Least Favorite Plant: Yellow Oleander (Thevetia peruviana)

June 2, 2009

Thumbing through a book of toxic and hallucinogenic plants, I finally manged to i.d. the neighbor’s shrub that looms over the staircase to our front door. The popular name given for this plant in the book was “suicide tree”, so named for its use in Sri Lanka, though I’ve found other plants with this same moniker. The scientific name is Thevetia peruviana, and it’s also known as “lucky nut” (can we change that to unlucky nut please?), Be Still Tre...

Read…

Farm in a Box

Mr. Homegrown

June 18, 2009

Aquaculture, Preparedness

11 Comments

...h circulates into the planter box via a pump to provide fertilizer for the plants as well as removing nitrogen and ammonia from the water. From the Earth Solutions website: “By integrating fish with vegetables, naturally balanced aquatic ecosystems are established making it unnecessary to add fertilizer, chemicals or remove nitrogen rich water. As in nature, plants, fish and oxygen loving bacteria create a symbiotic relationship; Fish waste is con...

Read…

Watering 101

Mrs. Homegrown

July 2, 2013

Gardening, How-to, Vegetable Gardening

13 Comments

...dig before you even start watering. You may find you don’t need to water at all. In a regularly watered bed, the deeper you dig, the more retained moisture you are likely to find, but the first few inches dry out fast. Older, deeper rooted plants don’t mind this so much if the top dries out, because they can reach deep for water, but if you’re dealing with young or shallowly rooted plants, you have to be very careful with the first five inches or...

Read…

Least Favorite Plant: Asparagus Fern (Asparagus setaceus)

Mr. Homegrown

April 18, 2009

Least Favorite Plant

49 Comments

Today, a new feature on the blog: least favorite plants. I’ve always thought that it’s more fun to read a bad review than a glowing one, so why not extend the concept to the plant world? But we’re not going to rant about “weeds”, which Ralph Waldo Emerson defined as, “a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” As active foragers we’ve found virtues in what most people think of as weeds, plants like broadleaf plantain and stinging nettle...

Read…

Satan’s House Plant: More on Asparagus setaceus/plumosus

Mr. Homegrown

April 21, 2009

Least Favorite Plant

3 Comments

...Photo by Mr. Subjunctive It seems like we hit a raw nerve with our mention of one of our least favorite plants, Asparagus setaceus. Just in a case you’d like to know more about this demonic plant, Mr. Subjunctive, a garden center employee with a fantastic blog, Plants are the Strangest People, has a detailed post about Asparagus setaceus (apparently also known as Asparagus plumosus)....

Read…