Search Results for: label/book reviews/page/4/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

617 results

Happy Mayan Apocalypse!

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
8 Comments
OK, so why are the folks in front having a good time? If you’re reading this post the Mayan apocalypse did not happen. Either that or I’m blogging via a HAM link from the Root Simple bug out location. So what is the official party line here at Root Simple on the whole 2012 deal? I’m hoping the uneventful passing of this day will mark a peak in interest in apocalyptic scenarios. While I could opinionate about the Apocalypse meme...

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Our Footprint

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
3 Comments
We’re not the types to obsess about carbon footprints, preferring a separate set of fun, pleasure and cheapness metrics with which to base our lives on. That being said, Mr. Homegrown Evolution punched in our stats for a contest over at Low Impact Living and ended up winning the contest. Read the article about us here. There’s some irony about this, in that Mr. Homegrown Evolution is, as you read this, busting the household carbon fo...

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Feiyue Shoes: The Poor Man’s Vibrams

Mr. Homegrown
Fitness
5 Comments
I’m cheap and just don’t want to pay $100 to run “barefoot” in those funny Vibram shoes even if everyone I know swears by them. So, I run . . . barefoot. In two years of actual rather than Vibram-mediated “barefoot” running, on both concrete and dirt paths, I have yet to even get a scratch. But there have been a few times when I’ve encountered a particularly gravely path. Ouch. On those occasions IR...

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Borage (Borago officinalis)

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Herbal Medicine, Herbs, Vegetable Gardening
9 Comments
Borage, just about to bloom. Borage is an ugly sounding name for a beautiful and useful plant. The moniker is probably a corruption of the Andalusian Arabic abu buraq or “father of sweat”, a reference to it’s diaphoretic qualities1. Both the leaves and the blue flowers (sometimes white flowers) are edible and have a refreshing cucumber like taste. Borage is an annual herb that we plant in the late fall here in Los Angeles for...

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Physalis pruinosa a.k.a. “Ground Cherry”

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening
9 Comments
While strolling the nursery seed isle this weekend looking for things to plant for our summer food needs, Homegrown Revolution came across a strange fruit we’ve never heard of, Physalis pruinosa, a.ka. ground cherry, a.k.a. husk tomato. a.k.a. strawberry tomato. Homegrown Revolution hates to throw around scientific names for plants but in this case we have to because the common names get so confusing. The back of the Tompson & Morgan...

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Jujube and Goji Fever

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Gardening
8 Comments
Jujube Photo from the Papaya Tree Nursery Tucked into a residential neighborhood in a corner of Los Angeles’ vast San Fernando valley, the Papaya Tee Nursery, sells a dazzling array of exotic fruit trees, countless species and varieties you’ve never heard of. Papaya Tree’s proprietor Alex Silber, with his encyclopedic knowledge and stream of consciousness delivery, comes across at first as, well, unusual, until you realize that it&...

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Easy to Make & Delicious Fermented Veggies

Julia Posey
Fermentation, Food, Recipes
13 Comments
Inspiration hit at Camp Ramshackle and I finally made fermented vegetables. I loosely followed the Golden recipe from The Versatile Vegetable by Miranda Barrett and Colleen Pollard with cabbage, golden beets, carrots, celery, ginger, lemon and garlic. I omitted the Granny Smith apple because every person/book I consulted said use only the freshest apples and my stash had been sitting for quite some time. I made a stop at Culture Club in Pasad...

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Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands

Mr. Homegrown
rainwater harvesting
RLeave a comment
“The bricoleur, says Levi-Strauss, is someone who uses “the means at hand,” that is, the instruments he finds at his disposition around him, those which are already there, which had not been especially conceived with an eye to the operation for which they are to be used and to which one tries by trial and error to adapt them, not hesitating to change them whenever it appears necessary, or to try several of them at once, even if the...

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Homegrown Evolution on WAMC

Mr. Homegrown
Events
1 Comment
Kelly and I will be on WAMC, Northeast Public Radio’s Roundtable show on Earth Day, April 22nd at 9:15 am EST. You can listen in online here. Earth Day will be a busy one for us as Erik will also be on a panel for the National Conversation on Climate Action at 2 pm PST at MTA headquarters. More info here. We’ll close the day with a book signing at an innovative new neighborhood market called Locali. We’ll be there at 7 pm PST a...

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Advances in Gardening: The Trough of Garlic

Mrs. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening
7 Comments
Remember a while back I posted a picture of Erik in a manly pose, whomping our patio with his sledgehammer? He took out a strip of concrete and built this over the hole: a new planting bed.  That’s the Germinator on the right, butting up to it and my Fan behind it.  When we’re done with all this redoing, we’ll clean everything up and take some wider shots so it all begins to make sense. For now–believe me–it’...

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