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 feel a automatic coop door opener is a must have for every urban chicken keeper, especially if your spouse, like mine, is not too keen about being woken up at dawn everyday by hens anxious about getting on with their business for the day. However, getting power to a coop can be a challenge and some of the battery powered or solar powered automatic door openers can be very expensive. I stumbled on to this nifty automatic coop door…
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…
Sand vs. Shavings is one of those things, each chicken keeper has their own personal preference, based on their run situation and location of their coop. In 2008 when I was in the planning stages of building my chicken coop, a few individuals in the online chicken community were heavily promoting the use of sand in a chicken run. They made it sound like the best thing since sliced bread. None of my chicken keeping resource books mentioned using it as…
Burclover is a commonly used name for two prickly invasive clovers, Black Medic Medicago lupulina and California Burclover Medicago polymorpha. Since the beginning of the last drought we had, probably around 2007, my neighborhood has slowly been overtaken by burclover. It is the tiny clover looking plant with yellow flowers and then prickly spiral shaped seed pods that stick to beach towels, picnic blankets, and dog fur. I have been hand pulling it from the beginning, not wanting to resort…
Now that our wet season is pretty much over, it is time to switch back to gray watering in the in the back yard garden. For a little over 5 years we have been using some of the water from our washer machine to irrigate part of the backyard. During most of that time, the washer machine water was just sent out through a hole I haphazardly made in the laundry room window and into a homemade surge tank. I…
How loud are ducks? At 6AM, when I am trying to enjoy a few extra minutes of sleep, they seem really loud. The quaking started shortly after dawn this morning. At first is was a soft quacking. Then all 3 joined in. The snails and slugs are in plague like proportions right now and at one point, the ducks must have been celebrating when they discovered the bounty within the agapanthus. As a urban homesteader, this would not be that…
George, the dog, did a lot of damage to the Baba patch back in January and for a long time the patch looked like it would have a hard time recovering. When the warm weather returned in late February and early March, the roots started to send up lots of new canes, even where George did some of the worst digging. Fortunately, there were enough 1 year old canes remaining that we are getting some Spring fruit already, not just…
Some gardeners save “heirloom” and non-hybrid seed from special plants. I don’t consider myself one of those conscientious gardeners, only rarely saving seed from some of my favorite perennials. However, I often have packets of vegetable seeds leftover at the end of the season that I didn’t manage to use up or I bought on an impulse and never got around to planting. Seed retailers and growers would like us gardeners to discard out of date seed packets and buy…
In February 2009, I purchased three tiny 4″ goji berry Lycium barbarum plants from a fellow edible plant collector during bare root planting season. At the time, I was reticent to pay a premium for a small plant I knew very little about, and even worse, never tasted. I like collecting edible plants, especially ones that are exotic for Socal backyard gardens, hard to find the fruit sold as organic in stores, or would cost me more than other common…