Mistakes we have made . . .

reliably every year while growing in terrible alkaline soil with no added water or fertilizer. The problem with the prickly pear is that it is too prodigious, and that’s the kind of problem you can hope for as an urban homesteader. 3. Newspaper seed pots Those newspaper seed starting pots we linked to earlier this year . . . well, there seems to be a problem with them. I think the newspaper is wicking the water away from the soil. While in...

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Far Side of the Stairs

ncy-room”. But the brave folks at SoapboxLA were clearly up to the challenge and took first place in the categories of non-crocodile wrestling Australian and fiery high-horse Hungarian. But seriously, part of this urban homesteading thing is about whipping our communities into shape and LA needs a serious thrashing, and I don’t mean the sort delivered by the ladies in the back of the LA Weekly. We need to make LA a walkable, bike-able...

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Got Real Milk?

or Introduction to Pemaculture Class and at 2:00 PM for “Got Real Milk?” Presentation.************************************************************************-Sustainable Los Angeles lecture series: * Part1: Free Urban Permaculture Design Course Introduction by David Kahn * Part2: Talk and Slide Show Presentation: “Got Real Milk?” by Mark McAfee President, Organic Pastures,LLC. “Today’s milk is accused of c...

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Santa Monica Legalizes Beekeeping

Last night the Santa Monica city council voted to amend their municipal code to allow beekeeping on single family properties. Now, legalizing beekeeping is a bit like legalizing sunshine. Bees, after all, do their thing whether or not the government permits it or not. For every beekeeper in an urban area there must be hundreds of feral bee colonies living in walls, roofs and compost bins. Nevertheless, Santa Monica took a big step forward, join...

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Raccoon Proof Chicken Coop

Homegrown Neighbor here again: Things aren’t always idyllic in the world of urban farming. Actually, they rarely are. There is literally a lot of blood, sweat and tears put into what we do. I’m still recovering from a scare we had a few days ago. After two years of trying, the other night at 2:30 a.m. a raccoon managed to break into my chicken coop. My housemate and I were up there in our pajamas shrieking while the hens flapped and...

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Sandwiched!

Homegrown Revolution began guest blogging this week on the engaging new consciousness shiftin’ nexus known as Reality Sandwich. We’ll be posting there at least once every two weeks. Check out our first post, an urban homesteading manifesto, just above Jamye Waxman’s missive, “Celebrating Sacred Sex Communities” (No doubt Waxman will probably win in the hit count). As harangues are currently running low in our on-...

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SoilWeb: An Online Soil Survey Resource

s isn’t included for some reason). While highly technical, terms are explained via hyperlinks. You click on the table to the right of the map for more detailed information including suitability for farming. Of course in urban areas you never know what unpleasant surprises lurk beneath the surface such as concrete chunks and lead. SoilWeb won’t tip you off to those things, but it does give a good overall picture of the kind of soil you...

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Your Opinions Please

So what does seafood, terrible graphic design and urban homesteading have in common? Absolutely nothing, but we got your attention which we will now direct to the poll we are conducting on the right. Please take a moment to render your opinion, so that we can better serve you with a delicately balanced nori roll of information and helpful tips. Please note that you can vote for more than one topic....

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Clicker Training Chickens

ere’s a video of a chick learning the basics. You can find others of this sort on Youtube: You might be able to find a chicken training seminar in your area, probably under the banner of dog training. With the rise of urban chicken-pets I think there is opportunity to be had in offering classes for would be chicken trainers. Googling around, I found this one in Lake Oswego, Oregon which is booked months in advance. Have you trained your c...

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Saturday Linkages: Sedum Stumps, Chicken Steadycams and the End of the World

ist http://econ.st/KAOPVc Cornstalks Everywhere But Nothing Else, Not Even A Bee http://n.pr/Rlasks Why Phoenix is becoming more like Minneapolis: http://nyti.ms/V3Nwlo Central Valley residents tired of receiving L.A.’s urban waste – Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/la-me-central-valley-20121126,0,3069632.story … For these links and more, follow Root Simple on Twitter: Follow @rootsimple...

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