Apartment Parking Lot Gardening in East Hollywood

...is that when I leave in the morning I can spend a few moments watering and pruning and picking some delicious tomatoes for lunch and when I come home at night I can repeat the same process . This routine has turned out to be very convenient way of getting my gardening time in during the course of my normal daily routine. Although there is some effort and expense getting started, there is a tremendous amount of satisfaction in growing your own vegg...

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Mulch, mulch, mulch!

...pretty much invisible in a few days. Practice “chop n’ drop”. When you’re pruning bushes or trees, chop up softer trimmings to about 6″ (15 cm) and leave them at the base of the plant. The plant will appreciate it. You can leave woody branches here and there, too, to support beetles and other bugs. (I make little piles of fallen wood, hoping to host lizards, but resign myself to the fact I’m more likely hosting mice. Well, it gives the neighbor’s...

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A happy tangle

...re are some bad bird diseases going around. Scrub it with soap and water and–according to birdish authorities like the Audubon Society–soak it afterward in a 10% bleach solution. I don’t do bleach, so I spray mine down with rubbing alcohol, which I keep in a spray bottle to sterilize my pruning shears. It’s just handy. If I didn’t have that, I’d use vinegar. Clean out your birdbaths, too. You don’t have to bleach them, but change the water regular...

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How to Squirrel Proof Your Fruit Trees

...That’s a lazy blogger’s lie. The truth is that you have to stay on top of pruning, irrigation, fruit thinning, fertilizing and pest prevention if you want to harvest any fruit. After not getting a single peach off our small tree last year due to squirrels, I vowed to do things differently this year. I considered a number of squirrel prevention techniques: Metal collars on trunks. This doesn’t work, especially in urban areas. Squirrels are superb...

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How to Garden With California Natives: Lessons from the 2016 Theodore Payne Garden Tour

...ive chaparral. Spacing can be tricky. You have to pay attention to nursery labels and not plant too far apart or too close together. Not that plants always perform predictably. You have to go back and edit: fill gaps in or take stuff out. The best gardens on the tour got the massing right like the Hessing/Bonfigli garden in Altadena shown in the photo above. Outdoor Rooms My favorite garden on the tour is the Loxton/Clark garden in Pasadena. It’s...

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