Which milkweed should I plant in Southern California?

Abundant Harvests - garden info

I’ve caught the milkweed bug. It all started with an accidental visit to a City of Santa Monica building near Santa Monica airport. They had planted milkweed outside the building, 18+ plants by my count, and there were TONS of monarch larvae, with lines of chrysalises along the building’s siding. A few adult monarchs fluttered about, checking the place out. I wanted a milkweed patch at my place!

I’d heard some controversy about milkweeds, that we shouldn’t be planting Tropical Milkweed, but I wasn’t sure.

The catch was, what kind of milkweed should I plant?…

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About Mycorrhizal fungus

Abundant Harvests - garden info, Climate solutions, Designing edible landscapes,

I’ve been reading more about mycorrhizal fungus and how incredibly beneficial it is to our gardens — indeed to our long-term future.

If you don’t know much about this beneficial soil organism, grab a copy of Lowenfels and Lewis’ Teaming with Microbes, and prepare to be completely amazed.

If you’ve been to my garden classes, and heard me talking about “live soil,” this is what I’ve been talking about. As gardeners, we need to make a shift from “taking care of our plants” to being awesome caretakers of the live elements within our soil.  If we become awesome Worm Farmers, we’ll have a gorgeous and productive garden.…

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Breathe in the gap (ClimateSolvr #9)

Climate solutions

There’s a significant gap between the direction of contemporary society, and ecologically-sound lifestyle habits. Take a deep breath and begin to reconnect with true reality.

Why this is important

The mainstream consumerist world zooms along in its frenzied more-more-more track, churning more-more-more environmental devastation. Meanwhile, some people label earth-wiser lifestyles as “out of touch with reality.”…

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A Review of the book Drawdown, edited by Paul Hawken

Climate solutions,

The concept of the book Drawdown (2017) is a fascinating one. Paul Hawken and his specially selected team set out not only to list many potential global warming solutions, but also to analyze the amount of potential that each of those solutions had to offer. They employed a team of scientists and high-level thinkers to analyze CO2 reduction, net cost and net economic savings for each of the solutions posed. That in itself was a unique and monumental effort.

Drawdown lists many solutions in categories such as energy, food, buildings and cities, land use, and of course transport and materials. But it also has some unexpected items such as “marine permaculture,” “perennial crops,” and the reversal of desertification. I was excited when Drawdown came out, and I couldn’t wait to see what solutions they might suggest.…

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Origami Seed Envelopes

Cityscape Seeds

Here’s how to make an instant seed envelope out of any square of paper.

If you’re a crazy seed-saving person like myself, this will come in handy. You can use any scrap of paper, grocery store receipt, newspaper, junk mail, whatever you have around at the moment. For purposes of this explanation, I’ll use a piece of printer paper with my Cityscape Seeds template printed on it.

(at the bottom of this post, you’ll find a link to download a free template)

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I’m speaking at the National Heirloom Festival

Teaching powerdown

In less than a month, the National Heirloom Festival will be held in Santa Rosa. Are you going? This celebration of seeds and vegetable plant diversity is lots of fun!

And this year, I will be speaking!  I’ll talk about Cityscape Seeds, the micro-scale seed enterprise that Matt VanDiepen and I have run (selling seeds at Mar Vista Farmers Market) for the past four years. And I’ll talk about Seed Saving in the City: what’s special about it, what are the advantages, and what you need to pay attention to in order to get reliable seed.…

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