A Prickly Situation

...pted to Southern California’s climate, that are both edible and don’t need watering. One of the most versatile is the prickly pear cactus, of which there are about a dozen varieties all under the Opuntia genus (Family Cactaceae). In the late spring the plant produces new leaves which can be harvested and eaten. Stores and street vendors sell them as “Nopolito”. Nopolito, tastes a bit like a slightly slimy green pepper and can be used in scrambled...

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

...ure. The lawn rebate programs and constant messaging to reduce residential watering has resulted in thousands of dead trees and handouts to fly-by-night landscaping companies that installed gravel moonscapes and disappeared as soon as the rebate program ended. What we need is not calls to end landscape irrigation in our yards and parks. What we need is responsible and thoughtful irrigation. We can transition away from water hungry lawns and planti...

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The Three Sisters

...ovides mulch. All plants are useful and you end up with an interdependent, self-sustaining beneficial feedback loop. Some people add a fourth sister, Rocky Mountain bee plant (Cleome serrulata) which attracts pollinating insects for the corn and squash. We added a drip irrigation system on a timer (more on that in a later post) which has seemed to keep the plants healthier by preventing watering mishaps due to those flaky hung-over mornings. We pl...

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Garden Like a Pirate

...at has been nice has been the conversations We’ve had with neighbors while watering and tending the space. Several neighbors have said that it encouraged them to plant their own vegetables, albeit in their back yards. With more people growing vegetables our neighborhood becomes more self-sufficient and a wasted space has been reclaimed. If all such marginal spaces, parkways, freeway embankments, vacant lots, and median strips were claimed by pirat...

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How to kill your palm tree

...have to. Don’t be fetishistic about tidyiness. Let the palm be its natural self. It knows how to grow, it knows where it wants its fronds and boots– after all, palms are much, much, much older than us as a species. They know what they’re doing. You’ll save money and the palm will thank you if you leave it alone. If you do prune your palm, hire a company that knows what they’re doing, or research the topic well before doing it yourself. One final f...

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