Ordo Ab Chao

There's a lot of conflicting advice in the vegetable gardening world. You've got your square footers, biointensivists, permaculturalists and survival gardeners, just to name a few. The truth is these often conflicting techniques probably all work for someone. I've been thinking lately that the next book we write should be a version of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders turned into gardening advice.Got attention deficit disorder? Well, here's how ya mix up your own potting mix.

Face it, we're all in the diagnostic manual somewhere. I suffer from a chronic lack of organizational ability. Square foot gardening has never worked for me--I just can't keep up with the schedule. For some folks, I'm sure it works great. John Jeavons' biointensive methods, however, have worked well for me. That is, when I actually follow his advice. I offer as evidence two beds from our winter garden. The one above, containing chard, carrots and beets turned out really well. It has produced an abundant and attractive harvest. The one below, on the other hand, is a mess.

The difference: planning. Whereas some people can probably improvise a vegetable garden, my unique place in the diagnostic manual means that I benefit from some degree of organization. With Jeavons, you project how much of a particular vegetable you'd like and plant with tight hexagonal spacing. Plan ahead and you get an abundant and attractive garden assuming you've taken care of your soil. At least it works for me.

My new commitment for our summer garden is to carefully choose what I'm going to grow, how much of it to plant, and stick with the program. No last minute improvising. And better note taking! I attempted to weigh vegetables this winter, earning the scorn of Mrs. Homegrown who deemed it too male an approach, too much about bragging rights. All that weighing took away note taking time from what would have been more useful information: when things were planted, transplanted and harvested.  That data could help prevent gaps in the garden in the future and clarify the best times to plant, information that's hard to come by in our unique Mediterranean climate. Not to say that weighing is without merit--it would be a good way to compare  methods--but I'm going to leave that to academic researchers and Mr. Jeavons. I'm also trying to figure out a way to share my gardening diary with other people in the L.A., area via Google docs so that we can all compare notes. More on that once we get our next book done!

As for keeping track of planting times, simply hanging the Stella Natura calendar by the stove has done wonders. I now keep better records of planting and transplanting dates. Cooking while looking at the calendar prompts me to plan ahead and think about the things I actually like to eat. Less turnips next year and more arugula!

Leave a comment about your vegetable gardening methods and, if you're so inclined, your place in the diagnostic manual!

What's the dirt on soap nuts?

Sapindus mukorossi fruits, image from Wikimedia Commons

Mrs. Homegrown here:

I'm trying to take a temperature reading on soap nuts. Have you used them? Did you like them? How do you use them--as laundry detergent, shampoo, soap? Do you use whole nuts or make a liquid? How long have you been using them? Do you find a big difference between brands?

If you could shoot me a comment, I'd really appreciate it.

On a more advanced level, I'm curious about their interactions with soil and compost, so if you have any thoughts on that, I'd love to hear them. I'm curious as to how they're harvested, and if their growing popularity is impacting their local ecosystems.

If you've never heard of soap nuts, let me know that, too! I'm wondering where they sit in the general public awareness.

Soap nuts are saponin-rich fruits, usually of a tree called Sapindus mukorossi (though all Sapindus make soaping fruits), which can be used for laundry and other cleaning purposes. They're usually sold only lightly processed: seeded and dried. A handful of these dried fruits, which look somewhat like small dates, are put into a cloth sack and thrown in with the laundry. The fruits release saponins, natural surfactants, which clean the clothes. Supposedly. I hear mixed things. I'm experimenting with Maggie's Soap Nuts right now (and Erik is complaining about their...uh...rich organic smell...which doesn't seem to linger after drying), but I've not used them long enough really judge how they work. The truth is, so much soap is embedded in the fibers of our clothing that you can wash the average garment a couple of times in nothing but water and it would still come out pretty clean. And, for better or worse, Erik and I don't do that much wash. I feel like I need to adopt a Little League team or something to really test drive this stuff! So send your comments, or your ball teams, this way...

