For the season finale of my video series, I have enlisted the aid of my French Bulldogs Dexter Sinister and Sadie the Berzerker.

mild mannered they are not - Dexter (stubby, dark, and handsome) and Sadie (deceptively relaxed here) run amok in my garden at least 4 times a day

As you know, j’adore gardens. J’ also adore dogs. This does seem like a problem, doesn’t it – dogs do all the things that make for problems in the garden. They dash frantically through planting beds, they dig to Australia, they patrol the perimeter of your fence like prison guards, they pee on everything, and they eat things they shouldn’t. Given all of this, WHY would someone who has invested time, energy, and vast amounts of money on her garden create a problem by throwing two maniacal bulldogs into the mix? Love! I can’t imagine life without these funny faced creatures snorting and snuffling, snoring and trilling, wrestling and generally freaking out while my husband and I do our respective things. They are a delight – all dogs are.

Dexter caught in the act. notice his complete lack of shame.

But dealing with their antics, no matter how charming the dogs in question are, can be a huge pain in the ass. Especially if you, like me, refuse to segregate your family pets into a “dog run”. I want my dogs with me, and I need every inch of my yard for garden beds and room for entertaining. If my dogs need to run, they are going to run in the middle of everything. If they are going to dig, they are probably going to dig right next to my tall, beautiful hybrid aloes and kill them. And then I’d DIE. So there are a few precautions I take.

Sadie is a survivor- she was hit by a car and lived to bark the tale. Her pirate patch is a reminder to other cars not to mess with her- she takes no prisoners

Precaution the first – I give my dogs room to run and roam. By giving them a clear “play area”, they are less tempted to wander into the forbidden areas (most of the time)

Precaution the second - Spikes & Thorns. Yes, it sounds mean, but giving dogs a clear signal of where they should NOT go often means planting something prickly and unpleasant in their path. Does you dog like to dig right next to your beloved Rosa “Tipsy Imperial Concubine? Consider planting a Red Elf pyracantha exactly in that spot – your pup will soon get the hint.

Precaution the third - The Perimeter. Many dogs love to patrol the fence. It is their instinct. Let them! Give them a little room between the fence and your plants – they’ll do their thing and your plants won’t get squashed. Compromise with your canine!

Precaution the fourth – No Cocoa Hulls. This is serious. Dogs can get very sick from chewing on cocoa hulls, and they are just as attracted to the smell of chocolate as we are. Besides, unless you live in a super dry climate, cocoa hulls get moldy and gross. Most people don’t use them anymore, but every once in a while, They crop up.

Precaution the fifth - Edible Dogscaping. Your dog WILL eat your plants. Some they will leave alone, but others they will treat like their own private smorgasbord. Dexter will not let me have ANY plant from the verbena family – he gobbles it up. At least it wont make him sick. Many of the plants in my garden are toxic in some way, but they are usually left alone. If your dog finds a certain problematic leaf or berry palatable and goes for it, get rid of it ASAP.

Precaution the sixth – Watch your dogs. Know what they are doing. They are part of your family. Yes, they can roam and play, but if they are out of your sight for too long, they are probably up to something. Keep them close and contented with toys, chews, and bones – they will be less likely to chew up your plants.

IMPORTANT – Don’t think that letting your dog run around in your garden is a substitute for nice long walks. Whatever the breed, they need to go out for a nice, long, tiring walk. They will be content and relaxed, and your garden will be less likely to fall victim to digging and trampling if your dog has had the proper amount of excersize for their breed.

It IS possible to have a dog and a garden, it just takes some work. Just like there is no such thing as a no-maintenance garden, there is no such thing as a no-maintenance dog. Do your part by BOTH of your loves, and you will have a peaceful, if not perfect, coexistence.

Now go and give your dogs a big hug from your Germinatrix, and tell them that Dexter and Sadie say “Ruff!”

it looks innocent enough... but it isn't. this aloe is getting tickled in all the right places

Plants have sex.

