If you live in almost any part of Texas from the coast up through Austin and ending in Dallas, you’ve gotten hit hard with rain from Tropical Storm Hermine this week! We got about 8 inches of rain in N. Austin where I live, but we don’t have a corner on the crazy weather market. People all over the place have storms, tornados, high winds, hail, you name it. If you have any warning that severe weather is coming your way, you’ll take potted plants in and cover the tender stuff if you’re able. The rest usually has to tough it out! But what to do after the fact? Here’s a handy checklist, in order of priority, but please feel free to leave a message and let us know how you clean up!

1. Survey the Damage: Take a trip around your garden and make a list of what’s happened while you took cover inside. This will be your starting point.
2. Call your Insurance Company: If you received significant damage to your property or landscaping due to a flood, your homeowners’ policy might cover it. It will typically cover a tree that falls over and hits your house, but it may not cover water damage if you don’t specifically have flood insurance. Check with your agent to see what kind of storm damage is covered!
3. Clear out the Big Stuff: Downed limbs are the first, then any trash or debris that blew in. You can’t work in your garden if it’s an obstacle course. Call a clean-up crew or tree people if you need help. Remember to look up and see if any limbs are now touching power lines! If so, call the city. Compost what you’re able to, drag limbs to the curb for pick-up, and bag up the rest.
4. Give Plant First Aid: Branches torn? Give them a clean cut. Plants knocked over? Reset them, packing the soil down around the roots. Taller plants downed? Stake them. Ripped foliage? Not a lot you can do there. If the entire plant has been ravaged, you may have to start over. If it’s a few badly damaged leaves, I’d just remove and compost them. Stems bent? If you can’t stake them, prune it off properly.
5. Watch out For Critters: This is critters good and bad. I’ve always noticed an increase in fire ants after a soaking rain, so be very careful when working or stepping in your garden! Also, if you live near a creek (even an urban one) whose levels have significantly raised due to flood waters, be mindful of a higher snake population.  Mosquitos will be plentiful as well–dump out any stagnant water to discourage laying eggs! And watch out for birds’ nests when tending to your trees–be careful to not jostle them around too much or displace them. If they’ve fallen, carefully set them back up into your tree.  You’ll probably see more toads as well, but I love them.
6. Give the Compost a Turn: I usually wait a couple days so the pile isn’t so heavy, but I really like to mix it all up after it’s been thoroughly soaked down.
7. Remulch: If you’ve had mulch displaced by rapidly moving rainwater, you may need to clean up what’s been spread over your walkway or driveway and then get a few bags to replace it in your beds.
8. Sweep: Obvious? Probably. I just don’t worry about sweeping up leaves and debris until the big stuff is done, but it gives me such a sense of satisfaction to have everything all tidy again.

I hope this checklist helps when you wake up feeling overwhelmed at the garden mess after a storm. Let me know what tasks you tend to, or if I’ve forgotten anything! And don’t worry too much about the small things; but I will grieve with you if your 80-year-old live oak tree keeled over or your prized succulent garden got hailed to smithereens. It’s happened to most of us at one time or another, but remember that Mother Nature is resilient and most things in your garden can bounce back with some time and special care. Now, go on out and get a rake and start cleaning up!

What is “urban homesteading?” Simply put, it’s growing as much food as you can in your urban setting, in order to a) feed your family, b) reduce your carbon footprint and c) know where your food comes from. The use of vegetable and herb gardens, fruit trees and chickens — yes, chickens– are on the rise as people like you and me try to become more aware of the impact of transporting food over 1500 miles from sources unknown to us. And these people are doing something about it.

I caught the newest episode of “Growing a Greener World” today–I’m forced for the time being to view it on their website as my local PBS station has not yet picked up this wonderful new program. Joe Lamp’l, Patti Moreno, Nathan Lyon and Theresa Loe talk about how to create your own edible landscape in a small space, from growing and composting to preserving and cooking.

