Search Results for: label/build it

159 results

Michael Tortorello on Urban Homesteading

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
4 Comments
...;The wonders of permaculture plus a jab at aerated compost tea. “Finding the Potential in Vacant Lots” Recent boom and bust cycles have left us with a lot of room to grow stuff. “Food Storage as Grandma Knew It“Tortorello actually tracked down some folks who have functioning root cellars. “The Spotless Garden“On aquaponics. Don’t name those fish! “Making Flowers Into Perfume“ Build that still...

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Vegetable Gardening Series Starts This Weekend!

Mr. Homegrown
Events
RLeave a comment
We’re teaching a three part series on vegetable gardening at the Hutington Library and Gardens starting this Saturday and there’s still some room in the class. In the course of this hands-on series we’ll reveal the secret to vegetable gardening: it’s all about the soil! To that end we’ll show you how to build a compost pile, how to interpret a soil report, how to amend the soil, how to set up a drip irrigation syst...

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Why we moderate comments

Mrs. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
11 Comments
  When you leave a comment on this blog, it doesn’t appear immediately. It’s held for us to approve. We’re not afraid of what our readers have to say (Root Simple readers are always very civil) but we have to protect the comments from the inanities of spam. We thought you’d might like to see some of it, so you know why you have to wait for your comment to go up. The majority of the spam is of the False Reader sort. Thes...

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Garden Swap

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening
3 Comments
Growing your own vegetables is a great way to add flavor, nutrition and, if done carefully, save money in our uncertain economic times. But what if you live in an apartment and don’t have any land to call your own? Homegrown Evolution’s in-box contained an answer to that problem for folks in the Los Angeles area. We love this idea: “Cultivating Sustainable Communities (CSC) is launching its newest project. GardenSwap is an op...

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How To Dry Food With the Sun

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation, How-to, Preparedness, Solar
5 Comments
.... But there’s a catch to sun drying: humidity. Food dries best when temperatures are above 85º F and below 60% humidity. If you live in a desert, humidity isn’t a problem. But in most other places in North America it’s simply too moist to set food out under the sun. It will rot before it dries. In Los Angeles, due to the influence of the ocean, it’s slightly too humid most of the year for sun drying to work well. But there...

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Los Angeles Earthen Oven Class – May 25-27, 2012

Mr. Homegrown
Events
2 Comments
We’re very pleased to announce that adobe master Kurt Gardella will be leading an earthen oven building class at the Root Simple compound. We’ve both taken classes with Kurt and he’s an amazing instructor. Details and registration information: Earthen ovens are inexpensive to build, fun to use, and provide baking environment impossible to recreate in the kitchen.  This May, Kurt Gardella returns to California for three...

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Hexayurt

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness
2 Comments
SurviveLA reader jbjhill, responding to our rant about designing for a world dominated by 4 x 8 building materials, sent a link to this unique yurt-shaped emergency shelter which can be built out of 4 x 8 sheets of nearly anything (the globe shaped thing on the right is an inflatable satellite dish). Designed by software engineer Vinay Gupta, who is working on this project full time, the “Hexayurt” costs somewhere between $200 and $5...

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How to start a chicken retirement community

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens
34 Comments
Mrs. Homegrown here: So–here’s the story of another mistake we made. When Erik and I first got chickens we didn’t lay out a plan for dealing with the chickens as they aged. That was the mistake. Simple as that. Make your plans, people! We learned how to slaughter chickens–we knew we could do it if we needed to–but we never really sat down and decided what would happen to our ladies when they stopped laying. We̵...

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Root Simple Edible Gardening Classes at the Huntington Ranch

Mr. Homegrown
Events
4 Comments
There are still some spots available for our edible gardening class at the Huntington that starts this Saturday. In the course of the three consecutive Saturday sessions, we’ll build a compost pile, dissect soil test reports, make a seed starting mix and discuss incorporating fruit trees and native plants into your edible landscape among many other topics. The class will be held at the Huntington’s spectacular Ranch. Here’s th...

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