Flowers are organs of sexual potential – they are there to attract pollinators to come and eat their goodies. Once inside, the pollinators gorge themselves, rubbing and cuddling up on the flower.  Fertile pollen grains from the stamen hitch a ride to the next flower, and while the pollinator is feeding again, the pollen attaches itself to the receptive flower part (the stigma) and plant sex occurs. It’s an inter-species surrogate sex, but sex nonetheless. Procreation results. More plants; more flowers. It’s a thing of beauty.

Even in the desert, plants have sex.

This video was shot at The Huntington Gardens during the Aloe bloom extravaganza 2010.

Everywhere you turn, you are confronted with shapes that immediately take your brain to those kinds of thoughts. There are the sturdy, upright blossoms of aloes covered in tight buds, and then tall, dominating cactus with red protrusions that erupt into bloom, or the small, undulating paddle cactus whose curves draw your eye into its dark places…

or is it just ME who thinks like this?

I don’t think it’s just me – gardens get action all the time, right under our noses.

And that is EXACTLY how it should be!

Relax and enjoy…

The song – “Gold For The Price of Silver” by Kings of Convenience

William, my awesome video minion!

Laura Livengood Schaub (our fearless leader), Rebecca Sweet, Jayme Jenkins, Debra Lee Baldwin, Christina Salwitz, Susan Morrison (who eluded my camera somehow, but she WAS there and I HUGGED her!), Laura Mathews, Shirley Bovshow,  Alice Joyce, Adriana Martinez, Fern Richardson, Katie Elzer-Peters, Miriam Goldberger, Billy Goodnick, Judy Maier, Elayne Takemoto, Jenni Nybro Peterson – this is for all of you who have created a vibrant community I am SO proud to be a part of!

apologies for crappy photo quality! the succulent version of the borg cube...

And a special shout out to Rich Radford who Lifted the Armadillo – DROOL!

Now about the video – I am snarky. I know. But I wanted to make it clear that there was a garden I liked VERY much, and a garden I REALLY couldn’t get on board with.

While I had alot of fun saying “Post-Apocalyptic” over and over and OVER, and made a little fun of the golden armadillo – I really enjoyed Rich Radford’s meditation on what would happen to gardens left alone – “Re-Generation”. (OKAY everybody who was there KNOWS he’s a FOX and I must have “interviewed” him seven times, but that had absolutely NOTHING to do with my discerning garden eye for good garden work!) While I could have done without the metal animals, I loved the corten steel lean-to adorned with rusty chains and a fabulous roof ‘hair-do’ of fescue , as well as the wonderfully textural planting that showed a restrained hand as well as a love of texture. Of all the gardens I saw, THIS was the one I could see in a real home. The hardscape was simple and chic, and it was a garden a homeowner could actually LIVE in rather than WORK in.

this subtle 'living wall' was a part of Rich Radford's "Re-Generation"

Now, I know that show gardens are fantasies – I’ve done a few, and I LOVE how theatrical they are. I like that designers reach, explore, and inspire – but too many are tricked out to the point of kitsch. (And to that Amanda Thompson of Kiss My Aster would say “Give it to me!” ).  I think that even when pushing our boundaries, we still should adhere to certain principles of good design. We should show people that good work ISN’T about shoving everything you like into one space and calling it “GREAT!”.  Alot of our work is wise editing. I’ve had to talk people OUT of more stuff than I’ve talked them into! Please don’t make my job harder, show designer all hopped up on possibilities! But if you MUST, then knock yourself out. This is just my taste, my opinion.

"Re-Generation" - a garden abandoned. thoughtful, with great simple design elements. And dead leaves!

