Search Results for: label/native plants/page/4/2011/04/making-it

857 results

Earth Building Classes!

Avatar photo
Events
...chool at their Farm. All of the adobes were made on site by students using native soil, and they’ve been baking bread and making pizza with ingredients grown on-site! It was great to work with such an enthusiastic group – cooking with dirt is more than mud pies! Got something going on?: Drop us a line! We’re anxious to hear about new projects, preservation efforts, classes and folks doing recreational or professional adobe work in California. Ther...

Read…

Vegetable Gardening for the Lazy

Avatar photo
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
13 Comments
...lianthus tuberosus). A member of the sunflower family, this North American native produces an edible tuber that, while hard to clean, is worth the effort. It’s invasive which, from the perspective of the martini swilling gardener, is a plus since it means never having to propagate more. We planted ours in the spring from tubers we picked up in the produce section of our local market, Trader Joes. You may be able to find Jerusalem Artichioke at fan...

Read…

Phytoremediation of Heavy Metals

Avatar photo
Gardening, Lead
13 Comments
...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...

Read…

Getting Hardscaping Right

Avatar photo
Garden Design, Gardening, Mistakes
14 Comments
...good one. Get the hardscaping done first, do it right and be bold. Putting plants in first and then building things like decks and seating areas is a recipe for disaster. Any construction project, even carefully done, causes a considerable amount of destruction. Some other lessons I’ve learned from fifteen years worth of hardscaping mistakes at our house: Design the hardscaping before even thinking about plants. Open the wallet and get quality mat...

Read…

Pee on your Compost

Avatar photo
Composting
1 Comment
...t a bladder infection. Urine should be diluted before applying directly to plants since salts in your pee can build up in the soil. Dilution should be at least 10 parts water to one part urine. Peeing directly on plants can burn them as anyone who owns a dog already knows about. Urine is easiest to apply to non-food crops, though it’s perfectly safe to use on fruit trees and bushes. Applying it to root crops is more controversial, and frankly seem...

Read…