Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin Kanye would like to wish you a spooky Halloween. May autotuned theremin music haunt your evening. (My cousin made this jack o' lantern today. She's 22 years old and had never carved a pumpkin before. Shocking! We had to rectify the situation immediately!)

- J

Book Repair Part II - It's All About the Glue

So now that you've spent a bunch of time removing crappy glue (see Book Repair Part I), you'll want to find some good glue to use for the new binding. There's a few other items you'll need to get together too. I probably should have discussed materials earlier, but I didn't. So now here's a quick list of all the materials you're going to want to get ready (I'll go more into detail about them as we discuss the process)...

Book Repair Part I - Comedic Ironies

Irony #1 - Currently one of the most common book-making methods uses an all glue binding. This binding is weak, often falls apart immediately, and even when working properly makes it difficult to open a book completely; and it is called, Perfect Binding. That is the actual name of the binding method... Perfect...

Irony #2 - The book we will be repairing today, which fell apart because it used this terrible, poor quality, Perfect binding, is actually a catalog for archival, conservation, and preservation supplies... Naturally...

Jack O' Lantern Jade Plant Planter

We have a pumpkin carving contest at work every year. This year, I made a pumpkin planter filled with Jade Plant and Elephant Bush cuttings.

Nuts to That

Our LACC home repair class was canceled! We were totally looking forward to learning about electrical wiring, plumbing, and drywall repair.  To subdue some of our disappointment, we’ve refocused our energies and are now thinking about applying to a Master Gardener class.

Halloween Costumes for Your Garden

My brussels sprouts are going as the Bride of Frankenstein. 

...I know, but let me explain... 

My New Buddy

To the world, this is Lenard!

 The intellectual

Station Wagons Rule!

Because even in a small wagon like mine, you can still fit two giant bales of straw. It's time to refresh the mulch in my vegetable garden. This is the second year I've gone to Stephen's Hay and Grain for my straw mulch. A single bale lasts a long time. There's still quite a few seeds in the straw, but I make my mulch layers so thick that it's not generally a problem for me. And at $7.95 per bale, you can't beat the price!
-J

Fall is for PLANT SALES!

I love plants. I love sales. I love plant sales! Squeeeeeeeeeeeeal! This weekend Erin and I went to the Huntington Botanical Gardens plant sale and the Theodore Payne Foundation Fall Festival members' pre-sale. We also realized we may be plant hoarders. Could a cable TV reality series be soon to follow?

Sunset Nursery: Take My Money, Please!

In the past month, I've become completely obsessed with cacti and succulents.  The tiny balcony attached to my apartment is filled to capacity with varieties of aeoniums, agaves, euphorbias, kalanchoes, and tons of other plants whose names I can’t remember right now.  I even started moving specimens to my parents’ house to make space for new ones. 

Since my cactus-hoarding days began, I've been to no less than 10 nurseries in the greater Los Angeles area.  Armstrong is super cute but pricey, and Home Depot has a surprising variety of plants at low prices (I found a dragon fruit tree once!).  The California Cactus Center has an amazing variety of succulents and cacti, but can also be quite expensive. Out of all the places I've visited, Sunset Boulevard Nursery in East Hollywood has the best selection of cacti and succulents at the most reasonable cost.

Candy Plants: Part 1

Did you know that there is a plant that smells exactly like an orange Tic Tac?  It's known as Osmanthus frangrans var. aurantiacus, or "Sweet Olive."  After eating one of its orange flowers, I realized the delicious smell was not translated into flavor.  If you are heading to the Huntington Gardens, you can find these trees in bloom near the parking lot outside of the library building.
-E

It's October... Or as it is known to Southern California gardeners, "Spring Part Deux: The Reckoning!"

It's still pretty warm, but it's supposed to cool down soon, so I began pulling up my summer vegetables to prep the ground for some cool season veggies. When I discovered, to my horror, evidence of nematodes. Guh-ross. Or at least I'm pretty sure I did. There were gnarly gall and cysts on lots of the roots. (This also explains the poor yield of cucumbers, zucchinis, and heirloom tomatoes I had all season. My hybrid tomatoes and peppers did fine, but that's probably because they were resistant varieties.) First, I flipped out. Then I started looking for a solution. I referred to all the gardening books I had at hand, scoured my favorite garden websites, and googled nematodes...