Dry Climate Vegetables

...mental irrigation. Here’s a short list of reseeding rogue veggies from our garden that have thrived with just the small burst of rain we got last month. New Zealand Spinach The one I’m most excited about is New Zealand spinach (Tetragonia tetragonioides). It’s reappeared for at lest three years now. And for us it’s much easier to grow than (unrelated) spinach. Fennel Fennel also comes back every year–so much so that if we don’t stay on top of weed...

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Annie’s Annuals and Perennials

...wide areas. Annie’s specializes in riotous color. Many of the spectacular gardens we visited on the Fling sourced their plants from Annie’s. And in addition to unusual and rare ornamental plants, Annie’s has a great selection of edibles. It’s first time I’ve ever seen Oca (Oxalis tuberosa) outside of a book. I had to keep a tight grip on my credit card to prevent myself from buying plants I had no way of getting home on my bike. The good news is...

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Squirrel-Proof Bird Feeder

...um garden. One of a series of posts inspired by our recent tour of the new gardens at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. The Nature Gardens at the NHM are not large by the usual standards of botanical gardens, and they are only about a year old, but they are already rich with bird and insect life. (A poorwill even visited, which apparently caused quite a bit of excitement in the birding community.) This is because the designers chose plants t...

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The High Cost of Golf

...ce to grow their own food. Meanwhile, waiting lists for plots in community gardens grow longer for lack of space. Most neighborhoods, of course, have no community garden at all. According to the City of Los Angeles’ 2006-07 budget, city run golf courses account for 1,500 acres of LA’s meager 8,520 acres of developed park land, meaning that 17% of park land is devoted to wealthy, middle-aged men with a taste for polo shirts and plaid pants. 2. Unfa...

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Did Kelly follow her 2012 resolutions?

...ting this week. Seriously. No, really! -Spend more time outside loving the garden–just being with it, regarding it with joy instead of judgement. This I did not do, which is a real shame. I don’t know what my block is, why the garden is no longer fun, but that is something to ponder. -Learn to identify trees. What a crappy goal. It’s too vaguely stated. All trees? How many trees? I do know a few more trees this year than I did last year. -Take up...

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