Only a couple areas of the garden are on automatic watering with dedicated sprinklers. The rest of the garden has to depend on rainfull and the gardener dragging a hose over to whatever needs to be watered. I’m sure that… Read More »expressive irrigation
Am I the only one with problems with how to pronounce the Latin names for plants? Last fall I was at a nursery and noticed a gorgeous stand of grasses in their demonstration garden. What was it, I asked? “JFjfaljsldjflajsdljf… Read More »um, how do you pronounce that?
The morning was warm so I went up onto the deck to soak up a little of the January sunshine. While I was up there I noticed the wind shaking the leaves of one of the potted plants growing up… Read More »quaking and shaking
Ferns are some of my favorite plants. Their delicate leaves and strong architectural forms keep me looking at them. The little ginkgo-shaped leaves and black stems of the maidenhair fern have to be right up there among my favorite kinds… Read More »bird's nest fern
If you read it on the internet it must be true, right? I’ve had some questions about a recent post that relayed some information on farmers in Iraq being prohibited from saving seeds. After doing more detailed research it looks… Read More »after a little more research…
Last July I did a post on the documentary A Man Named Pearl, and at point asked a question about what films there were about gardening. Leslie made the recommendation of Greenfingers, a Y2K British production starring Clive Owen and… Read More »a fun gardening movie
January can be an amazing month for succulents and other desert plants. Many aloes and agaves explode into bloom, and plants with ephemeral foliage are green with leaves in ways you don’t often see them. San Diego’s Balboa Park houses… Read More »balboa park's desert garden
View the update to this post here. Here’s a bit of political unpleasantness I read about in a seed description in the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog listing for the Iraqi tomato variety, Rouge D’Irak: Saving seeds was made illegal… Read More »seed saving banned?
Orchids can be finicky creatures, especially when you try to grow species that aren’t adapted to your growing conditions. If you’re lucky enough to live in an area with infrequent freezing temperatures (the warm end of zone 9B or in… Read More »an easy outdoor orchid
I think that these days all of us are trying to go green in many aspects of our lives as we try to reduce our demands on the world’s resources. Gardening has the shiny green patina of communing with nature… Read More »greener gardening practices