Mystery Weed Identified: Geranium Molle

February 4, 2014

...nter. It’s Geranium molle. Readily pollinated by hymenoptera, Geranium molle has two popular names: Dovefoot Geranium and Awnless Geranium. Native to the Mediterranean, it was introduced to North America. The Plants for a Future database has a reference to the use of Geranium molle on wounds (Glossary of Indian Medicinal Plants). Other than that, it’s not an exciting plant from a human perspective....

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Tomato Grafting Fail

Mr. Homegrown

September 26, 2016

Gardening, Tomatoes

7 Comments

...ng a greenhouse within which to create a “healing chamber” for the grafted plants would have made the process much easier. Since I have no space or desire to build a greenhouse I’m, most likely, going to give up on attempting to graft my own tomatoes. I did this project out of a geeky sense of fun but it resulted in a summer with no homegrown tomatoes and that’s a life not worth living. A better project, for our climate, would be to figure out how...

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Least Favorite Plant: Yellow Oleander (Thevetia peruviana)

Mr. Homegrown

June 2, 2009

Least Favorite Plant

31 Comments

...“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 Tree (presumably because you’ll be still if you eat any of it), and yellow oleander (it’s a relative of Southern California’s favorite freeway landscaping flower). I was able to dig up a research study on what the...

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The Theme of a Great Garden

Mr. Homegrown

March 21, 2014

Garden Design, Gardening

6 Comments

...ggested through dramatic, rough stonework and the use of California native plants. The garden feels as if exists in a time before humans. It got me wondering how thematics would play out in a more modest home landscape. Perhaps, when it comes time to design a garden it would be useful to toss around a few abstract words and ideas to help unify the design vocabulary of the garden. Picking a theme or several related themes could make it easier when...

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A Prickly Harvest

Mr. Homegrown

August 3, 2007

Gardening

3 Comments

...the perfect plant for the lives of folks too busy to tend fussy non-native plants. On the first anniversary of Homegrown Revolution, formerly known as SurviveLA, and a year after our last prickly pear fruit harvest season, we can now announce why, ironically, we’ve been too busy to keep up with our vegetable beds–next spring the good folks at Process Media will be releasing our book The Urban Homesteader. While we’ve been negligent in some of the...

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