Growing Potatoes in Tires

Chicago homesteader extraordinaire Nance Klehm, temporarily in residence here in Los Angeles, gifted us with some beautiful seed potatoes which we just planted. As we did last year, we’re growing them in used tires filled with compost (see our surprise potato harvest in a post from last September). As the plant grows you add another tire to the stack, causing the growth of more potatoes. An alternate method, suggested by Homegrown Revolut...

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See You At Maker Faire!

Erik says: A reminder that I’ll be speaking at the Bay Area Maker Faire tomorrow, Saturday May 19 at 6:30 pm on the Maker Square Stage (located in the Homegrown Village). The talk I’m giving will be about the appropriate tech projects we’ve been up to around the Root Simple compound. Hope to see you there! For more information about Maker Faire go to http://makerfaire.com/....

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New Squash Baby Theory: Aliens

Photo courtesy Piero Fiocco At the risk of becoming the “squash baby blog,” one final post on the subject. Reader Piero Fiocco sent some photo evidence that conflicts with Doug Harvey’s “Sass-squash” theory. Fiocco sent a brief, cryptic note: “I from Italy once again.I came in possession of this evidence….Use it as you wish, but keep Erik cool Ciao from Italy!” It seems as though I “gr...

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The Real Injera

Homegrown Revolution was delighted to receive a comment from “Watch Woman“, who is from Ethiopia, reacting to the injera recipe we posted earlier, From my experience of baking injera, the baking soda/powder, self-rising flour or commercial yeast alters the real taste & texture of teff injera. I say, the restaurants here in the US have the look alike of the injera, but far from the real taste & texture of injera. Sorry but t...

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Thoughts on Samhain

Image from the beautiful book, Haunted Air by Ossian Brown  Mrs. Homegrown here: I celebrate Samhain on November 1st because I enjoy marking the changing seasons of the year by making these old festivals my own. It’s so easy to lose track of time in an electronic culture. It’s even easier to lose track when you live in Los Angeles, land of the perpetual sunshine. Samhain marks the last harvest of the year. The weather is...

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Another way to deal with prickly pear stickers

One of those “farm uses” could be burning off prickly pear spines . . Image via BoingBoing I’m drowning in prickly pear fruit which means a lot of nasty thorns in the kitchen and an angry Mrs. Homegrown. Previously I burned them off over our stove, but inevitably a few stickers would find their way to the kitchen sponge. Now I’ve got a new technique for removing stickers thanks to Norman of Silver City New Mexic...

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I forgot about Bean Fest!

Mrs. Homegrown here: Apologies all, it’s been a heck of a week.  I realize I never set an end date on Bean Fest, a day where I could sign off gracefully with a last recipe, and now I think maybe that’s for the best. Because really, does Bean Fest ever end? No, it does not. Not in our hearts. And besides, I have a backlog of bean recipes. So while I will not be posting a recipe this Friday, I will declare Fridays henceforward as fruga...

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A New Source of Fuel

Homegrown Revolution comrades, the Yes Men have pulled off a rather nice stunt: June 14, 2007 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE EXXON PROPOSES BURNING HUMANITY FOR FUEL IF CLIMATE CALAMITY HITSConference organizer fails to have Yes Men arrested Text of speech, photos, video: http://www.vivoleum.com/ GO-EXPO statement: http://newswire.ca/ Contact: [email protected] More links at end of release. Imposters posing as ExxonMobil and National Petroleum Council...

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On the Southwest Chief to Chicago

I’m heading to Chicago aboard Amtrak’s Southwest Chief this evening for a series of workshops. Hope to see some of you in Chicago. When I get back to Los Angeles, Mrs. Homegrown and I will be leading a greywater workshop at Good Magazine on the 27th of May. Details to follow. In Altadena on May 30th I’ll be doing a talk, “Living Simply, Living Abundantly” at the Altadena Community Center 730 East Altadena Drive fro...

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Basil all winter long

Mrs. Homegrown here: Basil is a summer plant. When the nights get cold, basil turns unhappy. It yellows and loses flavor. Here in LA that doesn’t happen until quite late in the year. Erik just pulled out our summer basil a couple of days ago to make room for winter plants. I’m replacing it–in a culinary sense–with Italian parsley, which loves cool weather, but hates the heat. It seems our gardening year swings between...

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