Love your videos. It is frosty here this morning as I enjoy your video…you in short sleeves with gentle breezes causing your wind chimes to sing, me in two layers of pants and tops. You always have new knowledge and understandings to pass along. I just hope my brain retains enough to assist me once the gardening season is upon me. Your gentle nature does not disguise your passionate beliefs. Thank you.
Always excellent. I also appreciate that you look beyond the garden, and include the health of the gardener and the community in your understanding of "system."
Absolutely, this is gardening! Simply understanding that stress encourages flowering and fruiting is so elemental to managing plants; it explains to anyone looking in how you manage to produce so many plants in such a small space - competition in the root zone is key to intensive horticulture and only successful with a lot of watchful management to ensure that, whilst stressed, plants are not overwhelmed :)
Did you just refer to small snakes as danger noodles? LOL. Yeah... I'm carefully waiting for predators to return to our yard (newly built community, lots of disturbance...). I have only seen one snake out in the yard and only a couple raptors (one of our neighbors has a owl off his back yard so I'm hopeful). Currently the rabbit and rat / mouse pressure can be pretty intense. I'd love to have some garter snakes and bull snakes in the yard. Occasionally I'll see a coyote in the yard, good thing I don't have any outdoor pets.
Can you talk about trees and shrubs posing risks in small spaces? I also wonder about how to build resilience when the garden I have access to is full of plastic weed barrier I'm not allowed to remove, and neighbors who are growing large crops of weeds. I have a 5 gallon bucket for composting now. I guess I can lift up the weed barrier around plants to put the compost in once it's done. Most of the herbs and such are in containers.
We are in the middle of a 100-year heatwave and drought. The more mulch I use for water retention the infestation of earwigs gets worse. They have eaten everything to the ground. I won't spray so all I can do is watch it happen. This property is 1.5 years old so very little shade and compacted clay soil which is Void of any micro life. I feel helpless.
You could use Diatomaceous earth. Or put out plastic cups or containers with oil and soy sauce in them and Google- 'oil to capture earwigs.' A lot of information pops up from Universities to.
What part of the world? We were in a drought in May but now the ground has been moist for the past 2-3 weeks right at the surface, even areas with bare soil have been by and large remaining moist.
Don't despair. In Cape Town we had such a severe drought from 2015 to 2018 that we nearly got down to day zero, when there would be no more water in the dams. We were facing the prospect of zero water in our homes and it was downright scary. Our rationing and water restrictions were insane. Needless to say, watering gardens was strictly forbidden, and gardens pretty much died. In 2018, I looked at the dust bowl that was our garden and was able to start a radical shift in my thinking which is slowly but steadily leading me down a more permaculture path. Starting with soil and rain water harvesting. If it hadn't been for that drought, I would have carried on, year after year, throwing in the occasional bag of compost, digging the soil to death, using piped water only, and never really figuring out how it should all hang together. I'm not there yet by a long shot, but three years down the line am definitely seeing improvements. And it has to all start with soil and water and building out from there (your roof is, in essence, like a massive dam - consider using it). Good luck on your journey to recovery!
My garden has been Decimated by a 100-year heatwave, drought, and an infestation of earwigs that have eaten everything to the ground, and the more mulch I use to help with water retention the worse they get. This property is only 1.5 years old so no shade and bad contacted clay soil. As a new gardener, I'm at a loss.
Check out Greening the Desert by Geoff Lawton on TH-cam. Productivity can be achieved through Permaculture principles that are correct for your climate and situation.
What has helped my garden is a shade cloth I hooked up to four blocks of wood buried in the ground and I throw bird seed and have a homemade bird fountain in the garden to encourage them to come in and eat bugs as well as having plants that attract beneficial insects like wasp,bees, ladybugs, and praying mantis
Oof, that sounds like a really difficult staring place. Please be patient with yourself and your system. You’re only 1.5 yrs in. It takes time to restore a place that has been damaged. It’s taken me 13 years. In the beginning I was discouraged a lot because it can be hard to see how things will get better. But with good design and implementation, we CAN restore damaged landscapes. Definitely agree it’s worth checking out Geoff Lawton’s work in the Middle East on ReGreening. It’s very encouraging.
Love your videos. It is frosty here this morning as I enjoy your video…you in short sleeves with gentle breezes causing your wind chimes to sing, me in two layers of pants and tops. You always have new knowledge and understandings to pass along. I just hope my brain retains enough to assist me once the gardening season is upon me. Your gentle nature does not disguise your passionate beliefs. Thank you.
