Bidens rebuttal

November 8, 2016

...busy cloud of insects buzzing around this mystery plant: honeybees, little native bees and flies and these tiny orange-ish moths that I’ve never seen before. Good pollinator plants remind me of space stations (the kind in movies, that is): complex structures full of vehicles of different sizes approaching, docking, departing, filling the airspace with frantic activity all the day long.This was definitely a good pollinator plant, an important sourc...

Read…

Capparis spinosa – Capers

Mr. Homegrown

October 30, 2007

Gardening

6 Comments

...ants that belong in a climate similar to your part of the world. We’re not native plant fascists and will gladly source plants from other similar climates, but we don’t believe in nursing sickly plants that can’t take our heat, or need lots of water. This season we’ve pledge not to be tempted by the allure of the seed catalogs. We’re going to grow edible and useful plants that thrive in Mediterranean places. Thankfully that includes a lot of inter...

Read…

What is green water?

Mrs. Homegrown

December 10, 2015

Back to the Garden, Gardening, Water Conservation

1 Comment

...on our land, and let them return to the soil. Mulch is is vital to living soil, while bare soil is dead soil. We make our yards lush. Soil life occurs around the root zones of plants, so more plants means better soil. We plant trees, which the founder of TreePeople, Andy Lipkis, calls “living cisterns.”...

Read…

Plants: When to Hold Them, When to Fold Them

Mr. Homegrown

October 24, 2012

Gardening

17 Comments

...gs are flowing.” The best gardeners I know don’t suffer the attachments to plants that I do. They are much more ruthless. If a tree is in the wrong place it gets cut down. If two plants are too close together, one gets ripped out. What Pierce’s disease looks like. I’m trying to get the hang of this lack of attachment. This fall I get to rip out a grape vine that has graced our entrance arbor for a few years now. It’s a muscat of Alexandria that pr...

Read…

More boneheaded plant representations from Hollywood

Mrs. Homegrown

January 4, 2016

Gardening, Nature Awareness, Thoughtstylings

11 Comments

...designer shoes and footballs do. This is why it is fine to be stupid about plants, because nobody cares about plants, and we have lost every last vestige of plant literacy. I don’t think this is a case of me being picky. I’m not being a plant geek here, pointing out some minutiae of botany. I’m talking about the misuse of really common plants that people do know, or should know. Ferns, for example, are a plant that even the most determinedly unint...

Read…