Search Results for: label/least favorite plant/page/2/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

926 results

Paper Wasps: Your New BFFs

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Gardening, Insects, Nature Awareness
10 Comments
...opean variant is more the wasp you will likely be dealing with in urban/suburban North America, because unlike their native counterparts, Euro wasps aren’t shy. They are the ones who will build a nest by your back door, or on the side of your mailbox. Paper wasps build those distinctive, easy to recognize papery nests made of many cells. There are other types of native wasps which build with different materials, such as mud. Honeybee colonies, of...

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The Perfect Crisis Vegetable: Prickly Pear Cactus

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Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
9 Comments
...came with the house and another that I picked up a few years ago: Luther Burbank’s spineless variety that, well, isn’t actually spineless. My favorite method for preparing and eating the pads is to scrape them with a knife to remove the spines (you don’t need to peel the skin off). I then chop and boil the pads for five minutes to reduce the sliminess. Then I fry the pads in a pan with onions. You can also just chop the pads and eat them raw in a...

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Whiteflies

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Pests
2 Comments
...eeding. What we could have done better is to have kept a closer eye on our plants. Daily inspection of more sensitive vegetables is always a good idea, but something we’ve been lax about lately. Keeping intensively planted annual vegetable beds close to places of daily activity means being able to stay on top of pest and disease problems. Raised beds we recently installed by the front door are on the path of our early morning amble down to the str...

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Italian Dandelion Redux

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Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
7 Comments
...an army of aphids, the Italian Dandelion seems immune to both pest and disease. And, nearby, volunteer mallow hints at a spring of easy foraging. Horace was on to something. And to all who responded to my call for urban homesteaders: I’m overwhelmed by the response (and the emails!). You are all an incredible inspiration and, like my botanical friend Cichorium intybus, a sign of abundance in the midst of adversity....

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