Search Results for: label/food preservation/page/3/2010/06/the-urban-homestead/2011/04/making-it

807 results

Cutting a Beehive Out of a Wall

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Bees
6 Comments
Bees in a wall! Last week, along with two other “backwards beekeepers” Russ and Sue, we relocated a hive of bees that had taken up residence in a garage wall in East Hollywood. It was a “cut-out” in beekeeping parlance. The property owners did not want to exterminate the hive and we were able to give them a new home in Sue’s idyllic garden. Backwards Beekeeping guru Kirk Anderson sent us some tips via email. It&#...

Continue reading…

More Cargo Bike Porn

Mr. Homegrown
Bikes
4 Comments
In honor of bike to work week another round of cargo bikes, this time with photos courtesy of comrade Colin Bogart, former board president of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. These bikes were part of this February’s North American Handmade Bicycle Show in Portland. Get our your wallet, because these wheels are spendy. Here’s a very heavy looking bike for carrying your apples around with. It’s by Black Sheep Bikes of Fo...

Continue reading…

Nopales Season

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Foraging, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
6 Comments
It’s nopales (the pads of the prickly pear cactus for you Yankees) season at the Homegrown Evolution compound. Our prickly pear has thrown off so many leaves that a neighbor dropped by last week to ask for some. We filled a bag for her and declined the dollar she offered us. To cook up our nopales we use a simple recipe found in Delena Tull’s book, Edible and Useful Plants of Texas and the Southwest. First scrape off the spines with...

Continue reading…

Reseeding Vegetables for the Warm Season

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening
13 Comments
own food forestry experiment. This month the following things popped up out of that load of compost: stinging nettle cardoon tomatoes nasturtium fennel sunflowers Elsewhere in the yard, New Zealand spinach has popped up on its own. I doubt the stinging nettle or nasturtium will hang on for long (it’s out of season for those plants here).  But I’m willing to bet that the tomatoes, New Zealand spinach, fennel and cardoon will take. B...

Continue reading…

Lead Update

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Lead
8 Comments
that “plant available” is different than the total amount of lead in the soil. The total amount would be about ten times higher or 1,120 ppm. According to the University of Minnesota Extension Service, Generally, it has been considered safe to use garden produce grown in soils with total lead levels less than 300 ppm. The risk of lead poisoning through the food chain increases as the soil lead level rises above this concentrati...

Continue reading…

A Close Shave

Mr. Homegrown
Body Care, Domesticus, Shaving
1 Comment
Author and fellow revolutionary Nicholas Sammond is visiting the Homegrown Revolution compound this week and he really knows how to stick it to the Man! You see the Man wants to sell us gentleman cheap shaving implements that just happen to need expensive replacement blades, a business strategy called a “loss leader” pioneered by American Safety Razor Company founder King Camp Gillette that has since been applied to everything from i...

Continue reading…

Thoughts On the Egg Recall

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
11 Comments
of 10,000 hens. A small farmer has the same advantages–literally fewer eggs in one basket. I went on to get up on my high horse and suggested that our current agricultural system goes against nature. As Heraclitus puts it, “Though the logos is common, the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own.” By the “logos” Heraclitus means the underlying, ordering principles of the universe. Applied to a chicken those un...

Continue reading…

Bucket Flushing

Mr. Homegrown
Water Conservation
4 Comments
SurviveLA is researching greywater systems and today we’ve got our first tip on recycling your water. First a definition. Greywater is the waste water that comes out of your shower, sinks, and washing machine. Blackwater is the icky stuff that comes out of your toilet and because of the risk of contamination it should not be reused. For now we’ll lump the kitchen sink in with the toilet since food scraps, particularly for meat eaters...

Continue reading…

Growing and Preparing Cardoons (Cynara cardunculus)

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
20 Comments
It’s the ultimate pain in the ass vegetable to prepare and I’ll probably get in big trouble in native plant circles for even mentioning it, but just last night I fried up my first successful plate of homegrown cardoons (Cynara cardunculus). Not the most attractive blanching job, admittedly. All ready to prepare The cardoon is a close relative of artichoke, identical in appearance, except that the flowers are much smaller and t...

Continue reading…