Bees in a Bird House

Backwards Beekeeper Phil and I transferred some bees from a bird house to a hive box in his backyard. You can read the rest of the story on the Backwards Beekeeper's blog. Here's what it looked like when we opened the front of the bird house:

Music to Grow Plants

From the The Secret Life of Plants era, New York dentist and horticulturalist Dr. George Milstein's 1970 album Music to Grow Plants. Apparently it came with seeds. From the back cover,

"As a result of present study, we were able to produce a sound which acts upon plant growth patterns. These sounds have been electronically embedded in this record. Every effort has been made to camouflage them, however, you may at times hear certain high frequency tones that could not be hidden completely. For best results this record should be played daily. The music which has been systematically selected and prepared is also most enjoyable for listening. Your plants and hopefully you will be brightened by the sounds of this album. (PATENT PENDING)"

I searched the interwebs for some mp3s for all of you but came up empty handed. Somehow I imagine the music isn't that interesting, but I'm not a plant so how would I know?

Update. Thanks to reader Amy Morie, here's a groovin' mp3 from Music to Grow Plants:

http://www.robertkelleyphd.com/MusicToGrowPlants.mp3

Yet another update. Reader Avi just found a link to the whole thing via a file share service here:

http://basementcurios.blogspot.com/2008/08/corelli-jacobs-music-to-grow-plants.html

Read the rest of the back cover here.

Italy Questions Neonicotinoid Pesticides, California Department of Food and Agriculture Loves Them

Can I report the CDFA as a pest?

Responding to concerns about the safety of nicotine based pesticides, such as imidacloprid, the Italian government, last year, banned them as a seed treatment. According to the Institute of Science in Society, Researchers with the National Institute of Beekeeping in Bologna, Italy discovered that "pollen obtained from seeds dressed with imidacloprid contains significant levels of the insecticide, and suggested that the polluted pollen was one of the main causes of honeybee colony collapse."[1] Since the Italian government's ban last year bee colonies have sprung back. In some regions no hives have been lost at all with the exception of citrus groves in Southern Italy where neonicotinoids were sprayed.[2]

Which brings me to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, whose love for the neonicotinoid pesticide imidacloprid I got to experience first hand. Last year our neighborhood was one of the first targeted by the CDFA for treatment in Los Angeles county after the appearance of the dreaded Asian Citrus Psyllid, a carrier of a fatal citrus disease called Huanglongbing (HLB)--see my early post about the psyllid and HLB. During a brief treatment period last fall CDFA agents and their contractors TruGreen attempted to spray every citrus tree with Bayer Crop Science's version of imidacloprid, brand name Merit. During that spraying in my neighborhood CDFA agents and TruGreen:

1. Entered private property without warrants or permission.

2. Left misleading notices (click on image at right to enlarge) which failed to note that the treatment was voluntary.

3. Acted in an arrogant, condescending and rude manner. They also lied. When I declined treatment and noted that I was particularly concerned about the use of imidacloprid one agent offered what he called, "an alternative." Upon further questioning he admitted that the "alternative" was a pellet version of imidacloprid--not an alternative at all, just the same insect neurotoxin in another form.

4. Ran out of pesticide. There are so many citrus trees in our neighborhood that the CDFA ran out of their precious imidacloprid tablets. They never returned to finish the job leading me to conclude that the operation was a kind of pesticide theater, a way to both justify their funding and please their friends at Sunkist.

European beekeepers would like to see all neonicotinoids banned for good. I'd like to see the same here. While imidacloprid is probably not hazardous to humans, all the oranges in the world are not worth killing our pollinating insects. And fighting invasive species this way is a losing game. I believe that HLB is inevitable. It's just like Pierce's disease in grapes, which is now an unavoidable part of viticulture in Southern California.

To my neighbors: I suggest we organize. Let's resist CDFA's attempt to spray more imidacloprid should they come around again. I've created a form where you can leave your email address here. I promise not to share the email addresses you provide or to send out spam. The list I create will only be used in the event we need to organize as concerned citizens. Hopefully I'll never have to send out an email. But let's not let CDFA treat us in a rude or condescending manner again. The next time CDFA pays a visit they may come with warrants and be even more surly. I'd love it if we had a crowd to greet them.

