predator of worms. When they sense the vibrations, the panicked worms crawl to the surface of the soil. (The high population of earthworms in the area profiled, upwards of 1 million per acre, makes grunting a sustainable practice.)

In England, grunting is called “worm charming”. And yes, there are competitions–in Sopchoppy, Florida, Shelburne, Ontario, and South Devon, England.

Kelly adds: Attn: geeks! After viewing, shall we discuss whether Dune author Frank Herbert knew about grunting…er…thumping? Were the Shai-Hulud fleeing even more terrifying SandVoles?

Urban Chickens and Lead

Mr. Homegrown
Chickens, Lead
13 Comments

From the One More Thing To Worry About department, the New York Times has an article on lead levels in eggs laid by urban chickens “Worries About Lead for New York City’s Garden-Fresh Eggs.” According to the article, the lead levels found in New York City’s home grown eggs ranged from none to over a 100 parts per billion. Since the FDA does not have an acceptable lead level in eggs it’s difficult to interpret the results. And I have to wonder what unknown problems lurk in industrial eggs.

It’s a reminder that those of us who live in older cities and grow food need to confront the lead problem. Personally, I’d also like to see the Real Estate industry come clean on this issue beyond boiler plate disclosures buried in sales documents. But I’m not holding my breath.

How to Order Bare Root Fruit Trees

Mr. Homegrown
Fruit Trees, Gardening
4 Comments
The trees we planted in 2011–all doing well now.

Ladies and gentleman, it’s time to get your bare root fruit tree orders in! The massive wave of common sense that’s swept over the world since the 2008 econopocolypse has got people thinking about planting trees that provide more than just shade. Last year many nurseries ran out of stock. And bare root trees are a great way to save money. The time to order, for delivery next year, is now. Some tips:

  • Choose carefully–talk to people in your area with fruit trees and see what grows well. Visit botanical gardens, community gardens or talk to farmers in your area.
  • Plant varieties you can’t buy at the supermarket.
  • Consider aesthetics. I planted a Red Baron peach in my mom’s yard and the tree not only produces delicious fruit, but it also puts on a spectacular display of flowers in the spring.
  • Pay attention to root stock and cross-pollination requirements.
  • Check out the Dave Wilson nursery’s Backyard Orchard Culture Guide for how to turn a small backyard into a mini-orchard.
  • Order online for the best selection. Bare root trees ship well. Our favorite online nursery is Bay Laurel.
  • Use the Dave Wilson fruit and nut harvest date chart to maximize the number of months you’ll have fruit. 
  • When selecting trees plan for warmer temperatures. The USDA’s new zone map, according to some, is already out of date. Many places will soon bump up another zone. Take this into account when calculating your chill hours.

Most importantly, get going! One of the big regrets with our property is that we didn’t start planting fruit trees until just a few years ago. Knowing what we know now, we’d get started right away. Fruit trees take a lot less time and care than vegetables. And there’s nothing like the taste of a fresh nectaplum!.

A Keyhole Garden in Africa

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening
13 Comments

I’m working on a dry climate version of a keyhole garden with an integrated compost bin for our own yard (it will be lower to the ground rather than raised). With our alkaline soil I’ll also skip the ash. But, in principle, it will be similar to this one.

Thanks to Rober Fixer Smith for the link.

What Are Your Favorite Compost Materials?

Mr. Homegrown
Composting
20 Comments

Root Simple’s new composting game for your Xbox!

I wish I could source compost pile materials from our yard. But lead and zinc contamination in our soil make that a dodgy proposition without doing a lot of expensive lab tests. And I never seem to have enough materials even for our modest vegetable garden. So in the past I’ve used:

  • horse bedding
  • chicken manure from our own chickens
  • alfalfa hay (kinda spendy these days)
  • straw (takes a long time to break down)
  • spent grain from a local brewery
  • vegetable scraps from the farmer’s market

Once again I’ve got to build another pile and I’m interested in hearing from readers about compostibles you’ve used. Do you have a good source for stuff to compost? What are some of the things you’ve managed to scavenge? Comments!