Think you can’t do this? Think again! All the usual objections are debunked–you don’t need acreage, it doesn’t smell, it can be not only beautiful but gorgeous, and it’s not as hard as you think it would be. You can grow food under your own conditions, bring it in from the garden to your kitchen, cook and preserve, and compost the waste. Cycle of life? You betcha!! You don’t need to wear jumpers and not shave–this is not “Little House on the Prairie.” This is about a simple yet profound lifestyle change that affects the world around you, as you eat and live  more healthfully and teach your children, if you have them, to do the same. And more and more people are doing it–it just makes sense. Check out this episode and tell me–and “Growing a Greener World”–what you think! I think you’ll be inspired and motivated to make a change.

Say that one three times fast!  As a landscape designer, I sometimes find the prickly plants hard to sell to my clients. The usual concern is that they have children or pets and are afraid the spiny plants will hurt them. Well…they might….but seriously, when’s the last time you heard of someone being really injured by a plant? Here’s my philosophy: teach children and pets about plants and how to respect nature. If they get too close on occasion, the worst thing that can happen is that they get a sticker or spine in their elbow or patootie, and then they will walk a wider circle around said plant in the future. From the landscaper’s or gardener’s point of view, avoid planting a prickly plant near a playscape or active walkway. These plants are better appreciated in the proper spot–back in the border or away from where people gather or walk.

What I love about these plants are their drought tolerance, textures, and architectural forms in the garden. They are typically deer-resistant as well, and tolerate a wide range of soils as long as they’re well-draining. I live and work in Austin, Texas–a land of severe drought interrupted by crazy gullywashers–and I’m telling you, these plants take a lickin’. One caveat, though–be careful of overwatering if you have an automatic irrigation system. Prickly plants will quickly rot if they are watered too much. Oh, and don’t pile up the mulch around the base of these plants; same thing will happen. Pull mulch away, or better yet, use gravel or decomposed granite as a suitable topdressing.Golden barrel cactus (Echinocactus grusonii) is one of my favorite no-touchy plants! The form is so awesome, like spiny pincushions. You can buy them small at the  nursery, but a 4″ pot could set you back $10 or so, so you can see that a large specimen can run into the hundreds of dollars. I like to buy the ones that are about 1′ across for $80.Prickly pear cactus (Opuntia spp.) is probably my hardest sell to clients. When you grow up in Texas and see this plant thriving on the side of the road, it can lose its appeal and seem like a weedy trash plant, but I live for the day when a client gives me the green light on this one. Why? It has a rugged appeal to me, roots easily, has a beautiful yellow spring bloom and combines so well with native sprawling plants like homestead verbena. Be careful of the leaf-footed bug with this plant, though–prickly pear is particularly susceptible to this pest.Sago palms (Cycas revoluta) obviously aren’t members of the cacti family, but man, they are sharp mamas! Their prickly fronds are killers. Clients like this one, though, because of their more tropical look.Agaves (Agave spp.) are probably the most prickly of all. Their stiff sharp points are actually slightly toxic–I know agaves contain a chemical compound called saponins, so that’s the likely suspect. I once got poked in the knuckle by an agave spine and I had a small painful knot there for about 5 months. Eek! Here’s a tip from my client Sarah: when you’re working around the agave, put wine corks in the agave spines to avoid getting poked.

photo by enchantedgardenaz.com

Yuccas have pointy ends that require caution, too! And what’s up with the “soft tip” yucca–soft tip, my rear end! There’s nothing soft about that or any other yucca, so be careful around them.

Take the plunge with some prickly plants in your garden–there’s something so primitive and strikingly beautiful about them that keeps drawing me in!