Radical Homemakers

Last year we had the great privilege of meeting and being interviewed by farmer and author Shannon Hayes for her new book Radical Homemakers. Hayes is well known as an expert on cooking grass fed meat--see her website grassfedcooking.com for more on that. Radical Homemakers takes a look at the new domesticity of the past decade through a series of interviews with its practitioners. Touching on issues such as gender roles, food choices and finances, Radical Homemakers is the first book I know of to delve into the motivations of the unnamed movement that this blog and its readers are also a part of. I really like what Hayes says in the introduction about the subjects of this book:

"the happiest among them were successful at setting realistic expectations for themselves. They did not live in impeccably clean houses on manicured estates. They saw their homes as living systems and accepted the flux, flow, dirt and chaos that are a natural part of that. They were masters at redefining pleasure not as something that should be bought in the consumer marketplace, but as something that could be created, no matter how much or how little money they had in their pockets. And above all, they were fearless. They did not let themselves be bullied by the conventional ideals regarding money, status, or material possessions. These families did not see their homes as a refuge from the world. Rather, each home was the center for social change, the starting point from which a better life would ripple out for everyone."

Now I have an excuse not to clean up the chicken poo I track into the kitchen! But seriously, I highly recommend Radical Homemakers, as well as Hayes' other books. It's about time somebody addressed the "why" of this movement and Hayes is the perfect person to do so.

You can pick up a copy of Radical Homemakers and read the introduction a radicalhomemakers.com.

Laundry to Landscape Legal in LA

Ludwig's "Laundry to Landscape"

California's new greywater code, passed in August of last year, was a big step in the right direction. The revised code legalized simple "laundry to landscape" systems of the sort promoted by greywater guru Art Ludwig and allowed their installation without a permit. Here's a pdf from the City of Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety confirming that you don't need a permit within LA city limits for "a graywater system in a one or two-family dwelling that is supplied only by a clothes-washer and/or a single-fixture system." Though, confusingly, it also goes on to say, "Any alteration to the building or plumbing, electrical or mechanical system

requires a permit." I guess we shouldn't expect clarity from a department that can't seem to get around to regulating thousands of illegal billboards. But I digress. I'm calling my laundry to landscape greywater installation legal!

Hopefully all California cites will respect the state code. Ludwig says,

"Trying to sell permits to California graywater users is like trying to sell a $100 search engine that you have to register for to people who use google. Any standard that can’t compete with “free” and “zero time for compliance” is doomed to irrelevance.

The only way government agencies can compete is to offer "free", “zero time for compliance” legal systems that are better, and can be installed by professionals instead of having to do it yourself.

This involves surrendering the illusion of control, in trade for actually making things better on the ground."

By foregoing permits, city government can play a role in encouraging greywater. Legalizing the practice makes it possible for professional plumbers to do the installations in addition to plucky DIYers. Kinda like prostitution in Holland--keep it out in the open and you'l have less . . . shoddy plumbing.

See Art Ludwig's excellent website to see how to install your own laundry to landscape system. His book, Create an Oasis with Greywater is also highly recommended. And, if you've got a laundry to landscape system, make sure to use Oasis Biocompatible Detergent.

Chicken Coop Architecture

I have a guest post over on re-nest.com on how to build a chicken coop:

"Architect meet your client: the chicken. You're about to become a coop buildin' Frank Gehry. Keeping chickens is mostly about figuring out their housing arrangement. The rest is easy—chickens are a lot less trouble than a dog. Now I wish I could offer a one-size-fits-all chicken coop plan, but living situations and climates vary. Instead, I'll offer what the gifted architect Christopher Alexander calls a "pattern language," a set of general guidelines you can use to get started building your coop."

Read the rest here.

And a special thanks to David Kahn of Edendale Farm for the architect metaphor. Mrs. Homegrown was not happy that I used Gehry as an example (suggesting that he would build a flashy, twisty chicken coop out of titanium that would leak and get raided by raccoons). I just mentioned him because he's the only architect most people can name. Come to think of it, most of the architects you can name are all kinda silly. A Rem Koolhaas coop would probably look great in the CAD program but also get raided by raccoons. But I digress.

Nutria Trappin' by Bike!

I like to keep up on all the "urban homesteading" trends, but bikesnobnyc beat me to this one: nutria (Myocastor coypus) trapping via bike.

"We then returned with our catch and skinned them, prepared the hides for tanning and butchered the carcass and cooked up a bit of the meat. Most folks seemed pleasantly surprised at the "chicken- like" taste of the meat."

