leather wing soldier bug, Podabrus tomentosus

We were wondering about this guys that live in our favas. Finally after web searching a lot we found they were called soldier bug or leather wing beetle from the family cantharidae, closely related to lampyridae falmily but they lack the light producing organ. This dudes are your allies in the selective battle to aphids, mexican bean beetle, and others. When there is not enough pest to eat, they will eat sap from the plants causing very little damage.

This is a baby little soldier:

  

Lawn Be Gone

Our friend over at buenoluna taught a class she called lawn be gone. Here in California our periodic droughts make lawns a luxury. We decided to get rid of our front lawn. But how to do it? One method we used was digging a hole in the lawn with a mattock or shovel and then removing the sod for an area bigger than the plant that was going to go into the hole.

When everything is planted, you just newspaper mulch over the grass. Do this by taking newspaper, several pages thick, dunking it in a bucket of water for a few seconds and then lay it over the grass. Make every layer overlap and cover your lawn. Then throw regular mulch on top of that. It's also important to dig up the edges of the lawn 6-8 inches in. You can't newspaper all the way to the sidewalk, so grass will grow out the edges otherwise.

We planted this section of the front yard 5 months ago in November. It's still a little bare awaiting spring growth, but there are and have been almost no weeds.

Replacing our front lawn with a garden

Our front yard was a simple lawn, never used and not really attractive. I should say never used by us because the neighbors were using it for littering and taking their dogs for a walk if you catch my meaning.

So, we decided to replace our front lawn with a low-water, low-maintenance garden that had at least some California natives. Our landlord gave us the go-ahead and we've been doing it in sections. For the last section we (foolishly?) decided to try and dig up the grass completely and use the sod to create mounds to make the yard more interesting.



This was a lot of work so we stopped after getting enough for two mounds. Then today we collected two loads of free soil at a local nursery in our pickup to pile on top of the sod mounds and the rest of the yard.

The soil was really rich and now we just need some plants and mulch to finish the yard.

Dwarf lemon tree and worm castings

The little lemonade maker we have is an amazingly generous tree. It's always provided us with delicious juice that has a nice tangerine hint. The monthly food for this citrus is about a 1/2 pint of our own home made worm castings spread as top dressing for its soil. And watering often but letting the soil dry wisely.

What to do with an old bbq.

When we moved in there was a beat up, rusted out brick bbq. We already had a bbq so we decided to clean it out, buy some potting soil and plant an herb garden. It's above waist height, it's location at the edge of the patio and the proximity to our back door all make it really convenient. Something you can run out to at night when you've already started cooking.



Clockwise from top left corner, we have sage, rosemary, dwarf lavender, lemon thyme, regular thyme, and oregano. We have other herbs in the garden, but it's great to have the thyme, oregano and rosemary in this easy to reach spot.




A close up of the rosemary, trailing down the side of the brick.

Protecting your seedlings

When we first moved in our peas were attacked by birds and insects. They never grew taller than an inch or so. First we created some scare birds with some bamboo poles and hanging CDs. This year we just cut the bottom off of some plastic cups and used them to protect the peas as they sprouted. Once the peas get past the height of the cup, the birds usually leave them alone. This is a great way to protect seedlings from slugs and other insects as well.

Here we can see what is the difference for unprotected seedlings in the bottom right.

Western Columbine

We have a shady spot under our lemon tree. We wanted to add some native flowers to the garden. In there we have some blue-eyed grass, larkspur and two Western Columbine (Aquilegia Formosa) that have flowered 3 separate times in the last year. The bottom pic is one of it's many seedlings. We potted 3 to move to the front yard once they are a little bigger.

Fava Control

Favas have a tendency of falling over. Since we have a garden with limited space we put up this wire fence to hold them in place and keep them out of our path.

Wildflowers

The backyard had a small barren triangle between the driveway and a path going back to the garage. When we moved in, it just had a dead tree that the landlord had removed for us. During our garden-making party, we removed the stump, threw on some depleted potting soil from a container garden and a bunch of california native wildflower seeds. Here are the pictures from last year. And it looks like most of the species reseeded this year!
There are poppies, tidy tips, buttercups, baby blue eyes, and gilia tricolor. The cosmos hitched a ride from my last garden in Oakland.