Ok, so probably you’ve been going organic in your garden for awhile, or you’re getting interested in it but don’t really know specifics. For example, you have a nutgrass problem and you know Round-Up is effective but your friends are telling you not to use it (that’s because they’re good friends). So I’m here to help you kick your Round-Up addiction, and contrary to popular addiction rhetoric, you are not powerless to Round-Up’s influence even though your weed problem is unmanageable! Here’s a good organic weed-killer recipe to get you going on the path to organic freedom:

Organic Weed Killer

Pickling vinegar (not regular white or malt vinegar) with 7% acetic acid

Dishing washing liquid

Mix the above ingredients in a spray bottle at a ratio of 1 teaspoon dish washing liquid to 1 gallon of vinegar.

*Note: Although organic, this mixture is still a non-selective herbicide, which means that whatever you spray it on will die. So this is a great spray for those pesky weeds in sidewalk cracks or rock gardens, but be super careful if you choose to use it in your landscape beds or lawn. Get up very close to the weed and spray it slowly and in a controlled manner and you should be fine.

There are many organic weed control methods out there–let me know what you’ve tried/what works, what doesn’t work! I know many people who have used this vinegar solution with great results, so I feel confident in passing it along to you all. So get out there and make today the first day of the rest of your Round-Up -free gardening life! You can do it!

Tonight I was doing some research on potting soils and I ran across this site that would be an extremely valuable resource for any avid container gardener! I have a particular blend of soil that I use for my clients’ potted gardens, but there are so many brands out there to choose from, it can be a little confusing to discern which is  the best one. You might even think that all potting soils are alike, that you’re mostly paying for a brand, right? Well…truth be told, I sometimes think that, too. I’m only human, after all! But here is a guy, Wayne Schmidt, who took five popular brands and put them to the test. And I’m talkin’ testing, baby! He would do Mr. Atchkins, my 9th grade science teacher, proud, with his controlled study features. Take a gander and tell me you’re not impressed.So while you’re all trying to forget that I just used the phrase “take a gander,” please leave a comment and let us know what kind of potting soil you use. Is it pre-mixed? A national brand or a specialty local recipe? Do you make your own? Inquiring minds want to know!

So today I was a whirlwind of activity and in between brewing kombucha and watering balcony plants, I threw in a load of laundry. Jeans, T-shirts, that kind of stuff. Upon pulling the clothes out of the washing machine, I noticed what appeared to be chunks of dirt. I’m a landscaper, and I have teenage boys, so dirt is a given in this household. But….wouldn’t dirt just dissolve in the washer? Ah! Perhaps it was mulch! Chunks of mulch wouldn’t dissolve. But….I don’t routinely place handfuls of mulch in my pockets. Hmmmm. This is odd.

But, I’m having a busy day. On to the next task. Clean the kitchen, write a post. Back to laundry. So I open the dryer door and what do I see in the lint screen? This:And now, it is Confession Time: My first thought was, “Those damn boys!”Grumble, grouse, complain. Max brought some crap back from Scout camp; Luke must have been goofing around in the woods with those Abbott boys. But….Max doesn’t wear jeans with silver sparklies on the pockets, and I don’t recall Luke ever donning my Half Marathon T-shirt. This is my load of laundry.  So I continue folding clothes, completely confused. Until I found this:What the….?? The mystery deepens. Now in full Nancy Drew mode, I go over the clues: My clothes. Chunky dirt-like substance. Doesn’t dissolve completely. Little drawstring muslin bag. It’s…it’s….oh, my GOSH!!! Suddenly, light bulbs go off! Alarms sound! My brain engages! It all comes flooding back!! A couple of days ago, that little muslin bag looked like this:Now I’m in full Scooby-Doo mode: Why, it’s Authentic Haven Brand compost tea bag! My friend, Annie Haven, had sent me some bags to make her awesome compost tea. She’d read my tweets about creating my new balcony garden and she wanted to help me have the most gorgeous garden ever, so she sent me some bags of, well, cow  crap! It was dried of course. My plants have loved this stuff! And the herbs–fantastic! But clothes? Holy cow crap, Batman! I have no idea how this bag fell into my washing machine.

