Propagating plants in a Sierra foothill garden Propagating plants is making new plants from existing ones in your garden. Anyone can be a plant propagator with these easy, traditional and low-tech techniques that are perfect for our California foothills. It’s fun and economical, and you’ll be surprised to see how easy it is with these plants…
How to clean a bird bath in twelve photos Keeping a birdbath sparkling clean is easy and it’s worth a bit of effort to keep your wild birds happy and healthy. Algae may be a natural thing, but it’s not attractive when your bird bath is within sight of your windows like you want it. …
Violas and pansies are perfect daffodil partners Last year, I planted violas over the mini daffodils in patio pots and want to do the same this year. Deer don’t bother these on the patio,…they rarely come up the concrete steps any more and they aren’t attracted to either plant. It’s a safe zone. …
Did you know that when green onions get a bit old in the fridge, you can plant them in a garden pot or veggie garden? I did this in my galvanized wash tub garden and could cut fresh onion tops all through Autumn. These are regular grocery store green onions that I plugged in next…
Saturday– Hmmm, Tractor Man gone for the day? Having coffee and wondering WHAT to do today. I love having a day when nothing is planned.” Here is friend, Jeanne Sammons’s barn door which grabbed my attention. I first put it in my ‘Idea’ file, but then thought, ‘I have some of the things to make…
Simple Record Keeping for the Garden Fall and winter can be good times to settle in and plan for future projects. One thing that helps is keeping records, making lists and collecting clippings all in one place A garden journal can help when sorting out a new garden situation. It is all different gardening in…
Decorating with natural elements for a fresh New Year!
After the holidays, I like to decorate my house in a fresh new way sometimes. I bring out my favorite cobalt blue and aqua glass combination and if it’s snowy and cold, I lay the furry sheepskin over the back of the couch. This year I’m using the insulators that I found last spring at a yard sale and mixing them with a new color,.. red!
Bowl of berries
These Pyracantha coccinea or Firethorn berries are a bright spot on the steep bank to the south of the house. Why not bring some inside, I thought? I put on gloves and gathered a few sprigs along with some cedar and a bit of blue to match the Rainbow bowl used as a low vase. I also spotted some myrtle berries I could try.…
–Nov 16 Today, I’m happy because I have found a way to create a blog archive in one step. On my wordpress.org blog, the easiest in the world, here’s what you do. Click on Add New Page and type this: …that’s all. Now you have a nice list of every post you’ve written, easy to…
My friend crafty friend, Cheryl, and I have been at it again! We had a brainstorm! This stepping stone can be made in a snap using Ready-mix concrete and a plastic flat used by nurseries to hold ground covers. You can even reuse the mold to make more than one! Materials: A groundcover nursery flat A…
“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a
flower.”
– Albert Camus
Ever find a beautiful Autumn leaf and think, “’This one I want to keep’? Here’s how you can…
Save a leaf!
Choosing the right leaves
Pick fresh leaves with the brightest colors. Most leaves, when they fall, lose their water supplies within a day or two, making them brittle and hard to save, so if you take one off the ground, make sure it’s still pliable. You don’t want fallen leaves that have already started to dry.
Press in a heavy book, but between paper towels,…don’t forget them!
Pressing Leaves with Weight
Pressing leaves with weight is the simplest method of saving fall leaves. The trick to keeping the colors sharp is to remove the moisture as quickly as possible. Sandwich leaves between two paper towels.
