Natives at the roadside, 2020 update
On Monday morning I was watching the bees feed on the flowers of a black sage plant at the edge of my yard by the road. Two of my neighbors walked by, and one said, “Your plants are beautiful.” “Thanks!” I said. Then I thought, The beauty of these plants has nothing...
My watering schedules for vegetables and fruit trees
Every year in spring I get amnesia about watering my vegetables and fruit trees, as if I have to figure out anew how much and how often to water them, as if I have no record of my irrigation schedules that have worked in the past. Relax, Greg. Use those records to...
How to harvest avocados
The main question is: Should you just pull the avocados off the tree, or should you carefully clip the stems when you harvest avocados? Let me tell you what I do and explain why. Harvesting avocados by hand Whether my feet are on the ground or I’ve climbed up into a...
Growing ‘Green Finger’ cucumbers
I didn’t much like cucumbers until I grew ‘Green Finger.’ I didn’t love to eat them, and I was frustrated while growing them. From my garden, too often they were bitter, and I never could figure out how to consistently prevent that. Insufficient or uneven watering...
Hydrozoning
What’s hydrozoning? It’s grouping plants with similar water needs. You put those plants next to each other, or you put them on the same irrigation line. And I haven’t always done it -- to my great irritation, and to my plants’ hardship. Here are three examples of...
My mobile chicken pen
My goal is to keep happy and healthy chickens that do work for me. Building a small, mobile pen for them was my way to accomplish this. For four years we kept four birds full-time in a modest four foot by eight foot pen. I moved the pen and chickens around our yard so...
Will avocado fruitset in 2020 be like 1965?
I miss Bob Bergh. If you want to learn about avocado flowering and pollination, read everything that this longtime University of California researcher wrote. His studies were creative and useful, and his reporting was honest and skeptical. In short, you can apply...
Bees on flowers in Southern California
I continue to learn more about bees. Last week, for example, I attended a webinar presented by two UC Riverside entomologists, Quinn McFrederick and Boris Baer, about native bees and honey bees and their current health status. You can watch it here; it has been given...
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