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Grow a Fence
Image from Mother Earth News Why build a fence when you can grow one? Permaculturalist Harvey Ussery has an article, “Living Fences How-to Advantages and Tips” in the latest Mother Earth News that...
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Advances in Gardening Series: The Fan
Yet another heat wave slowed our backyard redesign project, but the weather is looking more cooperative at last and things are coming along. What we thought we might do over the next few days is share...
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Advances in Gardening: Introducing the Germinator™
I’ve built a kind of seedling Guantanamo which I’ve dubbed the “Germinator.” Why? Two reasons: 1. Damn squirrels and chickens. Both have gotten into my seedling flats in the past and wreaked havoc....
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Advances in Gardening: The Screens of Discretion
When our friend Tara helped us reconceptualize our back yard, one of the first things she did was wave toward our compost pile and chicken supply zone, and say, “You’ve got to screen off all that...
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Advances in Gardening: The Trough of Garlic
Remember a while back I posted a picture of Erik in a manly pose, whomping our patio with his sledgehammer? He took out a strip of concrete and built this over the hole: a new planting bed. That’s...
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Our Winter Vegetable Garden
Favas n’ peas It’s a blessing and a curse to live in a year round growing climate. Winter here in Southern California is the most productive time for most vegetables. It also means that there’s no...
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Accidental Garden Design: Pomegranate and Prickly Pear
Can good garden design be taught or is it something you’re born with? If it’s inherited I didn’t get that gene, unfortunately. But at least a garden can sometimes put on a good show despite the...
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Advances in Gardening Series: A Progress Report
Yes, you’ve seen this before. But Erik looks so bad ass with his sledgehammer, I just had to put it up again. Some of you may remember that back in November we ripped out most of our back yard,...
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Advances in Gardening Series: The Perennial Herb Bed, Patience and Plant...
No, this is not a pile of weeds. Someday it’s going to look good. Mrs. Homegrown here: One of the big lessons of gardening is patience. One way gardening patience is expressed is in planting...
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Advances in Gardening Series: We’re maturing
November–seedlings new planted January–all the foliage is in End of February–the flowers really start to pop Stuff grows. You just gotta remember to plant it! A quick photo update on progress for the...
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Hippie Heart Horizontal
Mrs. Homegrown here: So I was wrong about the rains in that self-pitying post I wrote a week or two ago. They came again. (But this time, I really do think this is our last spate of rain.) It was a...
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Adventures in Gardening Series: Wrap up on the Hippie Heart: Growing lentils...
The Hippie Heart got a crew cut We’re clearing out our cool season crops for the warm season ones, so it’s time for some reporting on the new beds we’ve been profiling under the “Advances in...
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Advances in Gardening Series: Thoughts on The Fan, and the problems of...
The Fan late in the season, about to be pulled out. See earlier photos of The Fan here. Mrs. Homegrown here: Last fall we dug up a sort of feral herb bed and replaced it with a more formal, three-part...
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Advances in Gardening Series: A Garlic Mystery
One of the new features of the garden this year is a long, trough-shaped bed that Erik installed along the edge of our patio. Its inaugural crop was garlic, which is generally a very easy plant to...
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Derek Jarman’s Garden
Photo by angusf Avant-garde filmmaker Derek Jarman spent the last years of his life, after an HIV diagnosis, tending a bleak, wind-swept patch of land opposite a nuclear power plant on the southern...
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Rearranging the yard, yet again!
Backyard redesign, in progress. Mrs. Homegrown here: This is all my fault. Last fall we re-did the back yard, but I decided it still needed a few refinements. I feel a little like a sitcom wife who...
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SunCalc: A Sun Trajectory Calculator
In attempting to figure out how to align a garden path with the sunrise of the summer soltice (that’s the way we roll at the the Root Simple compound), I came across a neat Google Maps hack: SunCalc,...
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Don’t Cut Down Those Sunflower Stalks!
I learned a neat gardening trick at the Huntington Ranch this weekend: 1. Grow tall sunflowers.2. Harvest the heads but don’t cut down the stalk.3. Use the decapitated stalk as a trellis for beans,...
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How to Plan a Vegetable Garden
Today I did the unthinkable and made good on one of my many New Years resolutions: I planned our 128 square foot vegetable garden a year in advance. Here’s how I did it: Identifying SeasonsUsing an...
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How To Design a Garden Step I: Identifying Goals
Food, beauty and habitat. Garden design does not come naturally to me. I’ve made plenty of mistakes and continue to make them. One of the biggest of those mistakes is thinking of a garden as a...
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