A Last Minute Gift Suggestion . . .
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Search Results for: label/gardening/2010/06/the-urban-homestead/2011/04/making-it
995 results
A Prickly Harvest
...next spring the good folks at Process Media will be releasing our book The Urban Homesteader. While we’ve been negligent in some of the small scale agricultural duties we profile in the book, at least we have our prickly pear cactus to keep us in fruit this summer. And due to the unusual quantity of fruit our prickly pear has gifted us with we’re experimenting with making jelly to deal with the abundance. We’ll share the recipe and other prickly s...
Leave Your Leaves Alone
...view that we need to consider a mix of native and hardy non-natives in our urban spaces, Our urban landscape bears little resemblance to pre-development conditions. Consequently, formally local natives may be unable to succeed in these altered environments. What plants are then most appropriate? Rather than looking to a past that is no more, it may be best to use our understanding of the ecological services plants provide. A review of research by...
Our new front yard, part 3: design
...ing site. A sideline: natives vs. exotic This is a hot button issue in the gardening world. Rainer and West have a very nice stance on native vs. exotic plants. They are not native purists. They point out that in a disturbed environment like an urban center, where even the soil might be imported, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to chase after a lost past, especially when local conditions have changed so much that what once might have grown there si...
When it’s time to remove a tree
...ing two shrubs too close together, so now they’re crowding one another and making a sort of Frankenstein hedge, you have to correct it. Gardening has a huge learning curve. You’re going to make mistakes. It’s inevitable. You have to fix the problem. If the plant in question is thriving, full of rude health, not poorly placed but not fitting into your future plans, meditate on that. A thriving plant–the kind that doesn’t seem to need any care at al...