Mullein (Verbascum thapsus)

July 1, 2009

Every time we visit the nice folks at Petaluma Urban Homestead they send us home with some strange plant. Thanks to PUH, who are busy actually doing things as opposed to blogging about doing things, we now have a beautiful flowering mullein plant (Verbascum thapsus). Verbascum thapsus is one of those plants that most people think of as a weed. Native to Europe and Asia, Verbascum thapsus was introduced to North America because of its many medicin...

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Essential System #4 – Illumination

Mr. Homegrown

September 6, 2006

Preparedness

...o bags, but we also are looking into a new generation of LED bulbs for our Urban Homestead’s interior lighting. As far as house lighting goes, while LED efficiency is rapidly advancing, compact fluorescents are still better from an economic perspective even though there are concerns about the trace amounts of mercury that compact fluorescents contain contaminating landfills. Still, compact fluorescents are far better than incandescents since they...

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Off to Baghdad by the Bay

Mr. Homegrown

November 27, 2007

Miscellaneous

...Homegrown Revolution is heading to San Francisco in our PPV on art business for a few days and to visit our comrades at Petaluma Urban Homestead. On our return we’ll post about our new illegal greywater strategy and our evolving thoughts on chicken housing. In the meantime check out our musings on guerrilla gardening over at Realty Sandwich....

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Build a Rocket Stove

Mr. Homegrown

May 30, 2007

Preparedness

8 Comments

...echo Research Center, a non-profit organization devoted to improving conditions in third world countries through the development of low cost, simple cooking and heating technologies have developed a number of rocket stoves that you can build for your urban homestead. They have a simple model called the VITA Stove made with sheet metal (note the better soundtrack music on the video) and an institutional model made with a 50 gallon drum. We think we...

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The Survivor

Mr. Homegrown

January 4, 2007

Thoughtstylings

1 Comment

...of articles about rainwater harvesting for important breaking news at our urban homestead–the development of the SurviveLA signature cocktail–the Survivor. For a long time we’ve cursed the previous owners of our compound for their useless, inedible landscaping. One of the plants they left us that we’ve lived with for all these years is an ornamental pomegranate tree (Punica granatum) that, while attractive, we had previously assumed was useless d...

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