Maybe I’m a hopeless garden girl, but my clothes looked and smelled clean and fresh! No stains, no grossness, nothing. Of course, I come from a family that closes our eyes and offers prayers of gratitude upwards when we see a pile of soil or compost. We think it’s manna. I’m not sure this is how Annie Haven thought her product would be used, but hey! Garden goodness is garden goodness, doncha think? The only thing is, I love how Haven Brand compost tea makes my plants grow bigger, but I’d like my clothing to stay the same size. Except for maybe right after Thanksgiving dinner. But that’s a different story.

So in closing, I would like to say the following: Thank you, Annie Haven, for supplying me with your fabulous compost tea bags! My garden looks superb! In fact, pictures of it have been on TV and there are plans for it to be in a garden book. My foliage is full and vibrant green, and the flowers are consistently gorgeous!

And also, my apologies to my sons. I silently blamed them for cow poo in the laundry when, in fact, it was my doing. But honestly, who could blame me with with scoundrels like these on hand?

Contemporary Basketweave Fence

Remember those tacky basketweave fences from the 70s and 80s? Well, I’m sure we all (or our parents) thought they were super-groovy at the time, but that time has definitely come and gone! But what about an upgraded version? I saw this fence the other day down the street from a client’s house, and I have to say, I love this! Granted, it wouldn’t work in every setting, but I can definitely picture it in a more contemporary tropical landscape with gorgeous palms and banana plants, or in a sleek modern landscape with cool grasses or bamboos. What do you think?

I just spent a delightful hour over at GardenBookstore.net‘s Facebook fan page, where there was an interactive interview with Christa Hanson about garden photography. Part of the conversation revolved around organizing your photos–and I realized that I don’t really take advantage of all the iPhoto doodads, so I hoofed it over there and began sorting. Would you like to see the flower pics I sorted? Yes, I thought you would!This is my friend, Kellie’s, back patio that I redid for her several weeks ago. I told Kellie, “Water every day!” and as you can see, she has! Kellie gets an A+ in container planting maintenance–woo hoo, Kellie!Here’s some gorgeous purple coneflower that I shot at Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center last month when Joe Lamp’l and his crew were here filming for their PBS series “Growing a Greener World.”  I never get tired of this flower!This past winter we had some mighty cold weather for Texas! In December, I spent the night at my sister Laura’s place, and we woke up to frost on her Knockout roses! Isn’t that beautiful?I couldn’t resist including this pic–this spring I was leaving a jobsite, and right around the corner was a neighbor whose garden motto had to be “More is More!” The exuberance of it made me break out into a grin and pull over to take a shot. Thank God I had my trusty Nikon with me!This purple ice plant is such a dependable bloomer, even when you forget about it. Wait, let me say that again: Even when you fuggetaboutit! I just made my New York family happy. These were the flowers on my balcony before I changed the flowers out for succulents. Now, you know I love flowers, but there’s a limit to what I can water everyday, so I had to switch some things out. But they sure were pretty, weren’t they??I’m adding this photo with a caveat: Although I don’t really love bicolor iris (it just gets too dang ratty), I do love this pic of the flower! It just looks like it’s floating, and the colors are just gorgeous.

So that’s my flower show for now! I would love it if you’d hop over to my Facebook fan page and add your own photos of flowers–the more, the merrier!

So, these last couple of months I’ve been focusing on really turning my 3rd floor balcony into an outdoor room that’s both functional and inviting. I say really because, although I’ve been in my current apartment for over two years now, I’ve only just been dabbling with this space. I’m not free to post full pics at the moment–I’ve pinky-promised to refrain from full pics on my blog until two book-writing cohorts publish them in their book in the fall! But, I want to share with you some things I’ve been learning about this very different kind of gardening:

