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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Weed Cloth Fail

One of the few, in my opinion, indisputable truisms in gardening is covered this week on Emily Green’s blog Chance of Rain. Green’s warning to the novice gardener: weed cloth always fails. There’s considerable controversy about this subject but I reached the same conclusion as Green. I’m still picking bits of plastic weed cloth out of our backyard from a ill fated decomposed granite project dating from nearly fifteen years ago. It’s time to decla...

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Happy Holiday Weekend!

...It’s a holiday weekend in the US, meaning that, with the exception of our international readers, few people are checking the blog. You’re either gardening, brewing beer, burning a large effigy in the desert or constructing a giant wall around San Francisco. Down in LA? We’re sleeping with the cats....

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Plantar Fasciitis Update

...ed up in the hands of a sports doctor who has slapped me into a boot and crutches: one month for one foot and another month for the other in an attempt to avoid surgery. So far it seems to be working. The downside of this is no building projects or gardening. The upside will be lots of blogging. Overall I think I’m healthier for having lived an active life. Fencing has occasionally gifted me with a bruised rib, sore knees, and pulled muscles. But...

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UC IPM on Facebook

...sts, we send people to the University of California’s excellent Integrated Pest Management page. Now, UC IPM has a Facebook page. Along with the Garden Professor’s Facebook page, you’ve got pretty much all the social media based gardening information you need. Kelly adds: We’d be remiss if we didn’t also mention the useful and better known, What’s that Bug. But you will need UC IPM if you have too many of one sort of bug and wonder what you can do...

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