California Buckwheat

Here’s a plant SurviveLA would like to see in more Southern California gardens. California buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum foliolosum) has multiple uses–it provides cover and nectar for animals, grows with almost no water, and best of all it produces edible seeds. We’ve gathered the seeds we’ve found in fields and baked it into bread and added it to cereal to both boost nutritional value and to add a nutty flavor. The local and resourceful Tong...

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Growing Potatoes in Tires

...Chris, is to dig trenches and mound up earth around the base of the potato plant as it grows. We’ve planted earlier this year, to see if our potatoes will do better in Southern California’s mild spring weather. One disadvantage to this earlier planting might be all the rain we get in January and February. Soggy soil can cause the potatoes to rot before they start growing. We’ll keep our fingers crossed–we’ve had a streak of bad luck with our plant...

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Polyculture

...r hose. Both are preferable to standing around with a garden hose, and the plants like it a lot better too. FYI, plants prefer occasional deep soakings to brief daily showers. However, while the seeds were sprouting and delicate we did water from above with a hose set on gentle sprinkle. Not knowing all of the habits of these plants, many of which are from growitalian.com, we just threw them all in to see what would happen. When the coldest nights...

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Tour de Crap

...Crap, a Bike Winter event which featured a tour of the Hyperion Treatment Plant. The photo above shows some intrepid cyclists who have traded their bike hats and helmets for hard hats and hair nets in order to enjoy the sight of a pile of poo soaked condoms in Hyperion’s odoriferous headworks building. Everybody should have to tour their treatment plant and meet the nice folks who deal, literally, with our own crap. Maybe then people would decide...

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Saturday Tweets: Thanksgiving Weekend Edition

...ned – Urban Digs Farm https://t.co/8HWF4jgCVL pic.twitter.com/826NcJzCe2 — Urban Agriculture (@UrbanAgRRicult) November 28, 2015 HGVs: designed for the open motorway & inexplicably now commonplace on crowded city streets. pic.twitter.com/DqpIhb3F7o HT @Cycle_Kix — KarlOnSea (@KarlOnSea) November 28, 2015 How do I get my agapanthus to flower? @AlysFowler has the answer #askalys https://t.co/hBbUMnainM pic.twitter.com/y4KdI1toNB — Guardian gardening...

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