When my kids were little, I bought an odd gardening book from a used book store called The After Dinner Gardening Book, by Richard Langer.* I was curious and had to buy it just to see if it had some ideas for kid-friendly gardening projects that we had not already tried. It was an enjoyable narrative story about the gardening adventures of growing edible plants in an urban East coast apartment, but mainly from leftovers and seeds which were normally…
As most seasoned gardeners know, one of the easiest plants to propagate is the strawberry. It is possible to make only a minimal financial investment and buy just few strawberry plants when getting a bed started, and within a matter of a few short years, have a giant patch of strawberry plants, all clones of the original variety. This is because strawberries send out runners, or stolons, in order to reproduce. This time of year, at least here in…
..out of the 100,000+ member pages at BYC, one of my pages was featured on the homepage of BackyardChickens.com today. When I started out with chickens 4 years ago, there were few resources promoting gardening methods to happily co-exist with pet chickens, other than keeping the chickens locked up all the time. Lots of folks said a pretty garden with free range chickens couldn’t be done; chickens would eventually destroy everything. I learned that isn’t true. In 2009, I decided…
Coastal Southern California, sunset zone 22, is generally not considered an ideal grape growing climate. Nevertheless, we have had great success with a few grape varieties over the last decade and a half. Between my friend across the street and I, we have grown Black Monuka, Fantasy, Glendora, Niabell, Eastern Concord, Canadice, Flame, Perlette, Interlaken, Einset, Marquis, Neptune, NY47616, and Jupiter. More than once during a shift at the CRFG booth at the Green Scene I get asked to recommend…
Having a nice yard and garden as well as eating fresh homegrown produce is something many of us enjoy, including backyard chickens. Here are some of my favorite gardening practices for keeping happy free range chickens and still having a productive garden for the family. Don’t keep more chickens than you really need. The more chickens you have, the more damage you get. I can’t stress this one enough. Fence off the vegetable garden area with permanent fencing. Picket fences…
Hoping to provide refuge and bring more solitary bees, like the native Valley Carpenter Bee, into our yard, the kids and I created homemade carpenter bee houses over the weekend.
Loquats are one of the earliest fruits to ripen around here in the Springtime, usually around March and April, just before the first of the Baba Raspberries. Our Loquat tree is still pretty young, just having started its 4th year in the ground, but it was about 2 years old in a 1 gallon can when it came to live here. Although the tree is still small, we harvested many dozens of loquats this year, which was enough for us…
Well, it turns out, I actually need to deal with it by DOING NOTHING. I was out weeding and deadheading on Wednesday afternoon and I was dismayed to find so many aphids on the new growth of my Mexican Flame Vine, Senecio confusus. My first instinct was to start squishing or get out the high pressure hose nozzle! But after taking a closer look, the vine was also covered in newly emerged tiny lady bug larvae. They discovered the problem…
Although I am pretty adept at gardening, I have to admit that I have made more than my fair share of dumb gardening mistakes. After 15 years at Hanbury House, that list of mistakes has grown pretty long. If someone was to ask me to name the number one worst thing I did on that list, it would have to be when I used black landscape fabric. I used it in the front yard beds near the porch, under the…
I have been getting a number of inquires from other gardeners around the country asking where to buy Bababerry plants. In addition, I am often asked about shipping the potted Baba berry plants I propagate each year from my own Baba Berry patch. Up until recently, I have limited my sales to local gardeners. I really haven’t had a need to ship, since I barely keep up with requests for Babas from Southern California gardeners. But last month, I finally…