Then select some of your heaviest books (or the stacks of garden magazines I know you have), at least five pounds of pressure, and layer the leaves between the pages. Ideally, you should use a large book and keep them about fifty or so pages apart. Putting them closer together won’t flatten them as desired. It should take five or six days.…
Finding a large woven basket can be useful as a kitchen garden in a small garden or where deer abound. Sometimes having a basket of herbs close by the kitchen door, will discourage deer who tend to keep their distance. To make the basket last as long as possible fit a piece of heavy black plastic,…
How to dry your tomato harvest to enjoy gourmet dried tomatoes all winter long
Like red gold
If you have a good crop of tomatoes in your garden, more than you can eat or give away, you can preserve them by drying them and enjoy delicious gourmet eating all winter long. Dried tomatoes are tasty additions to fresh pasta, sauces, sandwiches, salads, stir fry dishes and you can also enjoy them just the way they are, as a chewy tangy-sweet snack.…
Last month, my friend, Cheryl and I, committed to giving a workshop to the garden club on a subject we were trying for the first time, “How to make Hypertufa Troughs“. Risky? Foolhardy? Fun! We were interested and I must say, excited to see for ourselves how it would turn out.
One finished trough, the largest one we made with a corrugated box mold
Why make hypertufa troughs? For cost of the materials, Portland cement, perlite and peat, for us $37, you can make any size and shape plant container you want for your plants. These can show off small plants that would otherwise get lost if planted in a garden bed.…
Hypertufa (pronounced hyper-toofa) is a mixture of peat moss, perlite, cement and water.
Old stone watering troughs in England could be found in farmer’s fields, sometimes built into stone walls to provide water for two fields of livestock.
Traditional Stone Water Trough in Britain, Wikipedia Commons Photographer Roger Nunn
These troughs are usually one-of-a-kind, and very rare and desirable to alpine gardeners and plant collectors and are very expensive and heavy, as well. Now you can make them yourself.
There is a natural volcanic rock called tufa, which has also been used by gardeners. There are a few natural deposits found around the world, some in Britain, some in North America and various other areas. In the 1800’s, English gardeners found that by mixing certain ingredients they could make a light weight version of stone troughs. In time, hypertufa will develop the look of weathered stone.
For those who like miniature plants which often get lost in a garden, making your own troughs, and really, any shaped stone-like container, is easy and fun! I like growing succulents and other small plants and after hearing about hypertufa long, long ago, have always wanted to try it.
So,… this past month my friend Cheryl and I decided to give ourselves an assignment: to give a workshop to our garden club! O…K…!…
A Backyard Habitat is a transformation of your garden into a place that provides the things wildlife need to live there. You also ‘reduce the civilization’ there to make it more welcome and safe for small, beautiful creatures. My mother did this in 1970 in the suburbs of LA and I have established a wildlife habitat…
Places to sit in the garden? You’ve got to have them. Especially when the place is affectionately called ‘Rancho Relaxo.’
First the paths…
We took our time to figure out where to lay out paths and the words “paths of desire,” I’d read about stuck in my head. Paths of desire are where you really want to go.
“Landscape designers sometimes talk about “desire paths”: the paths traced by people’s habits of movement from one place to another, the paths that make clear where we want to go, and how we want to get there.” Dominque Browning in “Paths of Desire”
Regardless of where a professional designer would lay out paths, it’s good to let a little time to go by and figure out where you want to go on your place and build your paths there.
The first places to sit were old furniture I got curb shopping or from friends. These we put on the patio, …we had two, one the same level as the house and one down a level, built from stamped concrete in place of the deck that we had originally planned.
Old furniture from trash day on lower patio.
We had two level 70′ long leach lines as the start to our paths. The rest of the place is on a slope. Each year we’ve ventured further out building a network of paths in order to be able to walk out without tromping through weeds. I laid out a path going through the garden planted around the lower patio.…
Dang, and I put the name in the post title… A few days after posting Dandelions, Grand dandelions and Blow wives, I discovered on a native plant site that Blow wives are NOT Blow wives but Silverpuffs. Not only Silverpuffs, but Lindley’s Silverpuffs. I was looking for why Blow wives was called that and happened…
The difference between trash and junk I posted a picture of my terribly messy potting bench area on my FB page, Flea Market Gardening, and asked for help with what I should do with it. They posted tons of ideas and I’ve been working on it for the last couple weeks. Here is the “before”: Why…
