Search Results for: label/pruning/page/3/2011/04/making-it/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

894 results

A happy tangle

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Animals, Nature Awareness
2 Comments
...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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Mulch, mulch, mulch!

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Back to the Garden, Garden Design, Gardening, Permaculture, Soil
11 Comments
...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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Loquat season is here!

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Foraging, Fruit Trees
51 Comments
...ng it’s vaguely tropical looking. They don’t seem to require much water or pruning–so they do well under benign neglect, though I’d suspect the fruit is best on trees which are not completely ignored. This is the time of year when the fruit comes ripe, and it’s always kind of an exciting time because the loquats bridge the “fruit gap” between winter citrus and stone fruit. The thing about loquats is that they are really suited only for fresh eatin...

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How to Plant a Fruit Tree

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Fruit Trees, Gardening
5 Comments
...bble–it’s been proven to be not a good idea to amend soil when you’re planting a tree. Other than that, this is how we’ve planted our trees and they’ve all grown well. And I wish that I had done the radical pruning you see at the end of the video. Cutting the tree to knee height will give you a shorter, more manageable tree. You can find more home orcharding videos on the Dave Wilson website....

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