Search Results for: label/pests

37 results

A Bustle In Your Hedgerow: California Natives for your Vegetable Garden

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Native Plants, Pests
8 Comments
...n a lot of the relationships these sorts of books tout. What makes intuitive sense to me, however, is that biodiversity in in a garden can create habitat for beneficial insects and birds that can help keep our edibles free of pests. For thousands of years in Northern Europe that biodiversity was maintained through the use of hedgerows. Now, thanks to a study conducted by UC Santa Cruz researchers Tara Pisani Gareau and Carol Shennan, we’ve...

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Polyculture

Mr. Homegrown
Permaculture
11 Comments
...one plot all year long. SurviveLA’s Impetuous Salad Bed Now the SurviveLA bed is not so well organized, because we don’t know as much as these permaculture folks, but it has been very successful so far, meaning no pests, no weeds, low watering, and tons of salad. This bed was started in October, as soon as the weather had decidedly shifted toward the cool. In LA, it makes sense to grow tender salad greens and the like in the winter, w...

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Whiteflies

Mr. Homegrown
Pests
2 Comments
The upside to garden pests and diseases is getting to do a little amateur backyard science. Any excuse to mix up a martini, pull out the microscope and take a close look at things and we’re all over it. This week’s happy hour entomology comes thanks to a infestation of white flies living on the underside of our tree collards. I believe the specific culprit pictured above is the greenhouse whitefly, Trialeurodes vaporariorum which, de...

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Parkway Plantings

Mr. Homegrown
Vegetable Gardening
1 Comment
...orth bed we have: Broccoli Rabe – Cima di Rapa Novantina, which matures in 55 to 80 days and Cima di Rapa Quarantina, which matures in 32 to 35 days. Broccoli is somewhat difficult to grow and requires vigilance to keep pests under control, and frequent fertilizer applications (organic, of course). The faster growing Quarantina, is easier to grow since the crop is produced faster and bugs have less time to munch on it. We grew both of these...

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The Green Cone

Mr. Homegrown
Composting
RLeave a comment
...l. The Green Cone, supposedly digests all kitchen waste including meat, fish, bones, animal waste, and dairy products, items not recommended in most compost piles due to the fact that they smell bad while decomposing, attract pests, and could possibly transmit Salmonella and E. coli bacteria if used on food crops. The green cone is, however, not a composter and the end result should not be used as garden compost due to the fact that home compost...

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On the Many Frustrations of Gardening: Pierce’s Disease

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Mistakes
17 Comments
...rous borders it’s bound to show up someday. Might as well get ready. Gardening is a humbling lesson in evolutionary biology. It’s all about survival of the fittest. Work with evolution by selecting for immunity to pests and disease and you’ll harvest the rewards. Resistance is futile. More info at piercesdisease.org. If any of you readers know of a comprehensive list of resistant varieites for California please leave a link in t...

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Nopales Season

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Foraging, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
6 Comments
...ke with the boiled chopped nopales. Fry up in a pan and you’ve got a delicious side dish. One of the charms of the prickly pear cactus, in addition to the food it provides, is its ability to survive drought and fend off pests. Sadly, it’s not as indestructible as it seems. The cactus moth, Cactoblastis cactorum was introduced into the Caribbean in the 1950s and has slowly worked its way to Florida and Mexico. It may soon reach Texas a...

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Maggots!

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Gardening
RLeave a comment
...fill up, Becky would transfer the contents to the next bin, thus aerating the pile and creating room for additional materials. This aeration, combined with making sure to keep the pile moist produced a hot pile that kept the pests away and produced a high quality compost in a relatively short period of time – a few months. You can find instructions on how to build this type of compost system with used pallets on this web site. Other compos...

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Avocados

Mr. Homegrown
Fruit Trees, Gardening
12 Comments
...t. So if you dig a hole and fill it with water and that water sticks around for a day, plant something else. Avocados use a lot of zinc and may need supplemental applications of zinc sulfate placed in shallow holes. What few pests avocados have can be sprayed off with a hose.  Occasional deep waterings flush out chlorides in the soil that can cause leaves to turn brown at the tips and poor fruit production. In fact if the first rain of the seaso...

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Butterfly Barrier Failure

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Pests
21 Comments
...sity in the garden I’m liking the biodiversity option the best. Planting a bunch of brassicas is like opening an all you can eat buffet for cabbage leaf worms. Our backyard has more biodiversity and fewer problems with pests. I used better (homemade) compost  in the raised beds in the backyard, thus the soil in these beds also has greater microbial biodiversity...

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