You are so intelligent, well spoken, and insightful. There is such an inspiration coming from your videos, can’t wait to get in my garden :))
Always excellent. I also appreciate that you look beyond the garden, and include the health of the gardener and the community in your understanding of "system."
Great video from a very knowledgeable lady. Thank you Angela. God Bless.
Our dog does an excellent job of adding disturbance around here...our elderberries are having a GREAT year due to his winter chewing for example... :)
're really such an insightful teacher, i love your videos! Thankyou for talking the time to make them.
Thank you!!
Absolutely, this is gardening! Simply understanding that stress encourages flowering and fruiting is so elemental to managing plants; it explains to anyone looking in how you manage to produce so many plants in such a small space - competition in the root zone is key to intensive horticulture and only successful with a lot of watchful management to ensure that, whilst stressed, plants are not overwhelmed :)
The Tattoos were a trick!!!! :-D
Did you just refer to small snakes as danger noodles? LOL. Yeah... I'm carefully waiting for predators to return to our yard (newly built community, lots of disturbance...). I have only seen one snake out in the yard and only a couple raptors (one of our neighbors has a owl off his back yard so I'm hopeful). Currently the rabbit and rat / mouse pressure can be pretty intense. I'd love to have some garter snakes and bull snakes in the yard. Occasionally I'll see a coyote in the yard, good thing I don't have any outdoor pets.
Can you talk about trees and shrubs posing risks in small spaces? I also wonder about how to build resilience when the garden I have access to is full of plastic weed barrier I'm not allowed to remove, and neighbors who are growing large crops of weeds. I have a 5 gallon bucket for composting now. I guess I can lift up the weed barrier around plants to put the compost in once it's done. Most of the herbs and such are in containers.
We are in the middle of a 100-year heatwave and drought. The more mulch I use for water retention the infestation of earwigs gets worse. They have eaten everything to the ground. I won't spray so all I can do is watch it happen. This property is 1.5 years old so very little shade and compacted clay soil which is
Void of any micro life. I feel helpless.
You could use Diatomaceous earth. Or put out plastic cups or containers with oil and soy sauce in them and Google- 'oil to capture earwigs.' A lot of information pops up from Universities to.
What part of the world? We were in a drought in May but now the ground has been moist for the past 2-3 weeks right at the surface, even areas with bare soil have been by and large remaining moist.
Don't despair. In Cape Town we had such a severe drought from 2015 to 2018 that we nearly got down to day zero, when there would be no more water in the dams. We were facing the prospect of zero water in our homes and it was downright scary. Our rationing and water restrictions were insane. Needless to say, watering gardens was strictly forbidden, and gardens pretty much died. In 2018, I looked at the dust bowl that was our garden and was able to start a radical shift in my thinking which is slowly but steadily leading me down a more permaculture path. Starting with soil and rain water harvesting. If it hadn't been for that drought, I would have carried on, year after year, throwing in the occasional bag of compost, digging the soil to death, using piped water only, and never really figuring out how it should all hang together. I'm not there yet by a long shot, but three years down the line am definitely seeing improvements. And it has to all start with soil and water and building out from there (your roof is, in essence, like a massive dam - consider using it). Good luck on your journey to recovery!
Similar to the concept of hormesis in humans.
My garden has been Decimated by a 100-year heatwave, drought, and an infestation of earwigs that have eaten everything to the ground, and the more mulch I use to help with water retention the worse they get. This property is only 1.5 years old so no shade and bad contacted clay soil. As a new gardener, I'm at a loss.
Check out Greening the Desert by Geoff Lawton on TH-cam. Productivity can be achieved through Permaculture principles that are correct for your climate and situation.
What has helped my garden is a shade cloth I hooked up to four blocks of wood buried in the ground and I throw bird seed and have a homemade bird fountain in the garden to encourage them to come in and eat bugs as well as having plants that attract beneficial insects like wasp,bees, ladybugs, and praying mantis
Oof, that sounds like a really difficult staring place. Please be patient with yourself and your system. You’re only 1.5 yrs in. It takes time to restore a place that has been damaged. It’s taken me 13 years. In the beginning I was discouraged a lot because it can be hard to see how things will get better. But with good design and implementation, we CAN restore damaged landscapes.
Definitely agree it’s worth checking out Geoff Lawton’s work in the Middle East on ReGreening. It’s very encouraging.