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...

Read…

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...

Read…

So Cal Alert: Polyphagus Shot Hole Borer

Mrs. Homegrown

June 15, 2015

Fruit Trees, Gardening, Insects, Trees

10 Comments

...r is merely upping the stakes. Keep in mind that a mature tree needs to be watered such that the water penetrates to a depth of two or three feet. That’s no quick sprinkle with a hose! Visit the Inland Urban Forest Council to download a PDF about how to properly water your trees. Also, we might suggest that this is a great time to install a laundry to landscape graywater system. Many thanks to our excellent arborist, Nick Araya of Tree Care LA, wh...

Read…

Midnight in the Desert

Mr. Homegrown

October 25, 2018

Thoughtstylings

3 Comments

...ossible objects such as 1943 Roosevelt dimes. During a commercial break on Water’s first appearance on Coast to Coast, listeners started searching the area around Ellensberg on an early internet satellite service called Terraserver. Mysteriously, Water’s property seemed to have been blacked out. Bell later claimed to have heard of military activity around Ellensberg. After his last appearance in December of 2002, claiming to have found another hol...

Read…

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...

Read…