Search Results for: label/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

363 results

Why Did We Change Our Name?

Mr. Homegrown
Miscellaneous
18 Comments
m. “Everything changes and nothing remains still …. and … you cannot step twice into the same stream.” as Hereclitus says. The publishing and blogging world is getting a bit crowded in the “urban homesteading” category. It’s time to expand the conversation and explore some new home ec related topics. We don’t want to become stale. Having a new book coming out later this spring, Making It: Radical Ho...

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Moringa!

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Permaculture
1 Comment
Photo by Harvey McDaniel One of the big inspirations for starting our front yard urban farming efforts at the SurviveLA compound is a Philippino neighbor of ours who has turned his entire front yard and even the parkway into an edible garden featuring fruits and vegetables from his native land, most of which we have never seen before. This morning, while walking the dog, I found him cutting hundreds of long seed pods off of a small attractive...

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Five Lessons We Learned About Lead in Soil

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Lead
18 Comments
As regular followers of this blog may recall, we did some soil tests last year that revealed elevated levels of lead and zinc in our backyard. The cause? Most likely, paint from our 92 year old house and nearly a hundred years of auto exhaust and dust from brake linings. Applying a little alchemy to turn lead to gold, I think the most productive thing I can do is to help get the word out about lead soil and how common this problem is in urban a...

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Plymouth Rock Monthly

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens
4 Comments
What magazine had 40,000 subscribers in 1920? Answer: the Plymouth Rock Monthly, a periodical devoted to our favorite chicken breed. We have two “production” Barred Plymouth Rocks in our small flock of four hens, and we’ve found them to be productive, friendly and, with their striped plumage, an attractive sight in our garden. While the internet is an amazing resource for the urban homesteader, there are a few holes in this el...

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Friday Afternoon Linkages–Some Fun, Some Scary

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
1 Comment
Life is like a seesaw with a rusty bolt–a good kid on one end and a bad kid on the other and no way to tell whose ass is gonna hit the ground hardest. On the fun side of life’s pesky algebra equation this week: Mark Frauenfelder is experimenting with a unique way of drying persimmons using a traditional Japanese method as pictured on the left. Meanwhile, in a busy month of blogging, the intrepid urban homesteaders over at Ramshackle...

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Looking for a Hardware Store Interview Subject

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
14 Comments
Image from the new CLUI Morgan Cowles Archive Hey all, I’m working on an article for the May issue of Urban Farm magazine on the subject of businesses to patronize before they disappear. One of those businesses is your local independent hardware store. If you either own or work at a hardware store and have opinions, I’d like to interview you. Send me an email at [email protected] For the rest of you, if you...

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Garden Amendments as Placebos

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Soil, Thoughtstylings
9 Comments
I just finished writing an article for Urban Farm Magazine on the subject of aerated compost tea (ACT for short). It proved to be one of the most contentious subjects on which I’ve ever tried to, as Mark Twain liked to say, “corral the truth.” It got me thinking about other controversial soil additives popular in organic gardening and farming circles right now such as rock dust, mycorrhizae additives, and biochar. Now I pr...

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