By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

You saw Venice garden designer Suzanne McKevitt's front yard on Monday.  Now here's what her inner courtyard looks like.  There's a little joke hidden in this sleek, sophisticated garden.  Can you spot it?

For those of you who didn't -- I certainly wouldn't have if McKevitt hadn't pointed it out -- here's a closer look.

Yes, that weed popping up out of her faux turf carpet is a real dandelion, deliberately planted.  McKevitt's little prank.  Funny thing, though, but this has proved to be the place her dog Boots, a sturdy Australian blue heeler, likes to sit most.  "Good thing dandelions are tough," says McKevitt, "because this plant gets squished often."

Last week we relayed a story about very clever squirrels we'd come across in the book Squirrel Wars. And we promised to mail the book to anyone who could top the story.  I think Kirsten Begg has done it.  Here is her story:

"We thought we had finally thwarted our squirrels (and amused our cats at the same time) by installing a window-mounted bird feeder to a bay window.  It was 6-7 ft off the ground, the seed was covered by a plastic "roof", and there did not appear to be a squirrel in sight, just birds.

Then about 2 wks in, we hear a loud thud.  A squirrel had dropped off a second-story roof onto the bay window roof and had then dropped off (not always succesfully) onto the small roof on the bird feeder, an area maybe 3" x 10", which was only attached to the window with rubber suckers.

At which point, although nose-to-nose with my cats through the glass, the chubby squirrel would sit in the feeder undeterred by bangs on glass or any kind of attempt to scare it away.  He would chomp away until either the seed ran out or the feeder fell off the window, at which point he would be joined by all his squirrel friends.

It turned out to be easier to raid the window feeder than it was to attempt the 8 foot leap from atop a nearby tree to the top of our baffle-protected, pole-mounted bird feeder.

Incidentally,  they mastered that, too, landing on a tiny bar of wrought iron, not always successfully but successfully enough that it was attempted regularly."

Kirsten sent photos to prove her tale.  Squirrel Wars is headed her way.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Let's start with this photo and sweet caption from Tall Clover Farm.

2 bulldogs and tu-lips: Boz & Gracie channel their inner Vermeer

There's reason for some cautious optimism regarding the health of bees, I found out from Valerie Easton's blog Plant Talk.  Now if we can just turn the economy around.

And you can grow lettuces in rain gutters.  Who knew?

I picked this up from Cindy McNatt's Dirt Dujour blog, and she picked it up from Fern's Life on the Balcony, and Fern found it on Juneau Empire. 

Good ideas get around.

More tricks for small veggie gardens

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Photo by Tina Dixon
 

Without doubt, one of my favorite garden writers is Seattle-based Val Easton, who always has some lovely bit of horticultural wisdom to share. So when she did a post about designer Tina Dixon’s new puppy, Benny (pictured above) I thought you should know about Val's blog too—whether your interest is in gardening with dogs or in learning about a great new place to gather bits of gardening lore. Check out Val’s web site, and don't miss her post about Benny.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset Magazine

Driving past a grove of Oregon white oaks high on a hill overlooking the Columbia River, people gawk at a Wild West-looking row of buildings that, upon closer inspection, turns out to be one of the coolest chicken coops anywhere. Built by Geoff Thompson, it's clean, comfortable, sanitary, safe, and easy to maintain.

What more could a chicken want?

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Adriana Martinez has restored my faith.  For a number of years I was wondering if garden journalists were going to become an endangered species.  Nurseries kept telling me that young homeowners were just not interested in digging, weeding, deadheading, pruning, dreaming up new plant combinations, re-arranging plants like furniture, and all the other tweaking that goes into creating an ornamental garden that previous generations of gardeners thought was fun.  All they wanted was a landscape that looked respectable.  Something they could just put in and forget about.  The equivalent of plastic plants.  What would there be to write about?

But now the same people who didn't think ornamentals were worth ruining your manicure for have discovered edibles.  They're building raised beds, buying compost by the truck load, nurturing their own seedlings, researching organic pest control methods on the internet, and finding the whole process of harvesting things straight from their own garden enthralling.

Adriana, shown below with 'Green Zebra' tomatoes towering over her in her garden in Long Beach, California, is one of those new gardeners.

When Adriana responded to our July query asking to hear from gardeners who were finding ways to garden in small spaces, it was the fact she'd painted her raised beds black that first caught my attention.  How urban and edgy, I thought. 

And totally in keeping with Adriana and her husband Hector's personality as it turns out.  Both love punk rock music.  (Hector used to be in a punk rock band and now brokers punk rock music for a living.)  And the two have a wardrobe that is primarily black.  "I have 20 black t-shirts," says Hector.  Adriana even got married in black.

But Adriana's garden is not just about style.  This gal's the real deal.  She researches everything.  She found the plans for the "perfect raised bed" in Sunset's pages.  She checks in with Los Angeles Cooperative Extension regularly for monthly tips on vegetable gardening.  She loves the whole adventure of growing your own crops. Bringing home a truck load of compost and shoveling it into their new beds.  ("We always seem to pick the hottest days for the hardest chores.")  Ordering seeds.  ("I spent $52 on seeds when Renee's Garden seeds had their sale and could easily have spent twice as much.") Germinating seeds.  ("I got a huge bag of Vermont Compost Company potting soil and a seed block for my birthday, and I was thrilled.") 