Read more about it at dellerdesigns.blogspot.com, "Maker of Fine Hats for Town and Country Cyclists."

Bee Rescue Hotline

Backwards Beekeeper Kirk Anderson with the hot tub bees, via the Backwards Beekeeper blog.

First off: bee swarm seasons is approaching and, if you're in the Southern California area and end up with a bunch of bees you don't want, give the Backwards Beekeepers a call. The number is (213) 373-1104. I've put it on the right side of the page. When you call state:

How to reach you. Please give us a phone number that you will answer during the day. Bee rescue is a daytime activity
Your city Please be as descriptive as possible about where you are.
A description of the bees: Are they in a tree? How high? Do you know how long they've been there?

And if you're not in SoCal, consider giving a beekeeper a call rather than an exterminator.

I've been really enjoying the Backwards Beekeepers website, especially the way bees reinterpret our built landscape by taking up residence in the strangest places. The latest beehive location is oh-so-California: a hot tub (pictured above). One of my other favorites--the bike seat bees:

Photo from the Backwards Beekeeper's blog

Here's a few other spots I've heard about from the BBers:

doll house

suitcase

electrical box

mailbox

tree

shop vac

attic

wall

file cabinet

meter box

bucket

pot

cardboard box

compost bin

garbage can

fence
and the East Hollywood garage wall bees I helped with

The bee's creativity in finding new homes reminds me of the way skateboarders reinterpret dull city spaces as impromptu skateboard parks. Apparently architect Zaha Hadid tried to incorporate skateboardable features in her Phaeno Science Center until the lawyers stopped her. Too bad. When will we get around to deliberately creating bee spaces in our buildings? Well, maybe not the hot tub . . . ouch! But that's what the bee rescue hotline is for!

Gideon Lincecum Virtual Herbarium

--click to biggify--

(If you still can't read it, it says "Erigeron canadensis, the common hogsweed, bruise and press out the juice from the green plant and take it in tablespoonful dose as often as the stomach will bear, for bleeding lungs, bleeding from the stomach, bowels or womb. It is a powerful agent in stopping hemorrhage from any organ.")

Mrs. Homegrown here:

Our friend Nancy gave us some salve made up of calendula, plantain and a plant I was unfamiliar with, something I vaguely remembered her referring to as horseweed or fleabane. Actually, I mis-remembered the name as colt's foot, and then discovered another kind of plant called fleabane, two more actually. All these plants have their uses, but the plant I was looking for had astringent properties--enough to stop bleeding in small cuts. Our salve is for thrashed gardeners' hands, and I remembered that this ...uh...horse...colt...flea...weed...plant was in the salve for that purpose.

This is why scientific names are so important--common names overlap. But thank the good lord for Mr. Google. I found the plant I was looking for: Conyza canadensis, formerly Erigeron canadensis. When I saw the picture, I said, "Oh, you!' for it is a very common summer sidewalk weed. Recognize it?

Conyza canadensis
(image courtesy of Wikimedia commons)

And along the way I found a charming resource to share with ya'll: The Gideon Lincecum Virtual Herbarium, a project hosted by the University of Austin, Texas.

Dr. Lincecum was a 19th-century naturalist and "botanic physician" who lived in Mississippi and Texas. This virtual herbarium includes scans of more than 200 pressed specimens of medicinal plants and his hand-written notes on each specimen. The image at top is his note on horse weed.

Here's another card of his, this one on opium, where he not only condemns the plant, but other physicians for misusing it:



Go take a gander. But just beware it's a real time suck for plant geeks.

How to become the chicken coop Frank Gehry

Haven't laid my hands on a copy yet, but it looks like author and publisher Llyod Kahn has another winner, in this case a painstaking reproduction of a turn of the century catalog The Gardeners’ and Poultry Keepers’ Guide & Illustrated Catalogue of Goods Manufactured & Supplied by W. Cooper Ltd. Kahn says, on his blog,

"It’s hard cover, linen-looking finish, foil stamped, printed on off-white paper — a book lovers’ book — the kind that us bibliophiles love to touch and thumb through (and feel secure in the knowledge that no stinkin’ ebook will replace the “hard” copy). Also, it’s useful: it gives homesteaders, gardeners, builders, and architects still-practical designs."

