Our Favorite Searches

...refrigeration would probably prevent it from fermenting as it’s supposed to. Comrades, it’s time to overcome your food safety paranoias! “Accidentally flushed tampon applicator” Our favorite search phrase, and in fact something we’ve witnessed first hand when we paid a visit to a sewage treatment plant back in February....

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Anagallis monellii : A New Favorite

...gallis monellii “Blue Pimpernel” in a bed of mixed flowers and herbs. This plant is neither edible or medicinal, but we hoped the bees would like its many blue flowers. Anagallis monellii is a Mediterranean native, so it is well suited to the California climate, and it follows that it does not need much water. It is perennial in zones 9 to 11 (that’s us), but can be grown as an annual elsewhere. If you see Anagallis monellii without blooms, it is...

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Satan’s House Plant: More on Asparagus setaceus/plumosus

...Photo by Mr. Subjunctive It seems like we hit a raw nerve with our mention of one of our least favorite plants, Asparagus setaceus. Just in a case you’d like to know more about this demonic plant, Mr. Subjunctive, a garden center employee with a fantastic blog, Plants are the Strangest People, has a detailed post about Asparagus setaceus (apparently also known as Asparagus plumosus)....

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Garden Design Trends: Interplanting and Plant Communities

...ideo of that garden here. Rosalind Creasy has demonstrated, this same interplanting strategy can be used with edible and medicinal plants. Another related design strategy are gardens inspired by wild plant communities. The example Rainer cites is the Daily Telegraph garden seen in the picture above. You can watch a video about that garden here. Now how do I get Sarah Price to redo our backyard? Have you seen a new garden you really like in the pas...

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Straw Bale Garden Part IV: Almost Ready to Plant?

...checked, however, suggest that this is hot enough. The test will be when I plant seedlings. If they end up stunted, I’ll know that I did not let the bales compost long enough. One problem I had with the conditioning process is that the straw on most of my bales was oriented with the stem sides facing the wide (vertical) side of the bale. This made it difficult to get the blood meal into the bales. One or two of the bales had the straw oriented wit...

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