Favorite Plants- New Zealand Spinach

...rowing wild among the rocks right along the ocean, so it can handle saline soils. This is a very robust plant. It tolerates drought, bugs, salt and poor soil. And it does much better in heat than true spinach which just bolts in Southern California’s heat. New Zealand spinach can be grown in the summer when other greens may not grow so well. My front garden be is pretty much all New Zealand spinach now. The drip watering system broke and most of t...

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Straw Bale Garden Part V: Growing Vegetables

...ooms indicates that well rotted straw bales are more like the kind healthy soil that supports a web of soil organisms that, in turn, help vegetables grow. Some of the plants, like this winter squash, I planted as seedlings. Others, like this cucumber, I sowed directly into the bales by making a little hole and putting in the seed with some home made seedling mix. Again, the vegetables in the bales are doing better than veggies in my two remaining...

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Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land

...right up into the present, humans have been cleverly managing their water, soil and plants to gather harvests from some of the most inhospitable places on the planet. We have much to learn from them. Over and over he points out that we’re not meant to replicate the exact methods of these desert farmers, but learn from them and adapt them to our own particular situation and climate. To help us do this, he breaks down the methodologies into conceptu...

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Saturday Linkages: Soils, Prickly Pear and the Case for Going Outside

Soil diagram from the Garden Professors. Let’s get (soil) physical… https://sharepoint.cahnrs.wsu.edu/blogs/urbanhort/Lists/Posts/ViewPost.aspx?ID=943 … The Science Behind Honey’s Eternal Shelf Life http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/08/the-science-behind-honeys-eternal-shelf-life/#.Uh0YB1lfCUw.twitter … Open Tech Forever: permaculture/open tech startup: http://boingboing.net/2013/08/21/open-tech-forever-permacultur.html … DIY Hanging D...

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Grubs in your acorns? Meet Curcuio, or the Acorn Weevil

.... Once they fall to the forest floor, they hurry to bury themselves in the soil before something comes along and eats them. If they make it, they take a multiyear nap underground (I’ve read anywhere from 1-5 years). They don’t eat, but they somehow metamorphose into their adult beetle form. When they wake one fine summer day, they crawl out of the soil, mate soon after, and start the process all over again. There’s some points to be taken here for...

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