I was EXTRA snarky about a garden that might surprise some people, because it was an “art” garden, and most know that I’m fairly passionate about art, that my husband is an art critic, and that I’ve worked with several artists in my design practice. But I have a very uneasy relationship to “art” when used in a garden setting. This is too big a topic to get into here – I’m going to have to address this in a separate blog post. Suffice it to say that I felt that Keeyla Meadow’s garden REALLY needed a big dose of restraint. I loved the plants – WHO WOULDN’T – but they were deployed in a very patchy way; creating a sense of mass and repetition would have helped tremedously. But I could’ve dealt with the way the plants were used if the hardscape didn’t add an extra level of frenetic activity – in the end, there was no place for the eye to rest and make sense of the space. Her thing is color – and J’ADORE color – but using EVERY color in one small space in the planting AND in the hardscape AND in extra ornamental features (I can’t use the word “art”) just creates way TOO MUCH for this designer to get behind. Sorry!  I know LOTS of people loved this garden – it won the silver medal- but I do think it could have used an editing eye. Not all “art” is automatically good. Nor is it automatically “art”.  Hence the term “extra ornamental features”. I’ve seen images of Keelya meadow’s other work, and I really like some of it – but I have to be honest. For me, this was a big miss.

Exuberance – YES!!! But we have to add some restraint to our impulses, we have to craft it and work it – THAT is the “art” in what we do, in my opinion.

this courtyard garden inspired by New Orleans was a big hit - I wish I had better pictures! Great use of plants...

I had the BEST time at this show – I learn so much by looking carefully at what others do, and everyone who participated really gave it to us with alot of heart. The biggest heart has to be the one beating in the chest of Laura Livengood Schaub. Because of her, this show became a mecca for the west coast blog brigade (and even some from North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and even CANADA!). She is a force to be reckoned with, and is totally a Rock Star.

The video is dedicated to her …

XOXO The Germinatrix

Jimmy is well known in the heirloom seed world – a tomato that his family passed down over the generations, ‘Goose Creek’, is a favorite among connoisseurs for its firm texture, beautiful shape, and tart/sweet flavor. His enthusiasm for growing food is infectious – he spreads the word of organic vegetable gardening every week, and those of us whose lives he’s impacted keep coming back for more!

It’s a noisy market, so listen up!

Enjoy!

The music is “Eple” by Röyksopp

If you want more Röyksopp, check out this AMAZING video (this COULD be the future of organic living!)

A Wonderland from Ivette Soler on Vimeo.

I wish everyone who sees this could experience it! Laura’s sensitive hand controls, leads, and gives free reign to the desires of the garden she cares for. Captivating!

Thank you for watching! We’ll be visiting Laura, Nick, and Lily again – there is so much of their world to share! And generously share they do, embodying the spirit of the gardener.

The song is Batchelorette “Little Bird Tell Lies”

XOXO!!!

Planting, Weeding, Eating from Ivette Soler on Vimeo.

Here’s a live version of the song at a bar in England!

I am so incredibly thankful for all my wonderful blogfriends who have visited me over the past year – it’s been FUN! And we are going to have even MORE FUN in 2010!!!

Giddy-Up, Online Garden Posse, LET’S RIDE!!!

Germinatrix TV! Preview!!! from Ivette Soler on Vimeo.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!
XOXOIvette
The Germinatrix!

meet your new employees – they work for scraps

I’ve been getting emails asking to re-post the Worm Composting advice that I compiled after doing a segment with the worms on The Bonnie Hunt Show – and even though I am NOT supposed to ever, ever re-use anything I did for Domino in ANY way … WHATEVER! Here it is – Wormy Love parts 1 & 2 mushed together in one long, but digestible post. What kind of Germinatrix would I be if I was intimidated by The Man? Just don’t tell on me, okay? This is just between us…

I love worms. All gardeners do – they are our allies in our campaign for healthy soil! These tiny wigglers make something so wonderful and important: the richest compost EVER – and composting with worms is so easy ANYBODY can do it! I wanted to make certain that any of you who want to make your own worm bins had the info … I didn’t expect any of you to be taking notes while watching The Bonnie Hunt Show! Things have to happen so FAST when doing these little televised ‘How-To’ segments – there is really no way you can understand, remember, and follow the steps for building your own bins and making your own worm compost – so Germi to the rescue! Follow these steps, and you can have the best compost, made by you (with a little help from the tiny slimy ones) that will have your garden practically bursting with joy!