I'll note one detail I like in the chicken coop in the catalog above, the "dry run." I included a small dry run space in my coop and the chickens really like it--a place for them to hide out when it rains.

Available at Shelter Online.

Our Daily Bread

This stunning documentary, directed by Nikolaus Geyrhalter in 2005, is the best film about our modern agricultural system that I have seen. It has no commentary, narration or interviews, just slow moving static and tracking shots. It proves that it's better to simply show something and let the audience make up their own mind. That being said, I'd be surprised if many people would come out of a screening of this film and think that what they just saw, our industrialized agricultural system, is a good idea. But another point of Our Daily Bread, I think, is that, like it or not, we're all a part of this system.

Our Daily Bread is available on Netflix and Amazon. You can read an interview with the director on the official website www.ourdailybread.at.

Cooking Classes via Silver Lake Farms

Not to be missed if you're in the LA area. From our friends at Silver Lake Farms: Cooking Classes!! Go to the Silver Lake Farms website to register. Here's the 411:

"Inspired by a funny conversation with CSA shareholders about what to do with celery when there's no more peanut butter in the house...

All About Seasonal Vegetables

I'm introducing a series of fun, affordable cooking classes designed around cooking with seasonal vegetables - from the garden, the farmers' market or your local CSA.

We are lucky - very lucky here in LA to be able to grow vegetables all year round. We have cool and warm weather crops and our seasons are long. Some varieties grow naturally every day of the year.

Having a few extra recipes up your sleeve for what to make with seasonal harvests can come in handy, especially if you grow your own at home or support CSA. (Ours delivered celery to shareholders weeks in a row. If you support CSA, you rock!)

I'm introducing the classes at $48.

Shelley Marks is our teacher. She'll demonstrate the dishes of the day (see below), and get you to prepare them. We have a nice big kitchen in which to work. And eat! There's a light meal for everyone to enjoy and discuss as part of class. Handouts include recipes and gardening tips.

Bring your favorite apron (a prize for the most retro-chic).

Classes take place in Silver Lake. Email me here if you'd like to register.

Here's the schedule:

Saturday, Feb 20
2pm - 4:30pm
Easy Pureed Soups with parsnip, carrot, celery and asparagus.

Thursday, March 4
6pm - 8:30pm
Early Spring Garden Supper with beet salad, broccoli soup and fresh pea ravioli.

Class limit is 12 people.

Have a great day and enjoy your local veggies! Thanks for staying tuned.

Tara

323-644-3700

www.silverlakefarms.com"

Chumash Plant Wisdom

Mrs. Homegrown here:

Great news for our readers in Southern California (and parts near)! I've just found the holy grail of local plant guides: Healing with Medicinal Plants of the West. It's co-authored by a Chumash healer, Cecilia Garcia and a USC pharmacology prof., James David Adams, Jr., both of whom write for Wilderness Way magazine. It features full-color pictures of plants familiar to you from hikes in the desert and the chaparral, and discusses the recommended use of the these plants from both the Chumash perspective and the western scientific perspective.

I found this book in the wonderful Green Apple book store while visiting San Francisco. It can be ordered direct from the publishers. The title link will take you to their site. It also is available in our Amazon store.

Mushroom Porn

Funny how going to a mushroom fair can enhance your perceptiveness (and not in the way some of you are thinking!). Ordinarily, I wouldn't have noticed these beauties in my own backyard, as they were deep under a rosemary bush.

I'm no mushroom expert, so don't quote me on this, but I think they are common blewits, Clitocybe nuda. The spore print was a very light yellow/buff. If they are Clitocybe nuda, they are edible when cooked. I'll just appreciate them for their beauty.

An administrative note: We're flattered to have been the subject of a comment spamming attack all the way from Cebu City in the Philippines. Hello Cebu City! I've temporarily turned on comment moderation until the spamming folks get the idea that most of the visitors to this blog are probably not interested in dubious investment advisers and pharmaceutical sleep aids. Note to the spammers: ship us some durian and we'll consider an advertising deal!

