Rucola Selvatica A Foglia D’ulivo: the arugula you’ve never heard of

If I could boil down my vegetable gardening advice to one sentence it would probably be: just grow stuff that does well and tastes good. Let some other schmuck fight aphids on those Brussels sprouts. Another bit of advice is that you can never have enough arugula. The stuff at the market is wilted, tasteless crap. Grow your own and you’ve got an incredible diversity of arugula varieties to choose from. This year I grew two varieties from Franchi,...

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How to Garden With California Natives: Lessons from the 2016 Theodore Payne Garden Tour

...ive chaparral. Spacing can be tricky. You have to pay attention to nursery labels and not plant too far apart or too close together. Not that plants always perform predictably. You have to go back and edit: fill gaps in or take stuff out. The best gardens on the tour got the massing right like the Hessing/Bonfigli garden in Altadena shown in the photo above. Outdoor Rooms My favorite garden on the tour is the Loxton/Clark garden in Pasadena. It’s...

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Erik Talks Straw Bales on C-Realm Radio

...podcaster (and, as of last month, radio host) KMO. The topic is straw bale gardening. KMO talks first to straw bale garden expert Joel Karsten. Then I chime in enthusiastically on the topic. I’m followed by gardener and artist Lauren Blair. We’re all sort of an opening act for an entertaining 1990s era recording of Terrance McKenna thoughtstyling about “linguistic objects”. One interesting point that Karsten raises is the issue of persistent herbi...

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Tree Bondage

...derstanding Roots” http://www.robertkourik.com/books/understanding-roots.html “Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape and All Climates” “No-Dig Gardening, for a Healthier Soil & a Sustainable Garden”...

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