So here are the basics – Compost is decomposed organic matter that is used as a soil amendment and fertilizer in our gardens and in our container plantings. If we make our own compost, then we know that it is absolutely organic, which is so important to the health of our planet, and to our own health and well-being …

especially if we grow our own vegetables!

Regular composting can be a little time consuming, and I like to keep things simple – that’s why I love my creepy crawly worms, because they’ll do all the hard work for you! All you need to do is give them a home, feed them your scraps, and in a few months you’ll have the richest, most nutritious organic compost that you made yourself!

This is REALLY fun to do with kids! Gardening is MAGIC, and this is one way kids can see how nature works to turn one thing into another! Just follow these steps, and enlist your young ones as your sidekicks – they’ll love it…

Now about getting your worms – online sources can be pretty pricey considering you probably have all the worms you need chomping on fallen leaves in your backyard right now. Herd them up if you are so inclined! If you live in an apartment, or don’t want to go digging around your property on a worm hunt (because you’ll need about 400 of them to start out) you can do what I did – go to a pet shop. I got 500 worms for $4.75! You can also get them at bait shops – or, you can get super special earthworms at Whole Foods … gotta love a grocery store that will sell you earthworms! Okay – off we go…

Step 1 – First, we get plastic tubs. You can get them anywhere pretty cheap – I like the Rubbermaid variety. For one worm bin, you need 2 plastic tubs that can fit one inside the other, with a lid.

Step 2 – Drill about 8 or 9 small holes in the bottom of one of the bins (bin #1) and stack it inside the other one. These are drainage holes, and the stuff that drains from worm composting into bin #2 is called ‘Worm Tea’, and it is great to water your plants with! All you need to do to get your te is unstuck the bins and pour your worm tea into a watering can or a spray bottle, and you’ve got some liquid fertilizer!

Step 3 - You’ll want to put some window screen that you’ve cut to fit into the bottom of bin #1. This is so the worms don’t crawl out of the drain holes.

Step 4 – Now it’s time to build the nest for your worms. Get a bunch of shredded newspaper and fill the bin about halfway up with it. The worms will live in this, but they’ll also eat it, so it’s going to disappear. You should add more shredded newspaper about once a month to keep the whole bin fluffy and aerated.

Step 5 – Now we sweeten the pot with a little soil. About a cup or so. Some soil from your yard is fine, or from your neighbors, or from a bag of soil you have leftover from potting up plants…

Step 6 – And it’s time to add the worms! Be gentle – don’t just dump them in… make friends with them! They work for you now, you want to be good to them…

Step 7 – So now we feed. Worms will eat all of your vegetable scraps, stale bread, coffee grounds, used tea bags… The worms will make the compost faster if the scraps are smaller, so I like to chop mine up. I love carrots, so my worms eat a lot of those. Potato peels – give them to the worms. Any icky lettuce from the outside of the head that you aren’t using for your salad… stick it in there! Eggshells, banana peels, stale pasta, you’ll be amazed at all the stuff your worms will nosh on!

The things you CAN’T feed them are OILS, MEATS, and DAIRY – they are very hard for worms to digest… and ONIONS, HOT PEPPERS, and ESPECIALLY LEMONS!!! These are too acidic… lemons will actually MELT the worms, so do not go there.

But don’t limit yourself to food scraps! Worms LOVE junk mail! They’ll eat cardboard! Dead plants? They LOVE them!

Now you have your worms all nice and cozy – just moisten the whole thing with a tiny bit of water to get things going … put on the lid to the bin, and put it in a warm, dark place … in your basement, or a corner of your garage; I even know people who have small worm bins under their sinks! If it isn’t too cold you can put them outside, but worms are most active when the temps are moderate.