Make a Spore Print

Making a mushroom spore print is a fun activity for the kidlings and it's simple:

1. Pick a mushroom (from the wild or the supermarket) and break off the stem.

2. Put your mushroom, spore side down, on a piece of white paper (or a 50/50 split of of dark paper and white paper to check subtleties in the color).

3. Put a glass over the mushroom and wait 24 hours.

The next day you should have something that looks like the picture above. Spore prints can be used as one factor in identification. The above print is from a specimen of Agaricus bernardii that I found growing in the neighborhood and had identified by mycologist Bob Cummings at Machine Project's Fungi Fest back in January. Agaricus bernardii is a common mushroom found growing in weedy lawns and is a choice edible according to some. My identification skills are not up to eating parkway mushrooms yet.

Speaking of Fungi Fests, the Los Angeles Mycological Society is putting on the 26th Annual Los Angeles Wild Mushroom Fair this Sunday, February 14, 2010 from 10 AM - 4 PM at Ayres Hall at the Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden. Mushroom celebrity Paul Stamets will be speaking at 2 p.m. More info on the website of the Los Angeles Mycological Society.

Not in LA? Spend some time reading Mykoweb.com, and excellent and entertaining resource published by Michael Wood, a past president of the Mycological Society of San Francisco.

Stella Natura: Planting by the Signs

Judging from the hostile reaction the last time I posted about Biodyamamics, we need some kind of woo-woo alert for this type of post. Perhaps an animated flash animation, like those mortgage ads, of Stevie Nicks dancing to Rhiannon. I'll get the Homegrown Evolution IT department on it right away. On to the post:

Timing planting according to moon, sun and zodiacal cycles is a very old tradition. Farmers and gardeners have consulted mysterious almanacs for thousands of years to determine the best times to plant. There's even some, mentioned in the Foxfire books, that are still around: the Farmer's Almanac, Grier's Almanac and T. E. Black's annual booklet God's Way are just a few.

But the one I've been enjoying for the past few months is the Stella Natura calendar, published by the Camphill Village Kimberton Hills, an intentional community for the disabled associated with Biodynamics and the ideas of Rudolf Steiner. The Stella Natura calendar lists moon phases, the sun and moon's position in the zodiac, conjunctions, oppositions and other celestial events. It suggests certain days and times for planting root crops, flowering crops, fruit crops, and leaf crops. Much of it is based on the writings and research of Maria Thun.

Do I believe that planting by the signs effects the growth of my garden directly? I don't know and don't really care. What I like is the symbolic message, in the Jungian sense, that all is connected, all is one. Not such a bad thing to be reminded of in our fragmented times.

You can get the same planting information here online, but you'd miss one of the best things about the Stella Natura calendar, the monthly essays. This month's, by Laura Riccardi, says exactly what I've been thinking of late,

"I do answer with practical, logical, agricultural language most of the time. There is plenty to talk about regarding soil building, diversity, insect and drought resistance, quality, microbial life, nutrient availability. I am beginning to feel justified and unembarrassed to speak about subtle life forces, to say that everything is connected, because I believe it is important to balance out the one-sided approach that has dominated our intellectual human landscape for so long. What we call materialism is not inherently wrong or negative. It is simply in extreme presence in our lives today. In other words, it's already well represented in everything around us, including agriculture."

I put the calendar up by the stove. When I'm cooking (often during the past few months with vegetables from our winter garden) I look at the calendar. It's a nice prompt that it's time to plan for the next planting of vegetables.

Would I use this system if I lived in a cold climate and had a very tight window for planting? Probably not. But here in Los Angeles, where we have a four month time span to plant most things, following the Stella Natura calendar is a good way of avoiding procrastination. The calendar also has a handy space for taking notes on plantings, another thing I've been bad about in the past.

I want to be clear that I'm not discounting empiricism. But since don't have a lab at my disposal, gardening is an intuitive process whether I like it or not. And, as Riccardi suggests, we need to seek a balance. The cornerstone of alchemy is the expression "Solve et Coagula", to dissolve and bind together. We've been good in the past century at the dissolving part, breaking everything up into individual components, but not so good at the binding together part.

Now, if I could just get Rhiannon out of my head . . .

