Saturday Tweets: Squirrels and Other Stuff

January 14, 2017

...anuary 11, 2017 Plants need a social network. Traditional landscaping puts plants in solitary confinement. In this setting, plant lose resiliency #txplants pic.twitter.com/PLK44HpUUh — Thomas Rainer (@ThomasRainerDC) January 11, 2017 Could you make zero trash for 30 days? https://t.co/AeLJT0Bj7M — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 10, 2017 Add Pockets to Any Skirt or Dress Without Ruining the Look https://t.co/sOM8klCneq via @lifehacker — Root Sim...

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening

Mr. Homegrown

February 20, 2014

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

55 Comments

...myself from peat moss, an unsustainable product. Unfortunately, all those bags have to be hauled up thirty steps. As a whole, what we’ve done with our garden is a compromise. Most of the yard is permaculturish: lots of small fruit trees, some native plants, ornamental flowering plants for the wildlife and a whole lot of mulch. But I like to have a few Italian veggies so we’ve got five small raised beds. Did I leave anything off this list of raise...

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Are We Keeping Too Many Bees?

Mr. Homegrown

October 25, 2013

Bees

10 Comments

...honey production will decrease if there are not enough pollinator-friendly plants to meet demand. I’m confused about the article and the quotes from the BLKA. Is the concern about the bees or about having less honey? Focusing on honey can indeed lead to bee overpopulation. Bee populations self-regulate. If there are not enough food sources colonies will die off. That is, unless people are feeding bee colonies sugar to prop them up (and I assume th...

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Defining a Garden’s Purpose

Mr. Homegrown

July 8, 2013

Garden Design, Gardening

13 Comments

...to mean that even folks who eat all their meals at McDonald’s and think of plants as being a kind of green background material are doing a kind of gardening, albeit one that is not helping our planet. What kind of gardening did I see from the train? The photo above sums it up. The most common sight was dead grass and junk storage. In more affluent areas people had lush grass and maybe a pool. Some had vegetable gardens, a few chickens and goats. O...

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Watering 101

Mrs. Homegrown

July 2, 2013

Gardening, How-to, Vegetable Gardening

13 Comments

...dig before you even start watering. You may find you don’t need to water at all. In a regularly watered bed, the deeper you dig, the more retained moisture you are likely to find, but the first few inches dry out fast. Older, deeper rooted plants don’t mind this so much if the top dries out, because they can reach deep for water, but if you’re dealing with young or shallowly rooted plants, you have to be very careful with the first five inches or...

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