Saturday’s Quote: Spring

  NOTHING is so beautiful as spring—      When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;      Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush    Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring    The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;           The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush      The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush    With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         &...

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Book Review: Attracting Native Pollinators: The Xerces Society Guide to Conserving North American Bees and Butterflies and Their Habitat

...et a conversation going about creating more habitat for pollinators in public spaces. Los Angeles is full of space that could be planted with drought tolerant, flowering plants to replace the thousands of acres of lawn (mowed weeds, really) and Home Depot hedges. Think about the habitat we could create with all those barren parkways. Who’s in to help? Let’s pollinate a revolution....

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Growing Greens Under Fruit Trees

In the photo above is Scott Kleinrock showing off a section of the edible garden he designed at the Huntington Gardens. At first glace it looks like a lot of weeds, but it’s a clever idea: growing greens in the understory of fruit trees. In this picture, which was taken last weekend, you see a field of: mallow daikon radish arugula mustard  vetch calendula cabbage Except for the vetch, which helps build soil, all are edible and nutrit...

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Weed Eating Italian Style

Here at Homegrown Revolution we’re big proponents of eatin’ your weeds, which is why we were delighted to stumble upon an article on virtualitalia.com that contains a couple of weed recipes including dandelion egg salad and stinging nettle lasagna. As the article points points out Italians are one of only a few Western cultures that still actively forage. Spring approaches and with it a free salad bar and produce section just waiting...

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Piet Oudolf’s Enhanced Nature

...of the flowers Native Californians encouraged have edible bulbs or foliage. Criticisms Oudolf’s work is cutting edge and by his own admission there are problems–such as maintenance workers confusing plantings for weeds. Kelly and I also debated how much this book can be used to understand small residential spaces–I found the ideas helpful, but most of the photographs are of large public gardens. And the plant lists are of no he...

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Nitrogen Deposition

...n California, and is fertilizing our wildlands . . . While growers and gardeners may appreciate this free fertilizer, it promotes the growth of weedy species in our forests, shrublands, deserts and grasslands. The invasion of weeds is a huge problem for maintenance of our fragile biodiversity, which is already impacted by development.” The photo above shows the leaves of some of the bean plants at the SurviveLA compound. We believe that the dark...

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What To Do With Old Vegetable Seeds

...p. Fukuoka has some tips in his book The Natural Way of Farming for creating a semi-wild vegetable garden: Include nitrogen fixers (in my case some clover seeds) Use daikon and other radishes to break up hard soil Sow before weeds emerge Scott Kleinrock has used the same strategy at the Huntington Gardens. Here’s what his semi-wild vegetable garden, growing in the understory of some small fruit trees, looked like in January of this year:...

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Waiting for our tomatoes/Tomatoland

...tomatoes are grown. Are they better than Florida tomatoes, which are coaxed reluctantly from nitrogen-free sand beds, with massive inputs of chemical fertilizers and pesticides? …they must be protected from competitive weeds, disease spores, and especially nematodes, which thrive in Florida. Growers have a ready solution to these problems. They kill everything in the soil. To do so, they fumigate the beds with methyl bromide*, one of...

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