Least Favorite Plant: Ficus benjamina

Photo by Elon Schoenholz

While Ficus benjamina, a.k.a. "weeping fig", is one of my least favorite trees, my most favorite photographer, Elon Schoenholz is currently posting a series of ficus tree images on his blog. Schoenholz, wisely, takes a neutral stance on this hot button tree describing Ficus as,

"L.A.'s favorite underappreciated, unheralded, unfavorite curbside flora. I have no real love for these trees, per se, no sentimental attachment. They just express form and mass and scale and human intervention in a way that I enjoy, like nothing else in the urban landscape as I encounter it."

He's wise to be neutral. A civil insurection broke out in Santa Monica over plans to replace ficus trees with ginko trees in the downtown area. Hunger strikes were threatened and activists chained themselves to their beloved Ficii. In the end 23 Ficus trees were removed by the city.

In colder climates Ficus benjamina is strictly a houseplant. Here in Southern California it can leave the 1950s era office buildings and public access TV sets that are its normal habitat and wander the great outdoors. Once outside Ficus goes about lifting sidewalks with its massive roots and creating canopies so dense that the public space beneath them is as dark as the depths of the Amazonian jungle.

Ficus also seems to inspire what I call obsessive-compulsive topiary, so nicely chronicled in Schoenholz's photos. Just as when you're holding a hammer everything looks like a nail, when you've got a gas powered trimmer in your hand, and a Ficus tree in front of you, well, you just gotta go at it. Geometrical topiary that looks great in the gardens of Versailles, does not necessarily translate well on the sun-baked asphalt-lined traffic sewers of the City of the Angels. But Schoenholz's photos do make a persuasive case for what could be termed "outsider topiary."

To be fair, Ficus benjamina is not without some benefits. It's one of the plants NASA studied for its use in improving indoor air quality. But as the horticultural equivalent of the Nagel print, perhaps it's time to replace a few of them with its edible cousin Ficus carica.

Ficus fans and foes alike should visit Schoenholz's Etsy store for some handsome photos of what city employees can do with those power trimmers.

Bulk Bin Microgreens

Sunflower seed germination test

An admission: both Mrs. Homegrown and I are sprout haters. We love the people who sprout, but not the sprouts. Perhaps it's just the association with 1970s era health food restaurants or macramé. Sprout lovers out there are welcome to try to convince us otherwise, but I'll warn you that numerous good-hearted attempts have already failed. But we're both open to the microgreen idea. Microgreens are allowed to grow longer than sprouts and require either soil or some kind of fertilized growing medium. Usually you harvest when the first true set of leaves appear.

While we've never intentionally grown microgreens we've always thinned seedlings by eating them. And trays of microgreens are a great way for folks in apartments with sunny balconies or south facing windows to grow a little of their own food. You could also easily grow them under fluorescent lights.

Many seed companies offer microgreen mixes and seeds in bulk. Prices are reasonable considering that you need a lot of seed. But, being cheap, I was curious to see if I could germinate seeds from a health food store bulk bin. I chose my least favorite health food store, a depressing space tucked into a mini-mall where the isles are redolent with that unmistakable and unidentifiable 1970s health food store scent. Is it some chemical reaction between soy, wheat grass and carob fumes? But I digress.

For the sake of science I chose this forlorn store, which will remain nameless, since I assumed the stuff in their bulk bins has been sitting around a long time and I wanted to test seed of questionable viability. This store sells seeds for sprouting and microgreens, such as radish at around $9 a pound. The much cheaper bulk bin items, however, are all around $1 to $2 a pound. Of course, most don't have microgreen potential, but I found a few that do and set about to perform a germination test to see how well they would work. The test consisted of putting the seeds in a folded and moistened paper towel and placing the towel and seeds into a sealed plastic sandwich bag. Here are the results:

Amaranth

I'd say above 90% of the seeds germinated. Amaranth seeds are so small that it was impossible for me to count out a precise number, but it looks like virtually all sprouted.

Popcorn

10 our of 10

Sunflower

7 out 10

Fava

A complete bust, but I will try again in soil rather than in a towel.

Good results considering the circumstances. I'm interested in hearing if anyone else has tried bulk bin microgreens, and if so what other seeds you have grown as microgreens not sprouts. If that's you give us a shout in the comments.