Search Results for: label/flowers

104 results

Picture Sundays: Harvard’s Glass Flower Collection

Mr. Homegrown
Picture Sundays
4 Comments
Photo ©President & Fellows Harvard College, photo of Blaschka Glass Model by Hillel Burger. This cactus is made out of glass. Root Simple reader tworose tipped me off to the Harvard Museum of Natural History’s collection of glass flowers. According to the museum’s website: This unique collection of over 3,000 models was created by glass artisans Leopold Blaschka and his son, Rudolph. The commission began in 1886, continued for fi...

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Introducing Nancy Klehm With Tips on Growing Jerusalem Artichokes

Nancy Klehm
Gardening, Permaculture, Vegetable Gardening
10 Comments
...oods my growing area now that the natural hydrology has been interrupted by a nearby housing developer. The stand provides shade for toads and in wet times, muddy crayfish tunnel into the mud around its tubers. In August, the flowers are 10 feet tall. Every spring, I dig out 30-50 pounds of chokes from my ever expanding bed to keep them from overwhelming my young quince and apple trees, which they would if I didn’t. Muddy chokes and a fe...

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Derek Jarman’s Garden

Mr. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening
1 Comment
...ing Siberian winds push through the shingle and up through the floorboards of the fisherman’s cottages strung out along the road to the lighthouse. You can’t take life for granted in Dungeness: every bloom that flowers through the shingle is a miracle, a triumph of nature. Derek knew this more than anyone. Gardens give us food, medicine, solace, and the best of them, like Jarman’s, remind us of the impermanence of our lives...

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Our Keyhole Vegetable Bed: What Worked and What Didn’t Work

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
9 Comments
...did not appreciate the high carbon content of the bagged soil. It would have been better to make my own soil with high quality compost, but I was in a hurry. Clover in the keyhole bed did well and produced some pretty spring flowers. Conclusions Despite my mistakes, I heartily endorse the keyhole bed concept. I’d just make the sides higher and take more time putting the bed together. My neighbor Anne Hars layed her keyhole bed out more ca...

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Don’t be so quick to clean up

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
5 Comments
A lot of magic happens in the “dead” parts of a garden. Flowers gone to seed feed birds. Dead stalks support important insect life–from spiders to pollinators. Fallen leaves and sticks give habitat to lizards and toads and mushrooms and myriads of invisible creatures. Yet dead growth is not attractive to the human eye, and around about this time of year we’re all itching to make a clean sweep of all that brown stuff. I...

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Our Winter Vegetable Garden

Mr. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening, Seeds, Vegetable Gardening
6 Comments
...Rapa Novantina” I grow this every year. It’s basically my favorite vegetable–much more flavorful and easier to grow than broccoli. Spigariello broccoli. A large plant resembling kale. You eat the leaves and flowers. Used in “Minestra Nera” or “Black Soup,” which consists of this vegetable and cannelini beans. More info here. Fava and bush peas I’ve rotated in legumes in the bed we grew tomatoes in during the s...

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How To Design a Garden Step I: Identifying Goals

Mr. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening
7 Comments
...eas about what our garden should provide: solace and comfort a place to meditate food habitat for insects and birds beauty a place to sit and hang out with friends a place to sit and work with a laptop space for our chickens flowers for bees space for native plants areas that are semi-wild and not often visited  space for the composting Think and meditate on your goals before drawing up a plan.  And for those of us in the urban homesteading m...

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Bagrada, The Bad News Bug

Homegrown Neighbor
Gardening, Pests
5 Comments
...s, so that is a good thing. It seems to help at least. But after a few days of no beetles, the population seems to explode again. When the populations get too big I’ve been spraying with neem. But I never spray near the flowers that the bees like the best. So it’s quite a challenge, since the bees are all over. I’ve decided to try to spray only after dark now, when the bees have gone to bed. UC Riverside Center for Invasive Spec...

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Why we love fennel

Mrs. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
10 Comments
Fennel is an invasive plant, and there are plenty of fennel haters out there, many of them our friends, but every year we let a stand or two of wild fennel take root in our yard anyway. We just had to pause now, while the fennel is high, to say that we love it, because it is hardy and beautiful and grows with no water and no encouragement. Feral fennel bulbs aren’t as good as cultivated bulbs for eating, but we eat the flowers, the fronds...

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Make a Brigid’s Cross

Mrs. Homegrown
Design, Domesticus, How-to
6 Comments
A little cross hanging on our chicken coop Spring is here. In LA, it’s definitely in full swing, but I suspect even in more northerly places folks may notice a slight change in the air, or find early flowers like snowdrops or crocuses pushing their way through the snow. Spring is stirring. To celebrate spring this year, I made a few Brigid’s crosses to hang in the house and out on the chicken coop. They’re protective s...

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