Add new scraps about twice a week – worms will divide and create new worms to keep up with the food available to them. But try not to put in too much – about 2 cups in the beginning is good, and you can add more as your worms increase.

Remember to use the liquid that drains in your garden! Don’t throw out the WORM TEA!!! Use it as an organic liquid fertilizer to water your plants with!

Congrats! You’re COMPOSTING!!!

So, you are now a wrangler of worms, a farmer of compost. You probably want to know how to harvest this precious stuff!

You, being a good worm mommy or daddy, have fed them, moistened them, refreshed their bedding, and made sure not even the tiniest drop of oil or lemon juice nor the smallest bit of meat or dairy or onion got anywhere near your hard little workers. Good job! You’ve kept watch, and you have noticed that the worms have been voraciously devouring everything in sight – your bins are half full of lovely, chocolate cakey looking compost.

Don’t empty your bins! Gently push all of the compost to one side of the bin, and build a new nest on the other side.

Now, going forward from this point, only put the scraps in the new nest. Soon, the worms will start to migrate to the new nest full of scraps! Give them time – they’ll need a couple of weeks to fully take up residency in the new nest.

After you have given them time to set up their new shop, and you’ve poked around in the abandoned worm compost to make sure you aren’t evacuating a straggling worm family from the bin, you can harvest your compost.

Some people screen their compost – meaning they pass the stuff through a mesh screen to catch the solids that haven’t been fully processed (they’ll also catch worms that are trying to take the easy way out!). I don’t do this – I’m getting the wormy goodness into my garden beds asap! I don’t have time for any obsessive compulsive garden chores! So as far as I’m concerned, the chunks and the awol worms can make themselves at home in my garden – the chunks will eventually decompose, and the few worms that piggybacked on the compost will just have to do their work in the big bad world instead of the cozy bins.

Worm compost is like a supercharged vitamin – use it to pump up your vegetable beds, to make your ornamentals stronger and more resistant to bad bugs, and to give any planting a big ‘oomph’. And be proud that you made it!

As far as the worm tea – the drainage that collects in the bottom of the outer bin – I get about a cup a week, and I’ll put about a quarter of that into a spray bottle and spray that onto the leaves of whatever plants need it most (this summer it was all about the tomatoes – right now I have some mandarins that are reaping the misty rewards). The rest goes into a watering can, which I will then fill up with water, and sprinkle worm juice wherever I see fit. Worm tea is power. Whoever wields it has the awesome responsibility of using it wisely!

So now you have everything you need to go forth and conquer! Go! Recycle your scraps into the best organic fertilizer for your garden!

Your garden feels better already!

When Insects Attack!

YUK!!!

EEEEEEeeeeeewwwwww!!!

Bugs! Pests! Critters! Varmints! All bad things for the organic gardener, because we can’t just go to our local big box hardware store and get a bottle of poison and take care of business in one fell chemical swoop. For us, it’s a little harder work, but in the end we know that what we are doing doesn’t damage our environment. We can be comfortable with our children and pets playing in our yards, and we know that the food we grow in our vegetable gardens are wholesome and safe to eat.

Yesterday I was on The Bonnie Hunt Show – I’ve done it a couple of times before, and it is really great; not just because everybody is sweet and fun, but because Bonnie is an honest to goodness gardener who is VERY committed to organic practices. I was on the show with some tips on getting rid of the creepy sucky icky pests that inevitably attack our food crops and ornamentals, and everything we made on Bonnie’s show is easily available, either in our kitchen, our on/in our bodies (more on THAT later!)

