Erik’s 2012 New Year’s Resolutions in Review

December 31, 2012

...derful awesomeness that is Mrs. Homegrown each and every day. I’ve got the book but not the license. Fail: Get HAM technician’s license. Learn Morse code Attend CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) classes. Organize messy office so it doesn’t look like an episode of Hoarders. Organize supplies in garage into labeled boxes: still messy. Turn the garage into the ultimate man cave. Increase running distance. Organize bug-out box. Backpack more of...

Read…

The Hen: An Appreciation

Mrs. Homegrown

January 2, 2013

Animals, Chickens

10 Comments

Reading the fine book, On Writing Well, I came across this passage by E.B. White (Charlotte’s Web) about chickens, proving that nothing ever really changes: From “The Hen: An Appreciation,” which is found in the book of essays, The Second Tree from the Corner, by E.B. White, 1944: Chickens do not always enjoy an honorable position among city-bred people, although the egg, I notice, goes on and on. Right now the hen is in favor. The war has deifie...

Read…

Warning: This Blog is Based in a Mediterranean Climate

Mr. Homegrown

January 16, 2013

Gardening

24 Comments

...d Vegetable Planting Calendar and the Digitalseed Flower Planting Calendar Books: The New Western Garden Book: The Ultimate Gardening Guide (Sunset Western Garden Book) Pat Welsh’s Southern California Organic Gardening (3rd Edition): Month by Month And for those of you who live where it regularly freezes and snows, you’ll be amused to hear that in all of my years of gardening the first time that I’ve ever had plants get serious frost damage was ea...

Read…

What To Do With Old Vegetable Seeds

Mr. Homegrown

November 27, 2012

Gardening, Permaculture, Vegetable Gardening

15 Comments

...ng in a shoe box. And I’ve been reading a newly published translation of a book by the late, “natural farmer” Masanobu Fukuoka (review coming soon). Fukuoka inspired me to distribute those old seeds around our micro-orchard to see what comes up. Fukuoka has some tips in his book The Natural Way of Farming for creating a semi-wild vegetable garden: Include nitrogen fixers (in my case some clover seeds) Use daikon and other radishes to break up hard...

Read…

The Connection Between Human Health and Soil Health

Mr. Homegrown

September 20, 2013

Food, Gardening, Soil

2 Comments

...ian and author Dr. Daphne Miller discusses in the lecture above and in her book Farmacology: What Innovative Family Farming Can Teach Us About Health and Healing. In the research for the book Miller visited farmers who, as she put it, “farm in the image of nature,” who approach the farm as a living organism. While she cautioned that there is little research behind the connection between farming practices and health, she suspects that biodiversity...

Read…