Bad Forager: Mistaking Hemlock for Fennel

October 31, 2013

...ies, and are hard to fool. Some notes on hemlock: I’ve always been wary of baby hemlock. It likes to grow where chickweed grows, so its easy to pull up a few hemlock sprouts along with young chickweed, and it doesn’t take much fresh hemlock in your salad to make you very sick. The main poison in hemlock coniine, which is similar to nicotine in both its chemical structure and pharmacological properties. It takes about 100 mg of coniine to kill an a...

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Meet the Amazing Sierra Newt

Mrs. Homegrown

March 22, 2016

Animals, Nature Awareness

12 Comments

...e’s the best part–he was breathing through his skin. The gills he had as a baby are long gone, traded for fledgling lungs when he left his birth pool. But once back in the water, he dispenses with those clumsy organs altogether and draws oxygen out of the water straight through his skin, in a process called diffusion. That’s right. This handsome orange show-off breathes in three different ways over the course of his life: by gills, by lungs and, c...

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How to Deal with Extremely Root Bound Plants

Mrs. Homegrown

April 11, 2014

Gardening, How-to, Mistakes

22 Comments

...vide them with some shade. Also consider mulching to slow down water loss. Baby them as much as you can. [ETA: One of our readers reminds me that another way to up your chances of success is to trim back the foliage of the plant. Fewer leaves means it will need less water, and can spend more energy growing new roots.] No plant wants to be handled this way but with luck and care, the plant might do well afterward. The only alternative is planting i...

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How to Remove Bees From a Tree

Mr. Homegrown

March 20, 2013

Animals, Bees, Gardening, Trees

21 Comments

...es. Next to the exit the beekeeper places a hive box with some brood comb (baby bees) in it. The worker bees leave but can’t get into their old home. They take up residence in the new box and make a new queen. If all goes well the beekeeper comes in six weeks and takes away the box. I took bees out of a kitchen vent this way and wrote about it in a blog post. Know the difference between a swarm and a beehive. Swarms are how bees reproduce. Often t...

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Saturday Linkages:

Mr. Homegrown

April 5, 2014

Saturday Linkages

2 Comments

...ttp://www.nwedible.com/2014/04/bee-friendly-gardening.html … Nesting for a baby with a small (carbon) footprint http://wp.me/p2SaWz-us GR takes on shade gardening: Full sun to part shade. Really? | Garden Rant http://gardenrant.com/2014/03/full-sun-to-part-shade-really.html … How To Make and Freeze Guacamole http://www.nwedible.com/2014/03/make-freeze-guacamole.html … Sleek Angle On a Community Garden Shed http://lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.com/201...

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