The first gun in our Organic Arsenal was SLUG BEER. The prop dept built me a tabletop garden full of lettuces and herbs, and unleashed a buttload of snails and slugs right before the segment. Bonnie, who is really tough around worms, got very squeamish – and who can blame her? Slugs and snails are the GROSSEST things ever! They have a huge appetite for decaying matter and soft green leaves, and they can destroy a bed of lettuce in no time flat. Awful, awful creatures! Let’s kill them all! (sorry PETA)

So, I had Bonnie sink a pie tin in the middle of our tabletop garden, and in it we poured some beer. See, Snails and slugs are drunken bastards. They LOVE beer – it’s the yeast in it that attracts them. When you do this at home, rig up your ‘beer pool’ in the evening, because these slimy creatures are most active at night. Then in the morning, you are going to find your beer pool full of snails and slugs that died a happy, alcoholic death. Just pick up the pie tin and throw it away! SNAP!

The next weapon is the classic organic garden spray – Cayenne Pepper/Garlic Bug Killer! You can use this to kill all soft bodied sucking insects like aphids, mites, spittlebugs, and whitefly. Just check out the picture above – one little rosebud has ALL of those creeps on it! This spray will do them in! Here is the recipe:

3 cups warm water (needs to be almost hot to dissolve the pepper)

4 cloves garlic

2 heaping teaspoons cayenne pepper (powdered)

1 squirt low- phosphate dishsoap

Blend this in a blender REALLY well – you don’t want any chunks clogging your spray bottle. Now go outside (again, in the evening) and spray the leaves, the stems, and don’t forget the crotches of the leaves – bugs love to hide there. Leave the concoction on overnight, and hose it off in the morning. You will have aphid -free plants. Do this whenever you see an infestation starting, and you won’t be overrun by them.

Another great thing to do, especially for aphids, is to release ladybugs! I do it every year – you can have your own cute little army of aphid killers!

Now we move on to the bigger pests – the varmints. Possums, squirrels, rats – they need to know that there is a bigger, badder predator around. So another old garden tip is the use of something that grows right out of the top of our heads – hair. Yes, human hair – just sprinkle it around the base of the plants that the varmints like to eat – tomatoes, cukes, strawberries, etc… and they should get the message.

But let’s say they don’t. And if you have the worst of all critters – like deer and racoons – well, they are bad-asses. So when all else fails – PEE ON IT!. Yes, human urine has long been used as a barrier method to keep the ravenous hordes away from vegetable gardens. Urinate for the good of the earth! Don’t use chemicals – use PEE!

Of course there are so many more old garden tips to get rid of pests of all types – if you have a good one, leave a comment so we can all add it to our bag of tricks!

Hi Everyone!!!  I’m BACK!!!

I'm BACK!!!

And I am THRILLED to be blogging again! Sorry it’s taken so long, but you know … life …

So for those of you who don’t know me, I’m Ivette, your Germinatrix, and I blogged on all landscape-related matters for the now defunct Domino magazine. I am a garden designer and consultant working in Los Angeles, CA, and I am a crazy plant maniac. Some people describe my planting style as ‘cramnation’ (meaning I cram in as many plants as I can fit into any given space), but I prefer to think of myself as an exuberant maximalist (yes, that word is overused, but I think it really applies in my case). Since I live in perpetually rain-deprived Southern California, I work with a palette of planting material heavy on drought tolerants and succulents – which are the sexiest plants in horticulture. You might think that tropicals are the sexiest plants around, and they ARE hot – but a tropical is to a succulent what an exotic dancer is to a fashion model.

Like I said in the earlier incarnation of this blog, I truly believe that gardening can change the world, and I want to be a part of that evolution/revolution. My long range plan is world domination via garden design, but just having a lot of fun with plants runs a close second!

For me, gardening is a form of personal expression, and the best gardens have a strong point of view. I love a landscape that reflects the owner’s personality … but frankly, just like there are people with sucky personalities, some gardens are just – well… sucky also. Here at The Germinatrix, we call it like we see it.

Oh – anything and everything written in this blog is my opinion and my opinion alone and does not reflect the thoughts of any other member of any landscape or architectural firm I am now associated with or have been associated with in the past. Just had to get that out of the way, before I get down to the business of serious garden blogging, because you never know WHAT might happen when you start talking about plants and gardens!

rose