I hear your pain - I'm in an urban environment and just waiting to get a notice from the city.
A couple thoughts come to mind
Start plants in pots and get them a little bigger before setting out.
I do this for about 20 corn plants and then I stagger the seeding of the others - we can only...
Handling weeds can be a challenge in any garden. But because of our thick mulch layers, weeding at the autonomous garden can be completed in a simple step. I like to call it the Buddha attack.
At the Autonomous garden, we plant perennial Egyptian walking onions (also known as tree onions) and garlic around our fruit and nut trees for that reason. I don't know if it repels them, but I know I haven't had any damage and my garden has regular furry visitors.
With corn, I've always done...
Yes weeds would count as living mulch, but the more important question is why are those weeds growing there? You can learn a lot about soil based off of which weeds/native plants take up residence.
Oh no sorry for the misunderstanding. I'm not trying to scare them off, I'm trying to get them to leave a 'packet' of phosphorus when they come eat the sunflowers. The birds are fertilizing the garden for me basically. :)
Nature does a lot of the work in the garden.
I'm planting the kale/Agastache starts on the boarders of the small walk through my garden. I'll harvest the kale year one, collect seed year two but leave the Agastache there as a general insectory/bee garden. Drinking it in tea was also a motivator but mostly its for the pollinators.
Totally impressed by the cooking of sunflowers. I didn't know that - I found this, which I will try this year - http://www.wickedtastyharvest.com/wicked_tasty_harvest/2009/10/braised-sunflowers.html
What I like most about the photo is that it challenges, and very potently the idea of plant spacing. I'm all about asking questions when someone say's, "It has to be this way." I enjoy going out to the garden and testing that statement. By and large I have found that the "You have to's" are...