Search Results for: label/gardening/2011/04/making-it

462 results

Ordo Ab Chao

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
10 Comments
n of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders turned into gardening advice.Got attention deficit disorder? Well, here’s how ya mix up your own potting mix. Face it, we’re all in the diagnostic manual somewhere. I suffer from a chronic lack of organizational ability. Square foot gardening has never worked for me–I just can’t keep up with the schedule. For some folks...

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Advances in Gardening: The Screens of Discretion

Mrs. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening
7 Comments
When our friend Tara helped us reconceptualize our back yard, one of the first things she did was wave toward our compost pile and chicken supply zone, and say, “You’ve got to screen off all that crap.” Of course! We had to take control of the view. Ahhhhh….. So Erik built this screen. He started using a pre-made trellis material, but tricked it up.  Behind it you can see the massive compost pile. The structure on the le...

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Advances in Gardening: Introducing the Germinator™

Mr. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening, Seeds
4 Comments
...tic Vent Opener, a gadget that promises to automatically open and close the top. The Univent requires no batteries or power and aims to maintain a temperature range between 62-73 F. We’ll review the Univent when we try it next year. So far the Germinator™ has worked well, providing a safe haven for our winter seedlings: artichoke, spigarello broccoli, nettles, sweet peas, white sage, Italian dandelion, chard and more. We could sow directly...

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Advances in Gardening Series: A Garlic Mystery

Mrs. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening
16 Comments
  One of the new features of the garden this year is a long, trough-shaped bed that Erik installed along the edge of our patio. Its inaugural crop was garlic, which is generally a very easy plant to grow. We’ve done it before, many times, successfully. This year it didn’t work. The stalks failed to thrive. Many plants did not set bulbs at all, looking instead like green onions. The heads that were formed are quite small.  We’...

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Survival Gardening

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Preparedness, Thoughtstylings, Vegetable Gardening
27 Comments
One of many survival garden pitches. Listen to AM radio for more than a few minutes and you’re bound to hear an ad touting seeds and “one acre survival gardens.” The implication is that hordes of foreclosed zombies will soon empty the shelves of the local Walmart and leave us all bartering for gas with our carefully stored heirloom pole bean seeds. But it does raise the question of how much space you need to grow all...

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Gardening Tip: Senecent Seedlings

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Seeds
9 Comments
With seedlings, small is good. Mrs. Homegrown here: Senescence is the “change of the biology in an organism as it ages after it reaches maturity” (see Wikipedia). I believe I’m experiencing it right now. What we’re here to warn you about today is buying plants which are old before their time. Seedlings which are senescent. What are senescent seedlings? Basically, these are seedlings whose roots have met the botto...

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Advances in Gardening Series: The Fan

Mrs. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening, Herbal Medicine, Herbs
6 Comments
Yet another heat wave slowed our backyard redesign project, but the weather is looking more cooperative at last and things are coming along. What we thought we might do over the next few days is share some of the new things we’ve put in, and how/why we built them, just in case any of it might be useful to you. Everything is pretty rough and ragged right now, but it will be fun to report back in a couple months and do a compare/contrast. T...

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Advances in Gardening Series: We’re maturing

Mrs. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening, Herbs
8 Comments
November–seedlings new planted January–all the foliage is in End of February–the flowers really start to pop Stuff grows. You just gotta remember to plant it! A quick photo update on progress for the Phan of Pharmacy and the Hippie Heart, mostly for our own record keeping. Maybe it will inspire those of you surrounded by rain or snow with dreams of your own spring planting. Back in November, I clear...

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Resources

These are our favorite web resources on various topics, and books which you’ll find on our bookshelves: General Home Ec/Appropriate Tech/DIY Living Mother Earth News How to Homestead Backwoods Home Magazine  AfriGadget  The Urban Homestead Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World Radical Homemakers The Integral Urban House Made by Hand Farm City The Natural Kitchen Country Wisdom and Know-How Wendell Berry’s ess...

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