Search Results for: label/fruit

187 results

Cure for Prickly Pear Stickers

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening
15 Comments
Mrs. Homegrown here: Hallelujah! Last night, our friend Oscar (genius man!) told us how to deal with the dreaded, pernicious, invisible prickly pear fruit stickers (glochids) which somehow end up embedded in my hands every time Erik brings one of those fruits in the house. The answer? Pumice stone. It’s so simple. Just rub the site with a pumice stone. I think it just shaves off the top part of the stickler, and then lower part works its...

Continue reading…

Gardening Tip: Senecent Seedlings

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Seeds
9 Comments
...to itself, “Well, this is it. This is all the space I’ll ever get, so I better get going on the reproduction.” At that point its biology will change and it will flower and start to do it’s best to set fruit or seed as soon as possible. In short, it intends to reproduce before it runs out of resources. The result of this biological shift is that this plant will never really thrive in your garden. It will stay smallish and...

Continue reading…

Planting a Mini-Orchard

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Water and Power, Water Conservation
2 Comments
...ration of washing machines use a lot less water than the old one that I still have. Other than the unnecessary bucket and the persimmon tree (died, for some unknown reason) this greywater application has worked very well. Our fruit trees are lush and happy. With the news that Lake Mead could go dry by 2013 we figured it was about time to figure out how to grow food with very little water in a Mediterranean climate that gets on average 15 inches...

Continue reading…

Reseeding Vegetables for the Warm Season

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening
13 Comments
So what edible/useful plants pop up in lead contaminated soil along a hot, dry alternately sun-baked and deep-shaded south side of a house in Southern California? After dumping a load of compost along our side yard, mother nature is doing her 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 spin...

Continue reading…

On miso, caffeine and the search for a morning brew

Mrs. Homegrown
Domesticus, Food, Thoughtstylings
39 Comments
...the point of this post. I’m looking for interesting suggestions for hot beverages that I can drink in the morning which will ease my longing for the ritualized caffeine consumption. I do not approve of any of the myriad fruit-flavored or otherwise flavored “herb” teas in the marketplace. I have my own mint, nettles and other herbs to make tea of, but thin herb tea is just plain depressing first thing in the morning. In the morni...

Continue reading…

Maggots!

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Gardening
RLeave a comment
...y compost pile it’s best to maintain a 50-50 ratio of carbon material to nitrogen materials. Carbon materials are essentially everything that is brown, like dead leaves, sawdust and dry grass. Nitrogen materials include fruit, vegetable scraps and coffee grounds. The type of pile you construct depends upon the materials you have available to compost. Becky had lots of grass and leaves on a fairly large piece of property and the three pile s...

Continue reading…

Avocados

Mr. Homegrown
Fruit Trees, Gardening
14 Comments
...ations of zinc sulfate placed in shallow holes. What few pests avocados have can be sprayed off with a hose.  Occasional deep waterings flush out chlorides in the soil that can cause leaves to turn brown at the tips and poor fruit production. In fact if the first rain of the season is less than 3 inches, you should irrigate to flush out salts that build up during the dry season. Avocados take a long time to ripen on the tree–12 months or...

Continue reading…

Mellow Yellow: How to Make Dandelion Wine

Nancy Klehm
Fermentation, Food, Foraging, Recipes
33 Comments
Today on Root Simple we welcome another guest post from our Midwest correspondent Nancy Klehm: In the past week, we Midwesterners have experienced three hard frosts – killing back the growth, that emerged too early of my grapes and hardy kiwis and zapping peach blossoms. We will see if there is any fruit onset and if my vines recover. Meanwhile, it is dandelion wine time! I first tasted dandelion wine when I bought a bottle of it at a folksy gi...

Continue reading…