Tag: organic gardening
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Terra Foundation Grant: Irrigation
Reminder: I’m doing a series of posts over probably the next two months or so on the Terra Foundation Grant I received in April of this year. “The Terra Foundation Residential Grant provides $1,000 for native plant material to install a new garden where turf has been removed in a home landscape. The Terra Foundation…
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Terra Foundation Grant: Removing Existing Turf, Part 1. Why and How.
Reminder: I’m doing a series of posts over probably the next two months or so on the Terra Foundation Grant I received in April of this year. “The Terra Foundation Residential Grant provides $1,000 for native plant material to install a new garden where turf has been removed in a home landscape. The Terra Foundation…
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Introducing… the Terra Foundation Grant
Note: I wrote this post in April, shortly before I started doing full-time propagation work at a local nursery and filling most of my remaining free time with gardening to fulfill this grant. I’m not going to change the verb tenses. I am at the point now, at the end of September, where I can…
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Sunflowers and the Uncanny Valley
Sometimes, I feel I have to explain why there are “so many” sunflowers in my yard (when internally, my perception is that there is certainly more room for more sunflowers of all types). Talking with my son, a newly minted landscape architect, a native plant master, and an all-around good guy, I mused over the…
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Welcome back after this unscheduled interruption.
Whew, it’s been almost five months since my last post. That wasn’t planned! What have I been up to? What I have not been doing enough of is hiking, running, or writing, and I’m taking measures to rebalance. I’m in the middle of a transition as we move from summer to fall, and as I…
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Failures and Victories, Part 3: Living Mulch
This is the third post in a series on landscaping failures and victories at home. Earlier posts covered hardscapes and beds, berms, and swales. I’m a huge fan of landscape designer Benjamin Vogt. I encourage you to check out his website and to peruse his book Prairie Up. In a nutshell, Vogt’s aesthetic is about…
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What are all those leaf bags about? Part 4: making leaf mold.
I will have more to say later about leaves, leaf mold, and composting, but let’s end this little series with a post I wrote for Cool Boulder about a year ago. Skip the Yard Bag and Give Leaf Mold a Go—It’s Worth the Effort! Many City of Boulder residents are befuddled by the change in…
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What’s with all those leaf bags? Part 3: soil health.
I said in the last Pollinator Post that the main point of amending with compost isn’t to add nutrients for plants; it’s to support soil health, water infiltration, soil texture, and soil structure. Let’s get into that. Soil health is “the continued capacity of soil to function as a vital living ecosystem that sustains plants,…
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What are all those leaf bags about? Part 2: quality.
This is the second post in a series explaining why I have 50 leaf bags in front of my house. If you missed the first post about the financial angle, check it out here. The costs that I gave for compost last week were for the cheapest stuff out there. If you’re growing things, you…
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What are all those leaf bags about? Part 1: show me the money.
Anyone walking by our home can see a stacked row of kraft yard waste bags against the north side. Recently, an entrepreneurial fellow stopped by to ask if we would like to pay him to haul them away. Maybe now is a good time to start to explain. I am a master composter. I studied…
Climate Resilient Landscapes 