Vertical Micro-Farming

...rds and now this strange setup. They sell the produce at the adjacent farm store. From looking at it I can tell that this setup is meant to utilize vertical space and grow vegetables in a small footprint. Water drips down from the top, irrigating multiple plants on its way down. The plants are not only stacked vertically, but radiate around the central axis, maximizing horizontal space as well. In this photo they are growing hot chili peppers. I a...

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Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Gardening Wisdom

...at a garden should express moods and ideas and not be just a collection of plants or a collection of objects set amidst plants. Finlay’s garden is a poem. While it has a lot of sculpture in it, it’s not what you would call a “sculpture garden” which Finlay speaks despairingly of as little more than an “outdoor art gallery.” A liberal’s compost heap is his castle. Garden centres must become the Jacobin Clubs of the new Revolution. Certain gardens a...

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A Prickly Situation

...thick gloves and scooping out the flesh with a spoon. This is one of those plants that should be everywhere here in Los Angeles. Propagate the plant by cutting off a leaf and sticking it in the ground – it’s simple – no fuss, no pesticides, no watering once established. And note that not all prickly pear varieties produce edible fruit so when you look for cuttings seek out plants that are productive and tasty. It’s the ideal plant for what we call...

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Will the Lawn Rebate Turn LA into a Gravel Moonscape?

...ng 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 hundreds of plants, but that ancestral memory has been hijacked by commercial interests. Now, instead of plant identification skills, we name and distinguish things like cars and mobile devices. If there was a kind of car rebate program that inadvertently replaced BMWs with Pontiac Aztek...

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Phytoremediation of Heavy Metals

...them up as readily. One promising strategy is phytoremediation, the use of plants to uptake heavy metals. youarethecity, in New York, is experimenting with Indian mustard, mugwort, basket willow and sunflowers to remediate a contaminated garden. The results are promising with some metals down 50% in a year. Mugwort (Artimesia vulgaris) did an especially good job with a wide range of contaminants. I should note that Garm Wallace, who runs Wallace L...

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