The Homegrown Mailbox: How and Where Do I Get My Soil Tested?

June 5, 2009

...rs or stick to ornamentals. You could also try bioremediation: each season plant a cover crop, let it grow, and then pull it up and dispose of it. Test the soil until it comes out clean. This works well, but it can take many years to get all the contaminants out. For those of you in Los Angeles, our local Extension Service agent Yvonne Savio kindly sent me the following list of labs with comments. Biological Urban Gardening Service PO Box 76 Citru...

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A White House Vegetable Garden

Mr. Homegrown

August 4, 2008

Gardening, Thoughtstylings, Vegetable Gardening

3 Comments

...n garden: I’ll note that the last person to try to convince a president to plant veggies was the always forward thinking Alice Waters, the proprietor of Berkeley California’s Chez Panisse. Waters asked then president Bill Clinton to grow some vegetables at the White House. Clinton responded, “send me the seeds Alice” only to renege on the idea, claiming that it would interfere with the historic and formal White House garden plans. But what about t...

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Nettle Mania

Mr. Homegrown

April 25, 2008

Food, Foraging, Herbal Medicine, Herbs

7 Comments

...inging nettles (Urtica dioica) are a common weed with a bad reputation–the plant has tiny spines that inject, as Wikipedia puts it, a “cocktail of poisons.” Miraculously when you boil the plant the spines lose their punch and you’re left with a tasty green consumed plain or incorporated in a number of dishes, from soups to ravioli, to the German cheese pictured above (thanks to Berlin corespondent Steve Rowell for the photo). When dried, the leave...

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Book Review: A Feast of Weeds by Luigi Ballerini

Mr. Homegrown

February 26, 2013

Food, Foraging

7 Comments

...al heirs pursue that same design. Each chapter profiles a common foragable plant and includes a set of Italian style recipes for what to do with them such as spaghetti with nettles and purslane frittata. The wild plants Ballerini writes about are found in Italy, but most (minus capers, sadly) can be found all over North America. This is not a guide book–it assumes you already know how to identify the plants Ballerini is discussing. I had one quibb...

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The Difference Between Mulch and Compost

Mr. Homegrown

March 31, 2015

Gardening

2 Comments

...aves, shredded cuttings and bark, etc., spread on soil or around or over a plant to provide insulation, protect from desiccation, and deter weeds. Also: textile or other artificial material used for the same purpose. I’d argue that compost, properly defined, is fully not partially rotted organic material (or textiles or plastic, though I don’t like plastic mulch). The distinction is important. If you integrate mulch, i.e. partially rotted material...

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