Moringa!

September 14, 2006

...with green peas and potato. Some organizations are promoting this miracle plant as a way to deal with malnutrition, since its ability to tolerate drought while still producing edible leaves makes it highly desirable. We like plants like this that have multiple purposes, since in addition to food and medicine the attractive Moringa tree also provides shade. The goal that we have set for the new SurviveLA landscaping is that every plant must have m...

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Growing Watermelons

Mr. Homegrown

September 4, 2008

Gardening

10 Comments

...es, with almost no chance of a fall freeze, I’ve begun in the past year to plant early varieties of most vegetables simply because there is less time for bad things to happen. 3. Watermelon is a living mulch. Watermelon, an enormous vine, makes an excellent living mulch, snaking, as it does, amongst our tomatoes and okra. I’ve laid down a layer of straw as mulch, but the watermelon adds a little more to the shade and water retention effort. 4. Irr...

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Borage (Borago officinalis)

Mr. Homegrown

March 30, 2009

Gardening, Herbal Medicine, Herbs, Vegetable Gardening

9 Comments

...nd have a refreshing cucumber like taste. Borage is an annual herb that we plant in the late fall here in Los Angeles for an early spring bloom, but in most other parts of North America you’ll plant it in the spring after the last frost. Ours survived a winter outbreak of aphids, but is now thriving. We toss the flowers and leaves into salads as a flavoring. In fact we enjoyed a memorable borage spiked salad on a recent Greyhound bus trip to Las V...

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Tomato Review #2 Banana Legs – it don’t look like a banana and it don’t got legs

Mr. Homegrown

August 4, 2008

Gardening, Tomatoes, Vegetable Gardening

6 Comments

...mewhat ugly looking. We also made the dumb, lazy mistake of not caging the plant and it sprawled helplessly over the sides of the planter, probably reducing our yield. Here’s the way we normally cage our tomatoes when we’re not too busy blogging. You can also check out Bruce F’s nice staking system for his rooftop garden in Chicago. Verdict: we gotta get some of those Power’s Heirloom seeds next season, but I’ll save a few of the Banana Legs seeds...

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A Cheap Soil Testing Service

Mr. Homegrown

September 22, 2009

Gardening, Soil

7 Comments

...y of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Plant and Soil Sciences Soil and Plant Tissue Testing Laboratory. A standard soil test is $9, $4 more for the standard test plus organic matter. The standard tests includes heavy metals. That’s a bargain, and you don’t have to be a resident of Massachusetts. They also offer compost, fertilizer and plant tissue tests at reasonable prices. Read a review of UMASS soil testing by master gardener Amy Thompson a...

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