Growing on Trellises

She may be 81 years old — with a good excuse for sitting around and not doing much — but Gina di Nino never stops working, and even makes her own pasta by hand from semolina flour.  ̶...

Self-Watering Planter Box

When Idan Cohen’s grandmother, at the age of twelve, emigrated with her family from Germany to Israel in 1933, she could hardly have imagined a certain sequence of events that she would set in ...

Garden Spiders are Beneficial

It seems that there are spider webs all over my yard  as well as in the Santa Clarita area where my children live.  What kind of spiders are they?    I have read about brown spiders that can be dange...

Beekeeping in Los Angeles

Are your apples asymmetrical? Are your blueberries behind in their ripening schedule? Is the growth of your strawberries stunted? The problem might be insufficient bee activity. When bees are abundan...

The History of Fruit Tree Grafting

No one knows when grafting of plants began.  Initially, grafting was thought to be an extension of vegetative or clonal propagation by cuttings.  Just as softwood (shoot) or hardwood cuttings, detach...

Real Gardeners Don’t Use Sprinklers

Some of you might remember a book entitled “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche.”  Published in 1982, it was on the best seller list for over a year and sold more than a million copies.  I wa...

Slope Planting with Agaves and Daylilies

“Last October, I had the ivy on my front slope chopped to the ground and covered with landscape fabric. I recently took off the fabric and chopped out a lot of dead vines and roots, although I came n...