1. Make sure things are secured in case of high wind. The 3rd floor can be a brisk place to be, my friends. Walking out in the morning to a felled palm tree with potting soil all over the rug is not cool.
2. Make sure your container plants are compatible. An obvious comment, especially from a landscaper? Yeah, but we’re always learning, too! I got into old-fashioned annuals this spring, and I planted marigolds and geraniums together in rail planter. The marigolds love water and fertilizer, the geraniums bloom better with less of each.
3. Take advantage of every vertical surface. Even the 4 x 4 wooden porch post gets a small planter and some decorative tins.
4. Have lots of seating. I can seat 6 people out there comfortably, but I never thought I could before! Two at a bistro table, two on a chaise lounge and two on a little bench pushed up against the railing.
5. Pay attention to lights. Most of us balcony-dwellers have one ugly fixed light. I added overhead patio stringed patio lights and lots of candles. If you get wind on your balcony, make sure your candles are protected in glass holders or hurricanes.
6. Be sure to have Fernando the Cabana Boy on hand to bring you a libation. I cannot stress this enough. Even if Fernando is really Bob whom you’ve been with for 13 years and has a bit of a beer belly–girl, it works! We gardeners know how to use what we have! ; )
   

   photo by static.open.salon.com

   I’ll be posting more balcony-dwelling ideas for my like-dwelling readers out there over the months, but another good source for balcony gardening comes from Fern Richardson, who blogs at Life On The Balcony in Long Beach, CA. If you’re gardening on a balcony, what have you learned that you can share with the rest of us?

photo from werewolf.com

Holy Cow! I started googling werewolf images and wound up scaring the crap out of myself! This was the least frightening image I could find. So what’s up with all the werewolf stuff? My friend Katie Elzer-Peters of The Garden of Words has a friend, Christine Johnson, who’s putting out a young adult book on werewolves this month, so we thought we’d ban together and post–from all different perspectives–on werewolves as a sign of support!

So here’s my take: Plants that smell so disgusting that no self-respecting werewolf would come near them, not for any amount of human blood-letting in the entire world. Get ready and put on your nose plugs for:

Green Santolina (Santolina virens) I can’t even tell you how gross this plant smells. It’s supposed to be an herb but I can’t imagine what anyone would use it for. The plant itself is beautiful–a dark green low-mounding finely textured plant that features a ton of small pale yellow pom-pom-like flowers in the spring. But, probably you want to skip it when you’re arranging a cut-flower bouquet for the baby shower.

Marigolds (tagetes patula) Yep, we know this one as an old-fashioned annual in cheery hues of yellow and orange. I even have some on my balcony garden this year. I’m doin’ the retro thing, you know. But did you also know that marigolds have long been used to repel the bad bugs that munch on vegetable gardens? It’s true–you plant them around the perimeter of the veggie patch and viola! No grasshoppers or other munchers. So if bugs don’t like the smell, you know you won’t!

Paperwhites (Narcissus tazetta) Hey, sorry if you like this bulb around the holidays but let’s be honest: this one’s a stinker. I made the mistake of buying some about 20 years ago when I was newly married, thinking I was creating a romantic table-setting. Totally nauseating. I couldn’t wait to get rid of it. Beautiful, yes; beautifully scented, hell to the NO.

Corpse Plant (Amorphophallus titanum) From the same family as Dieffenbachia, Philodendrons, and Anthuriums, Corpse plant is a huge variation with a flower stalk that can grow up to 12′ tall. It emits a sulfur-like odor that few people can stand, so it’s not really a plant that one longs for in the garden. It’s just a freakish anomoly that grosses everyone out. So I’m guessing this one takes the prize if it’s been described as rotting flesh or flatulence!

So, you might be slightly nauseated by now, but take comfort in knowing that you are all the more prepared to fend off the unwanted advances of the hunky neighborhood werewolf. ‘Cause you know they like to put on a good show with their brooding good looks. But you just wave that 12-foot long Corpse plant in his face and, my friend, you are good to go!

For more werewolf-related  fun today, check out this list of participating bloggers! And, good luck with the book, Christine!

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