The Real Dirt Blog
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Cactus from the Rainforest: Christmas Cactus
Imagine a mountainous and remote rainforest along the ocean coast. Whisps of fog drift through the trees as cascades of colorful flowers sweep down from plants perched high on the tree limbs. This is...
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Collecting Seeds to Create Native Plant Spaces for Wildlife
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) excels at native plant restoration and ecosystem stewardship on a landscape-wide scale. By creating, extending, and conserving native habitat, they provide permanent and...
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Permission to Leave the Leaves: Promote native bee habitat by leaving some leaves and stems on the ground
The arrival of fall brings shorter days, cooler nights and a gradual winding down of garden activity. Flowers start to fade, while leaves turn glorious colors and begin to fall from the trees. For...
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Fire vs. Plants: Some Plants Win!
“The fundamental chemistry of combustion lies at the core of the living world. When it happens within a cell it's called respiration. When it happens outside organisms, it's called fire.”...
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Home Gardens in Japanese Cities
The past two columns in this space have focused on the formal gardens of Kyoto, and some ideas that can be borrowed from them for use in our own home gardens. But what about the average urban...
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Ideas to Borrow from Japanese Gardens
There is a lot to learn from the long, venerable tradition of gardening in Japan, a point made in last week's Real Dirt, which focused on the history and meaning of Japanese gardens. Indeed, in Kyoto...
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Japanese Gardens
Looking for some garden inspiration? Let's do some “armchair travelling” across the Pacific to one of the world's loveliest places for garden viewing: Kyoto, Japan. ...
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Garden Jobs for Fall and Winter
It's not too soon to start thinking about fall garden clean-up. As days begin to shorten and temperatures begin to cool (fingers crossed!), the pace of gardening slows along with plant growth. ...
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Cooling the Garden Landscape
It's Autumn! As we shift to cooler weather, take time to evaluate your garden's damage and stress caused by this summer's extreme heat. This is the perfect time to devise long-term cooling and...
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Owls Contribute to an Integrated Pest Management Program
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a science-based pest management process which focuses on managing the ecosystem for the long-term prevention of pests and the damage they cause. The...
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Serious Garden Pests: Voles, Moles, and Gophers
It's an exasperating experience. You go to the nursery, pick out a flowering plant, shrub, or tree and bring it home only to have some critter damage or destroy it within the first week. Pests cause...
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The Black Fire Beetle: As if Firefighters Didn’t Have Enough to Worry About….
Once again, we are experiencing a summer of devastating fires, with repercussions that will last decades or even longer. One of the lesser-known ways in which wildfires wreak havoc is the fact that...
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Lawn Removal: Do It Right
We have endured multiple years of drought, and are probably in store for more. For many of us, it makes sense to replace all or part of our lawn area with less water-intensive plantings. If you...
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Master Gardener 2024 Fall Workshop Series
A new season of Master Gardener Workshops is about to start! The series begins September 9th with a session on Neighborhood Habitat Certification, and concludes on December 3rd with a timely workshop...
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Hold Your Ground: Mitigating the Effects of Fire on Your Soil
I first heard the term on the local evening news in fall of 2018: Meteorologist Kris Kuyper was talking about hydrophobic soils. This potentially catastrophic natural phenomenon seems...
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Does Extreme Heat Mean Taking Extreme Measures in Your Garden?
How is your garden holding up during our all-too-frequent summer heat waves? Chances are you're seeing scorched leaves, deformed flowers, severe die-back, blistered branches, constant wilting, and...
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Fighting Blossom End Rot
Are your tomatoes not looking their beautiful best this year? They may be suffering from blossom end rot. Blossom end rot first appears as a small, water-soaked spot on the blossom end of a...
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Are Your Tomatoes Feeling the Heat?
It's hot. Tomatoes like heat, right? Actually, tomatoes like warm weather, between 65 and 85 degrees. When temperatures soar past 95, tomatoes stop growing. In that kind of heat, their flowers...
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A Native Plant Garden is Planned for the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge
The Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge in Willows is headquarters to the Sacramento National Wildlife Complex. In January of this year, construction was completed on a beautiful new headquarters...
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Elderberry
Gardeners looking for a drought-tolerant and highly disease-resistant native shrub might consider adding the blue elderberry (Sambucus cerulean also known as Sambucus Mexicana) to their landscape....
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