Search Results for: label/gardening/page/17/2011/04/making-it

511 results

2011 in Review: The Garden

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
20 Comments
ItR17;s was a difficult year in the garden. A lead and zinc issue screwed up my winter vegetables garden plans. At least we managed to find some river rocks and put in a path. I found this photo from December 2010. I was certainly a lot more organized that year. For 2012, IR17;m putting in raised beds to deal with the heavy metal issue and weR17;ve already planted more native plants. But most importantly one of my New Years resolution...

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Free Preparedness E-Books

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness, Resources
10 Comments
Camp loom, for making mats and mattresses from the 1911 edition of the Boy Scout Handbook Through a circuitous bit of aimless interweb searching I came across a huge list of downloadable urban homesteading/gardening/survivalist manuals on a site called hardcorepreppers.com. Unfortunately, this site is so popular that it seems to be down every time IR17;ve checked. But thanks to GoogleR17;s caching feature I was able to access a li...

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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 weR17;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: 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. WeR17;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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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 youR17;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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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, “YouR17;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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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 IR17;m experiencing it right now. What weR17;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: 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. WeR17;ve done it before, many times, successfully. This year it didnR17;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.  WeR17;...

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