h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Forest floor endemics: They tend to do well in indoor environments. I've currently got a culture of miners lettuce (claytonia perfoliata) which forms a head about a foot in diameter. Ideal for hydroponic salad vegetable culture and probably saved more California Gold Rush miners from scurvy than any other single plant.

Parking lot endemics: When I see something coming up in the cracks in the pavement, it does something to me. I've currently got a Four O'clocks culture (mirabilis jalapa) I found growing in a parking lot in stringy little plants about nine inches long that's growing eight feet in height and needs to be trained on a trellis. They usually grow about two feet in height and make a small bush. Also a California native marigold variety that makes no petals, only little yellow powder puffs. Bees visiting it to gather pollen initially attracted my attention.

Lawn endemic weeds: I'm currently in the state of Georgia and have spotted a wild onion that superficially looks kind of like chives, only much stronger, a salvia vulgaris (sage) and a plantago minor I'm interested in. (The last is a composite but makes cereal grain like seed heads and quite a tasty high bran breakfast cereal. The greens and roots can also be eaten.)

Biogas culture: In its simplest form, seasonal heating in a conservatory or green house with tubs of barrels of decomposing green manure, which can climb to temperatures over 140F. Lawn clippings work well this way, especially if potentiated with a couple of hens eggs or fish heads or something like that. Though the gas evolved is unpleasant for people, the plants thrive in it.

Another variant: I notice when I fertilized plants with fresh manure, they'd immediately perk up, but would start flagging again at about the time the odor vanished. Thinking that the odor was only ammonia, I tried freshening the mix with 5% solutions of plain household ammonia. They thrived, staying in the tender vegetative or meristematic stage longer. Experimenting I found that most garden vegetables will tolerate up to 20% solutions of plain household ammonia and that watering with a 10% solution (thoroughly soaking the leaves and stems of the plants) before a frost helps prevent frost damage. In the twenty percent range, the stuff has a very strongly antiseptic effect and can be damaging to desirable soil endemic fungi.

Hi ITWBS ,

I find your posts very interesting and informative .

A friend of mine used to work for the water board and was constantly taking the pavement up in various area's of the West Midlands to get to pipes and replace joints etc.
He came across a variety of different plants growing out of the cracks of the pavement and planted them in his garden. They all grew and done well, especially his sycamore tree which reached a height of about 20 ft which he had to cut down as it was very close to the house .

Do you see many bees? I very rarely see bees now like I used to, the population has gone down a lot in the UK because of problems the bees are picking up .

I never knew that about using Ammonia. A man on my allotment site uses Ammonia around the sides of his plot and at the very top, he says that it keeps predators such as foxes away from ruining his crops. I have never tried it but it sounds interesting.

I use lawn clippings in my compost bin but find that if I don't add a drier material such as shredded paper, it turns into a thick mucky mess which smells the allotment site out!.
I also use them on top of my soil or even mix them straight in because they are high in Nitrogen and helps my vegetables a little.

Nigel

The "Pride of China" elm got its name for its propensity for coming up in cracks in the pavement, just as "Mexica" translates from the Ahuatl "weeds".

The southern California wild bees are under a lot of pressure on account of the "killer bees" hysteria. Unfortunate, since they are uniformly more docile even than standard European honey bees. The most ubiquitous and most prolific producer of honey of them makes a wax paper comb and black, taffy-like honey. It gets the paper from members of the evening primrose family along with some little of the nectar. Its production of honey and the size of its combs are comparable with the domestic honeybee. Last year was a bad year for honeybees in California on account of the drought and epidemic pest problems. This year will hopefully be better. I've been making an effort to establish clover ground cover to support the occasional bumblebees I see. Unfortunately, the kinds of clover they like don't do well in the region where I keep my garden.

One of the principle advantages of ammonia waterings is controlling frost damage, applied before a forecast frost, late in the afternoon or early evening. Though common garden herbs and vegetables as a rule don't mind it in 5% to 10% household strength, it can be damaging to mycorhyzal fungus and other helpful soil microorganisms in the 20% or higher range. I won't use in concentrations like that unless unless I really need a powerful antiseptic for some reason. In the lower concentrations most plants, excepting some delicate ornamentals and exotics seem to accept it as just so much more high potency plant food. It is helpful for the antiseptic effect with fresh cuttings and injured or damaged plants.

I usually compost directly in flowerpots, first giving the, pot a loose fill of material to be composted, topping that with a thin layer of leaf mold from the prior season and then re-seating plants that are to over winter on top of that with the earth from their prior flowerpot intact and a side dressing of some suitable soil. The main disadvantage of this is infiltration of garden slugs into the composting leaf mold. I hadn't heard of using copper tape to prevent that and will be giving it a try.

Seeding compost with nitrogen fixing bacteria (from the roots of clover or peas or beans, doesn't take any awful lot) reduces the odor problem and increases the amount of heat generated in the composting process. I've gotten the best results with colonies of nitrogen fixing bacteria from the roots of yellow clover or alfalfa grown in high gypsum sand. The colonies of nitrogen fixing bacteria growing on the roots somewhat resemble clumps of yeast and look downright appetizing. Cover with a transparent plastic painters tarp or gardening mulch strung over a clothesline or something like that and you've got a winter conservatory. Oiled muslin used to be traditional. Polyethylene its less expensive and more durable.

I'm going to be applying some of your tips on potato culture the next time I put in a planting of potatoes. I've only once succeeded in producing a good table crop of standard potatoes in southern California conditions but have had some success with a wild native California variety with hairy grayish leaves producing walnut sized white potatoes,
which grows in sand soils along stream banks where the water table is not more than two or three feet deep.

One of my problems is soil, most southern California soils, especially where I grow, are either decomposed granite or alluvial sand.