Help! Small birds are eating us out of house and home!

July 24, 2014

...ldfinch obesity crisis? Our yard does have more natural food sources, like native sunflowers and white sage gone to seed. Perhaps we should have left it at that? ( I suspect we’re not going to win any permaculture awards for our feeder.) Bird people, help! What are your thoughts on feeders? Is it okay to leave the feeder empty sometimes? Does that encourage foraging, or is it just not very nice to be random about the filling? Is there a cheaper al...

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Creating a Moon Garden

Mr. Homegrown

July 17, 2014

Design, Gardening

2 Comments

...s stand out even more. We’re lucky in Southern California to have a lot of native plants with silvery grey leaves (an evolutionary adaption of dry climate plants). Masses of silvery grey leaves stand out well at night. Include a contrasting background. Light colored flowers and plants stand out better at night if they are in front of a dark background–a dark green bush or the shade of a large tree. It’s not all about plants. Including light colore...

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Bidens rebuttal

Mrs. Homegrown

November 8, 2016

Gardening, Least Favorite Plant

5 Comments

...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...

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February 2019 Garden Update

Mr. Homegrown

March 1, 2019

Gardening

5 Comments

...wrong place, too big or just plain ugly. Then plant trees that either feed native wildlife (such as oak) or provide fruit. Think carefully about their placement. Do all hardscaping first and build it out of durable materials. Those retaining walls that failed in the front yard are wood and only lasted 15 years. If you don’t know what your doing hire a professional. It think this would have actually saved money over the years due to hasty and poorl...

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Three California Natives that Double as Culinary Herbs

Mr. Homegrown

January 16, 2017

Gardening

5 Comments

...ild. Towards that end, I thought I’d look at three easy to grow California natives that look great in a garden and double as culinary herbs. White sage (Salvia apiana) If you can grow this one you should. Like most California natives, when used as a culinary herb, it’s much stronger tasting than its cultivated cousins. You need to use it sparingly when cooking with it. Our neighbor has one that made it through our multi-year drought without a drop...

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