Stop Wasting Time and Money on Replacing Broken Ecosystem Functions
As I walk dogs through urban/suburban neighborhoods, I notice a lot of things that come down to one theme: disrupting ecosystem functions and then spending a lot of time and money to replace them artificially. Here are some examples (not an exhaustive list): Removing leaves and plant debris, placing it in […]
Can an edible plant be too aggressive? A thought experiment.
The Thought Experiment Imagine you are currently unemployed and seeking yet another job. You live with your parents and they help you out financially, but it doesn’t feel great. You’ve cycled through a lot of jobs in the past, trying to find something worth the effort. They pay a barely livable […]
Plants That Want to Grow: Your Key to Low-Maintenance Gardening
If you want to have a low-maintenance, restorative landscape, it is key to choose plants that want to grow on your landscape. Every geographic area hosts its own special kinds of ecosystems. Each of these areas is home to plants that have evolved over millions of years to thrive in their […]
Ecosystem Mimicking: The Key to Easy Gardening
If you want low-maintenance, sustainable landscaping, your ultimate goal should be to try to create an ecosystem. Nature is the ultimate low-maintenance gardener. In natural ecosystems, humans are not needed to keep things alive (regardless of what some humans think). Nature knows everything, and all we need to do to learn […]
Rock Mulch: Why You Shouldn’t Choose It and What to Do Instead
A newly married house-shopping couple, my husband and I chose our current home in large part because everything was already done for us. It was not a fixer-upper, the paint colors were chosen and done, the curtains were left for us, and the landscaping was already done. We are not handy […]
Guilds: Plant Communities That Do the Work For You
To increase productivity the natural way, permaculturists often create guilds. A guild is a group of plants that perform many different functions and work together to help out not only each other but also usually a central performer (normally fruit trees). Three sisters guild A popular very simple guild is the […]
Shifting Perceptions of Beauty in Your Neighborhood
Low-maintenance edible landscaping typically comes in the form of guilds, food forests, wildflower gardens, and other wild gardens that function more like ecosystems. This type of landscaping is not as meticulous, organized, or controlled as the gardens your neighbors might maintain. That’s what makes it low-maintenance (and usually more eco-friendly). You […]
For the Love of Mint in All Its Spreading Glory
Mint, in all of its spreading, growing, thriving glory, is an excellent plant to add to a low-maintenance edible landscape. Tons of resources on growing mint are already widely available, so I’m not going to do that here. No, my job here is to rescue mint (and many plants like it) […]
Sharing Your Bounty
When we bought our house the landscaping was pristine. The lawn had been regularly watered and sprayed. It was a lush carpet of green in September. The rock garden landscaping was dutifully sprayed with roundup and planted sparsely with landscaping plants. It was just the way people like it around here. […]
Dynamic Nutrient Accumulators
What they are Dynamic nutrient accumulators are plants that are considered to be very good at grabbing lots of nutrients from the subsoil and bringing those nutrients back into their plant parts. Then when the plant dies or dies back, those nutrients are distributed to the topsoil as the plant matter […]
Chop-and-Drop Mulching: What, Why, and How
What is it Chop-and-drop mulching is just what it sounds like. When you prune or cut back a plant, you just let your cuttings fall to the ground and leave them there or spread them around. This dropped plant matter will act as mulch. Why do it Mulch is important for […]
Queen Anne’s Lace: The Easy Carrot
Many people know that Queen Anne’s Lace is a weed, but fewer people know its secret identity. Queen Anne’s Lace, Daucus carota, is actually wild carrot. The carrot we all know and accept into our gardens is a cultivated strain of the same plant (sativa). In fact, if you don’t harvest […]
Less Raspberry Thinning: When Less Maintenance Results in Even Less Maintenance
Earlier this summer while I was in my raspberry patch, doing some gymnastics to get to the fruits in the back, I started wondering if maybe I had let my patch get a little too out of control. We haven’t done much to control it, and it has indeed taken over […]
Common Milkweed and Its Many Uses
Milkweed is one of my favorite plants! I love milkweed so much that a friend posted this meme on my timeline. My friends know I’m obsessed. There are so many amazing and fascinating things about milkweed to cover so let’s get started. Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) is a plant […]
Nitrogen Fixing Plants and Their Roles in Guilds
When I write a post about a plant, I include a chart with many of the plant’s properties. One property I include is whether the plant fixes nitrogen. So what does that mean, and why does it matter? For a fully scientific discussion on this process, read this article on nature.com. […]
Is a Lawn Right For You? How to Choose the Best Low-Maintenance Landscaping
Are you looking for landscaping that requires the least amount of time and resources? Today we’re going to determine if a lawn is right for you, especially if you are looking for something low-maintenance and eco-friendly. The lawn investment Lawns require mowing about once a week. Depending on your lawn and […]
6 Reasons to Avoid a Clover Lawn
A lot of people tell me they’re interested in switching their traditional grass lawn over to a clover lawn. Now, a clover lawn could mean you are intentionally adding clover to your lawn, or it could mean you are planting only clover. Usually the people I encounter are considering a lawn […]
Invasive vs. Aggressive: Plants That Don’t Want to Die
One day I was outside picking some chives, when a neighbor walked by my yard and told me, “You can’t grow those dandelions and milkweed, they’re invasive!” Of course, I knew they weren’t. Not only is milkweed native, neither of the plants are listed as invasive or noxious in our city […]
Wild Sunflower: Weed or Worthy?
Wild or common sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is a native plant in most of North America and all of the United States. This is the plant from which we have bred large annual garden sunflowers grown for cut flowers, seeds, and pure bragging rights. Wild Sunflower. Image by Amber Avalona from […]
Hiking Trails In and Around Sioux Falls, SD
As part of our yearly hiking training schedule, I often refer to a spreadsheet to make sure the parks I’m considering for that day’s hike have enough miles of trails. I thought it would be nice to share this information on the internet, especially for the newcomers to the area. I […]
My Most Exciting Hiking Story Yet
Saturday, April 30, 2022, my friend Rose and I ventured out to Golden Gate Canyon State Park for a hike. It was late when we got there. I would have liked to go in the morning. I was waiting for everyone else, but by like 1:00 PM, I realized that most […]
You Seem Smart, Why Don’t You Work?
I saw a lovely neurologist today. He was young, and smart, and kind, and we discussed what may be keeping me awake at night. The thing that keeps racing around my head after the visit, though, was how perplexed he was that I seem intelligent but don’t work. “You’ve never worked […]
Why You Shouldn’t Start a Charity and What you Should Do Instead
Nonprofits are inherently inefficient. No matter what, a traditional charitable organization that depends on donations to survive will take double the work, if not more, to accomplish its mission. It’s in the bones of the concept. There are better ways to do it. So You Want to Start a Nonprofit Do […]
Spontaneity and Joy – Don’t Wait for the Stars to Align, Just Go For It
Today I had to travel a couple hours away for a food forest consultation. On the way there I drove by a state park I haven’t visited before. It looked like it might be pretty nice. Luckily, the meeting ended early enough that I was able to stop by the park […]
Let Go of the Grudge: How to Forgive and Why
You’re walking barefoot in the forest, soaking up the energy from the earth (no really, you should totally do that) when suddenly you feel a sharp pain in the sole of your foot. You find a moss-covered boulder to sit on and examine your foot where you find a brand new […]
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