California Dreaming

May 2, 2008

...verted every spare bit of space into a mini-farm. There were impressive rows of cabbage and other greens all planted in plowed rows. The crops took up so much room that there was, in fact, very little space left to even walk. It seemed, at first, a pleasant dream of a utopian future of efficient urban land use with an emphasis on growing tasty and healthy food. But when I awoke I realized that this idyllic vision was actually a nightmare. Those r...

4 Vermicomposting Tips

Mrs. Homegrown

October 17, 2011

Composting, Gardening, Vermiculture

11 Comments

...terested. Click here for details). Darren dropped a few vermicomposting tips during the beginning class that we thought we’d share: 1) Worms don’t like empty space in their bin. They dislike voids. They appreciate it very much if you bury their entire working area under a very thick layer of light dry carbon material, like shredded newspaper or chopped straw. Yes, it’s standard practice to put a layer of cover material over the...

The kids are all bikin’

Mr. Homegrown

May 17, 2008

Bikes

1 Comment

...tails of biking in L.A. (hint–route choice!) and pitched the notion of changing our built environment to encourage walking and cycling. Here in Los Angeles, with the majority of bike commuters being poor folks of color, making our city more bikable is a civil rights issue. For an overview of the bike to work day festivities (which ironically, since they take place in the middle of a weekday, tend to involve mostly the self-employed or unemp...

3 things to do with citrus peels

Mrs. Homegrown

April 20, 2012

Cleaning, Domesticus, Food, Food Preservation, How-to

11 Comments

...7;t do, in practice. I’m too lazy. Instead, I scent my cleaning vinegar with essential oil. But we always have citrus peels laying around in piles, and the simplicity of the citrus idea is so a peeling that I had to try it. (ouch! stop throwing things!) I filled one jar with orange peels and covered it with vinegar. After only a couple of days it started smelling really nice. Now it’s about a week old and doesn’t seem to be gett...

Cargo Bike Roundup

Mr. Homegrown

May 5, 2008

Bikes, Transportation

9 Comments

...n has forgotten every word of his college German, so all we can make out is that this bike represents the Grüne Liga, some sort of environmental organization. Don’t know if this trike is an ad, or if the Grüne Liga uses it to distribute literature or environmentally correct currywurst. We imagine this bike belongs to some way eurotrashy DJ dude who uses it to shuttle his 100 kilo collection of Eurodisco hits to all the hot Berlin nightclu...

Damned Figs!

Mr. Homegrown

March 14, 2008

Gardening

4 Comments

“In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.”-Matthew 21:18-19 We find it hard to cut down a mature tree, especially a fruit tree. But after living with a substandard fig tree for ten years we finally understood t...

Novella Carpenter Harassed by City of Oakland

Mr. Homegrown

March 30, 2011

Thoughtstylings

20 Comments

out of compliance for “agricultural activities”. I’m supposed to get a Conditional Use Permit for growing chard. The annual fee: $2500. My two cents. Get involved in local politics to change outdated planning codes. We did it in LA with the Food and Flowers Freedom Act. In the meantime let’s lend Novella our support and best wishes....

California poppy tea

Mrs. Homegrown

April 12, 2011

Domesticus, Herbal Medicine, Herbs

22 Comments

...ly in your yard or general area, rather than trying to coax more exotic species along. There are many herbs that can be used to make relaxing teas (valerian, catnip, linden, chamomile, etc.), but this one intrigues me because it’s essentially a weed where I live. If it doesn’t grow readily where you live, I’d encourage you to investigate other herbs which grow more easily in your area. But for those of you who can grow Californ...

Mead!

Mr. Homegrown

January 24, 2008

Fermentation, Food

7 Comments

While we’ve tasted the Ethopian honey wine known as Tej, we’ve never had mead, so we decided to cook up a batch. It’s way too early to tell if we have a tasty beverage or a gallon of home brewed Listerine–it will be many months before the stuff is drinkable. But we thought we’d note how we made it, based on a recipe in Ken Schramm’s book The Compleat Meadmaker. We downsized the recipe from five gallons to one...

Prickly Pear Fruit Chips

Mr. Homegrown

September 7, 2009

Food, Recipes

13 Comments

Prickly pear fruit chip–some specimens are purple, our produces orange fruit It’s prickly pear fruit season. I know this both by the view out our front window and from the comments trickling in on an old post on how to make prickly pear fruit jelly. Thanks to a tip from Oliva Chumacero at the Farmlab, I now have another way of dealing with an over-abundance of this spiny fruit: slice it and dry it to make prickly pear fruit chips....

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California Dreaming

4 Vermicomposting Tips

The kids are all bikin’

3 things to do with citrus peels

Cargo Bike Roundup

Damned Figs!

Novella Carpenter Harassed by City of Oakland

California poppy tea

Mead!

Prickly Pear Fruit Chips