A happy tangle

October 12, 2015

...hope for survival–and yet I’ve learned to respect the choices of volunteer plants, as Fukuoko-san advised. Sure enough, the sunflower knew what it was doing. It concentrated all its resources into an epic twelve foot growth spurt, straight up, like a bamboo stalk. Only once it crested the top of the pomegranate and found the sun did it begin to spread its arms, and I swear that when it did, I could hear a sigh of relief. Now this monster sunflower...

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Build a vegetable prison to keep out raccoons and skunks

Mr. Homegrown

January 12, 2016

Gardening, Pests

18 Comments

...Down to protect small seedlings: And up to act as a trellis and allow tall plants to grow out the top: I’ve noticed that once plants get established and past the 2-foot point I don’t usually have to worry about those midnight raccoon parties. Obviously, if I had to deal with deer I’d have to build a bigger cage. I can also cover the whole thing in floating row cover material if I want to keep out cabbage leaf caterpillars. If you’re a Sketchup use...

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Should I Try Tomato Grafting?

Mr. Homegrown

January 18, 2016

Gardening, Tomatoes

15 Comments

...raft your own tomatoes? In case you’re not familiar with the idea, you can graft, for instance, an heirloom tomato on to a more hardy root stock tomato to increase disease resistance and yields. You can also graft tomatoes onto potato plants (two crops in one!) as well as graft tomatoes onto eggplants for plants that are more hardy in soggy soils. In the bad idea department, you can graft tomatoes onto tobacco (for nicotine laden fruit) and jimson...

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Trees Susceptible to the Polyphagous Shot Hole Borer

Mr. Homegrown

October 3, 2016

Gardening, Trees

2 Comments

...st Dr. Jerrold Turney. I’ve learned, as a gardener, that there are certain plants in every bio-region that simply aren’t worth planting due to pest pressures. When it comes to trees it can be frustrating, expensive and downright dangerous to have a tree attacked by an incurable infection or pest. PSHB attacks hundreds of different tree species but is hosted on a more limited number. The list of PSHB host trees is growing as scientists study the pr...

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Least Favorite Plant: Asparagus Fern (Asparagus setaceus)

Mr. Homegrown

April 18, 2009

Least Favorite Plant

49 Comments

Today, a new feature on the blog: least favorite plants. I’ve always thought that it’s more fun to read a bad review than a glowing one, so why not extend the concept to the plant world? But we’re not going to rant about “weeds”, which Ralph Waldo Emerson defined as, “a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” As active foragers we’ve found virtues in what most people think of as weeds, plants like broadleaf plantain and stinging nettle...

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