Will the Lawn Rebate Turn LA into a Gravel Moonscape?

March 9, 2015

...nintended consequences! Drought conditions here in California prompted our water utilities to offer rebates for ripping out water hungry lawns. Unfortunately, as Ivette Soler has pointed out in a blog post, “The Road to Hell is Paved with Chunky Gravel and Indifferently Chosen Plants,” unscrupulous “landscapers” are taking those rebates and installing gravel and mulch moonscapes. It’s an education problem. For most people plants are a sort of gree...

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Our Disastrous Summer Garden

Mr. Homegrown

September 15, 2015

Fruit Trees, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

37 Comments

...ed by climate change. Drought, of course, made everything worse. We had to water our already alkaline soil with alkaline water. Only the native plants and what we call the Biblical plants seem happy (e.g. the fig and the pomegranate). The drought and an extreme heat wave pushed everything in the garden to the edge–and a few over the edge: in the last month we abruptly lost some garden stalwarts, including a rosemary bush and a culinary sage. Despi...

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Saturday Linkages: Paleo Flour, Viking Tents and Chinese Cabbage as the New Kale

Mr. Homegrown

September 19, 2015

Saturday Linkages

1 Comment

...rootsimple) September 15, 2015 We'd be in so much trouble if sparkling water were bad for us-fortunately, the myths are busted here: http://t.co/qCjJAWRxDB — Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 15, 2015 What the Sale of Niman Ranch Could Mean for Farmers https://t.co/TjwwQuSWDr via @CivilEats — Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 15, 2015 Pizza receipt warns of labyrinth, minotaur via @BoingBoing http://t.co/JJs45cDDz9 — Root Simple (@rootsimp...

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How to Remove Bees from a Wall

Mr. Homegrown

October 5, 2015

Animals, Bees

4 Comments

...To do this we sprayed the bees with a sugar syrup made with a 50/50 mix of water and white sugar. This keeps the bees busy cleaning themselves so that you can gently brush them into a dust pan and transfer them into their new bee box. Some people use specially adapted vacuums to suck the bees off the comb and out of cavities. You have to be careful if you do this as it’s easy to injure the bees. Once the comb and as many stray worker bees as you c...

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Planting in a Post-Wild World

Mrs. Homegrown

October 19, 2015

Back to the Garden, Garden Design, Gardening

25 Comments

...vention that traditional gardens. A beautiful wild meadow doesn’t need our water and weed killer, after all, and we have to ask just why that is. We can’t hope to match Nature in her complexity and wisdom, but we can mimic her ways as best we can. So this is not just a matter of letting your existing plantings run wild. This is a well-thought out and carefully executed design process. Rainer and West do a fantastic job of breaking the task down in...

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