Search Results for: label/lawns

53 results

Greywater Precautions

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Water Conservation
2 Comments
...ation by contact with contaminated water is low. Do not apply greywater to lawns (lawns are evil anyways) or to the foliage of any plant as this can cause a microorganism growth party. Remember that greywater is treated by moving through soil. Greywater tends to be alkaline, so avoid using greywater on acid loving plants such as citrus, ferns and other forest plants (pretty much anything that grows in the shade). Occasionally irrigate your plants...

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The Manzanita Miracle, or, why you should love native plants if you live in a dry climate

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Gardening, Native Plants
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...’s true, in that they don’t act like typical imported landscape plants–the lawns and the boxwood hedges. They don’t need even a fraction of the water as exotics do, so they are almost always overwatered, and die as a result. I think it is hard for us to even imagine that plants can be so profoundly unthirsty, because we are so accustomed to babying along lawns and other needy plants. We might water our hypothetical manzanitas every two to three we...

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A Warning About Straw

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Animals, Chickens, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
12 Comments
...icide/herbacide residues. Clopyralid is an example–while banned for use in lawns in many places it’s still allowed on hay and grain crops . All the more reason to grow your own mulch and carbon materials if you can–don’t throw out those fall leaves! Here’s what Polyparadigm says: “I’m glad I read through to the end! I was thinking this would be a warning about clopyralid and its close cousins. Which bears some mention: Halogenated pesticides aren’...

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The Unintended Consequences of Water Conservation

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Gardening
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...ng restrictions and cut off irrigation to parks and other city properties. Lawns are brown and trees are dying. Back in May, two University of California Cooperative Extension horticulturalists, Donald Hodel and Dennis Pittenger issued a provocative position paper “9%: Perspective on the California drought and landscape water use” that argues that these restrictions have been short sighted. In addition to the amenities and benefits we would lose b...

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Will the Lawn Rebate Turn LA into a Gravel Moonscape?

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Gardening
14 Comments
...prompted our water utilities to offer rebates for ripping out water hungry lawns. Unfortunately, as Ivette Soler has pointed out in a blog post, “The Road to Hell is Paved with Chunky Gravel and Indifferently Chosen Plants,” unscrupulous “landscapers” are taking those rebates and installing gravel and mulch moonscapes. It’s an education problem. For most people plants are a sort of green background material. Our ancestors could distinguish between...

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