Search Results for: label/native plants

318 results

A Review of Masanobu Fukuoka’s Sowing Seeds in the Desert

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Miscellaneous, Permaculture, Reviews
4 Comments
...et bombing these areas with seed pellets (a how-to for making seed pellets is included in an appendix). And the content of those seed balls? Whatever will re-vegetate the landscape most effectively regardless of whether those plants are native or not in order to achieve what Fukuoka calls a “second Genesis.” As he puts it, I would mix the seeds of all plants–forest trees, fruit trees, perennials, vegetables, grasses and legumes&...

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Mandrake!

Mr. Homegrown
Fermentation, Food
2 Comments
...p during an endless video game inspired broom chase scene). Apparently wherever it appears in the world, mandrake (Atropa mandragora) has always inspired unusual beliefs. Buhner says, Though all indigenous cultures know that plants can speak with humankind, mandrake is almost the only plant from indigenous European practice about which this belief is still extant. Throughout its Christian European history, it has been believed that when mandrake...

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The Three Sisters

Mr. Homegrown
Permaculture, Vegetable Gardening
3 Comments
...anting the Native American three sisters–corn, beans and squash. The three sisters are textbook permaculture, the idea being that the beans nitrogenate the soil and climb up the corn while the squash provides mulch. All plants are useful and you end up with an interdependent, self-sustaining beneficial feedback loop. Some people add a fourth sister, Rocky Mountain bee plant (Cleome serrulata) which attracts pollinating insects for the corn...

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Spreadin’ Seed

Mr. Homegrown
Seeds
3 Comments
The past week was spent feverishly spreading genetic material around. No, we weren’t backstage with Metallica. We’re talking plants. Here’s a few ways we’ve been spinning the genetic biodiversity wheel in the past week: Seed Swaps Yesterday was International Seed Swap Day of Action, sponsored by Food not Lawns. We celebrated the day in Altadena with a bunch of local gardening enthusiasts and countless boxes of seeds. We g...

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Least Favorite Plant: Yellow Oleander (Thevetia peruviana)

Mr. Homegrown
Least Favorite Plant
29 Comments
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 chang...

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Greywater Fed Tomato Plant Takes Over The World

Homegrown Neighbor
Water and Power, Water Conservation
7 Comments
Homegrown Neighbor Here: So a few months ago Mr. Homegrown helped me install a simple ‘laundry to landscape’ greywater system. Most of the plants that get watered by the system didn’t get much water before and were just barely surviving. There are several fruit trees, a rhubarb plant and an assortment of perennial herbs lining a narrow strip of land along the side of the house. Now, the plants getting fed by the greywater are...

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Foraging Walk in Los Angeles on February 25th

Mrs. Homegrown
Events
RLeave a comment
...gn, Jefferson and Hetzler, http://g.co/maps/vf2j5 This unique forage will be a two hour informally guided walk through  the spontaneous and cultivated vegetation of our urbanscape. Along the walk, we will learn to identify plants and hear their botanical histories, stories of their cultural usages, animal usages, and human usages. Come share in the experiential, medicinal, magical, and uber-local properties of Los Angeles’s native pla...

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How To Design a Garden Step I: Identifying Goals

Mr. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening
7 Comments
Food, beauty and habitat. Garden design does not come naturally to me. I’ve made plenty of mistakes and continue to make them. One of the biggest of those mistakes is thinking of a garden as a collection of plants. Designing this way leads to lots of money wasted at the nursery and a garden that looks like a hoarder’s living room. Trust me, after years of misguided gardening design, your first step should be to identify goal...

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Dry Farming

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening, Water and Power, Water Conservation
19 Comments
...water risks we’d all do well to consider ways to grow edibles without supplemental irrigation. This may sound absurd at first, but I’ll note that in our garden we’ve discovered, quite by accident, that many plants such as prickly pear cactus, cherry tomatoes, cardoon and pomegranates will do just fine in a climate where it doesn’t rain for six months out of the year.  Scott Kleinrock at the Huntington Ranch proved that yo...

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Rain- The Best Gift of All

Homegrown Neighbor
rainwater harvesting
14 Comments
...it around to a few different spots. I have five 55 gallon barrels set up so far. Rainwater really helps flush out salts that can build up in the soil (an issue here in the West) and unlike tap water there is no chlorine. The plants just love the rain water. I also planted beet, carrot and onion seeds right before the rain. They are now starting to sprout....

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