Resilient Gardens

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening
17 Comments

The other day I was reading a message board where people from all over were talking about how their gardens had done this year. Most of them had trouble, and most of them blamed the strange weather. Now, of course, we can’t know the weather was truly to blame in each and every failure–but temperature shifts, unseasonable heat and cool do play havoc in the garden.  It got me to thinking about climate change and how gardeners might be able to hedge their bets to make sure they get a harvest every season.

Climate change creates unpredictable weather, and unpredictability is a terrible thing for a gardener. Ensuring success, I think, will have to do more and more with identifying and perhaps even breeding tough-ass, locally adapted plants.  Plants that are known survivors can form the backbone of your garden. Each year you can try to plant tender favorites, exotics, delicate plants of all sorts, whatever you want–and if the roll of the weather dice falls in your favor, you may harvest those plants. But that backbone of tough plants will be there, so you’ll have something fresh for your table no matter what.

Now, just what those plants are is going to vary by location. I’m going to list off some survivors for Southern California.  Please chime in with your location and your favorite, bomb-proof plant!

SoCal Survivors:

  • Prickly pear cactus. When the Armageddon comes, I’m sure we’ll be living off of this while serving our mutant cockroach overlords.
  • New Zealand spinach. We just posted on this.
  • Arugula. As a winter crop–it doesn’t like summer heat.
  • Artichoke. Everyone in SoCal should have one in their yard.
  • Cherry tomatoes. Cherries don’t seem to be nearly as susceptible to the various tomato maladies. Climate change or no, they are an important backup to big tomatoes.
  • Swiss chard. The most amiable of all greens.
  • Fruit trees. They aren’t bothered by much here in this mild climate–but this wouldn’t be true somewhere where, say, a late frost could wipe out a crop. However, I think our chill hours are dropping in SoCal so I’d recommend very low chill hour trees, like figs and pomegranates, over more borderline trees like apricots.
  • And, we’re very lucky to live in the ideal climate for avocados.  

Credit where credit is due: this is a post by Mrs. Homegrown–due to a computer glitch it got posted by Señor Homegrown. 

      Feijoa Fever

      Mr. Homegrown
      Fruit Trees, Gardening
      8 Comments
      Image from Wikipedia

      If you’re lucky enough to live where you can grow it, pineapple guava (Acca sellowiana) is a beautiful tree. Evergreen, the leaves are dark green on top and silvery gray on the bottom. In the spring you get hundreds of pink and red, edible flowers (they actually taste like cotton candy). In the fall you get copious amounts of green fruit, high in pectin and sugar.  When I’ve seen pineapple guavas in our local supermarket they are priced at nearly $2 a piece. I planted one a few years ago in our front yard.

      Image from Wikipedia

      Last Thursday morning at the at the National Heirloom Exposition Mark Albert, a pineapple guava expert, gave a lecture on “Developments in Pineapple Guava.” Those developments are, interestingly, entirely in the hands of amateur growers like Albert. Pineapple guavas are not part of any government breeding program. And the tree has really only been domesticated in the last 100 years or so. There’s a confusing jumble of named varieties and considerable disagreement on how you even propagate them. During his lecture, Albert dropped a bunch of factoids of interest to pineapple guava obsessed fruit geeks such as me:

      • First, how to pronounce the Portuguese name for the fruit: feijoa – fay–ee–joe–ah
      • Don’t pick from the tree–wait for it to fall to the ground.
      • Pineapple guava is very drought tolerant but needs summer water if you want fruit.
      • Albert’s prefers to propagate from seed.
      • Pineapple guava’s origins are in Uruguay. The region it comes from sometimes does not receive any rain in three years. It’s also the climax species in this arid region.
      • The Spanish name for pineapple guava is Guayabo del país or wild guava. 
      • Albert, who lives in Mendocino County in Northern California (about as far north as you can grow this tree) propagates the seeds by soaking pulp in water for a few months and planting the seeds when it warms up in the springtime.   

      If you live where it never gets below 15ºF, consider giving this gorgeous tree a place in your garden.

      More info from the California Rare Fruit Growers on pineapple guava here.