I am thankful to have met Adriana.  She restores my faith in the future of gardening.  I just hope there are thousands more out there like her.

The Martinez's dog, Wrinkles, next to their fall crop.  Photo by Adriana.  For more photos of the garden, see Adriana's blog.

And here's how Adriana grew her towering tomatoes.

1.  She started with good soil.

2.  She watered deeply but not too often.  Adriana drilled one-gallon plastic containers full of half-inch holes and buried them around her tomato seedlings up to the lip.  She filled them with the hose when it was time to water.  "It slows down the water and makes it go deep into the root zone," she says.

3.  She feed her plants kelp.  "I think Kelp Sea Weed Magic' is well-named."

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Pothos, philodendron, elephant's ear, and many other common housesplants contain miscroscopic crystals in their leaf juices that feel like splinters of glass if you try to eat them, I recently learned in a post Julie Bawden Davis wrote on this subject on the OC Register Homebody blog.  Though eating these plants is rarely life-threatening to pets (the sensation is too painful for them to continue long), it does cause them intense pain.  For a list of these plants and more details, see Julie's post.

By Sharon Cohoon, Sunset senior garden writer

Cats are notorious for liking to squeeze themselves into spaces just big enough to contain them.  But apparently dogs do as well.  Or at least this one, snoozing away contentedly in an empty planter.  Image found on Cindy McNatt's blog.

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

If you don’t know hardy kiwis (Actinidia arguta), it’s no surprise: they almost never show up in stores, and they need some kind of overhead support to grow. But try one if you can find them in a friend's garden or at a farmers' market—they're ripe now—and you'll probably be hooked.

You eat these sweet, grape-size fruits whole. They don't have to be peeled or ripened off the vine like their egg-size kiwi cousins, and they are prodigious producers.

The one pictured at right is 'Ananasnaja', the standard female variety. Like most edible kiwis, it needs to be planted near a male kiwi for pollination and fruit production, and it needs to grow over some kind of arbor or patio. Put the female plant at one end and the male at the other, and you'll get a shady canopy overhead and lots of fruit.

If your garden is tight on space, try the self-fruitful 'Issai' kiwi, which can grow and bear fruit without a male pollinator nearby. Its kiwis are green at maturity, so you judge ripeness by feel: when they're date-soft, they're ready to pick.

Hardy kiwis are widely adapted (they grow in Sunset climate zones A1-A3, 1-10, 12, 14-24), and you can get them from mail-order suppliers like Raintree Nursery, or from retail nurseries and garden centers with strong selections of fruit.

In the photograph below, Daniel Hnatovic harvests kiwis from just inside the canopy, where they ripen mostly out of sight. These plants bear thousands of fruits every fall, just as the leaves start turning yellow. Sorn the Labrador retriever guards the crop from raccoons, and eats windfalls with great relish (he apparently finds the term "carnivore" too limiting).

By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

At Monrovia Growers’ new-plant presentation last month, Dan Hinkley showed a wonderful photograph of a cat blissfully lying on his back in a patch of silver vine (Actinidia polygama).

Catnip (Nepeta cataria) is well known for unleashing feline affection, but the kiwi connection was news to me. Not, however, to Dan, who said it was documented in Japanese literature five centuries ago (how could I have missed it?). Nor does the phenomenon end with silver vine. A Chinese kiwi called Actinidia monosperma also stirs the passions of mature cats (kittens seem unfazed). Cats express their appetites by chewing the leaves off the plants. This is only a problem if your reasons for wanting the plant are different from those of your cat. When I learned the truism that dogs have owners and cats have staff, I never dreamed that cat staff included gardeners, of which I am apparently one.

The catnip response, as it’s called, has been well studied in the catnip plant, Nepeta cataria, and in related plants like Nepeta faassenii. Though catnip has naturalized in the United States and Canada, it is native to Europe and Asia. Domestic cats whose ancestries can be tracked to Nepeta’s native range seem to be responsive to catnip; those from other places aren’t influenced. More than half of all domestic cats respond to catnip, as do lions and other large cats; susceptibility seems to be hereditary.

The active ingredient in catnip is nepetalactone, a terpene that may mimic feline pheromones. Cats breathe it in: there’s speculation that they roll in catnip to bruise the leaves and release more of the fragrance. But catnip leaves seem to have a sedative effect on the cats that eat them, thus making the plant the solution to the problem it creates. After a cat has been stimulated by catnip, it takes about two hours away from the plant before the cat is ready for another dose.

In the kiwis, several compounds found in the plants’ essential oils seem to trigger the catnip response. When exposed to these plants, the cats frantically chew the leaves, perhaps again to bruise them, and tear small kiwis to shreds. Think about this if you plan to plant Actinidia polygama or Actinidia monosperma.

Catnip seems to operate on male and female cats equally. But because it doesn’t affect kittens, and has only limited influence on older cats, it is thought that the stimulation is sexual. Judging from all the affectionate cheek rubbing, meowing, and rolling around that catnip produces, it certainly looks that way.

For years I’ve grown Crocosmia 'Lucifer' to attract hummingbirds, and bronze fennel to attract hover flies and other small insects, but only now has it occurred to me that I could plant something to attract cats to the garden—or even lions, come to think of it. I imagine the backyard wildlife sanctuary people are already updating their lists.