Search Results for: label/least favorite plant/page/2/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

733 results

Rooftop SIP Garden in LA

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Self Watering Containers
7 Comments
Got to visit John Zapf’s vertiginous LA compound yesterday. He’s got an amazing rooftop vegetable garden using self irrigating pots. John has little sun in the yard so the roof is only option for veggies. He uses drip line to refill the reservoirs. Reminds me of the Green Roof Growers of Chicago (minus the extreme weather). His two cents on what to grow: chard good, zucchini good, corn in pots not so good. For more info on self ir...

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Stickers for the Organic Gardener

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
6 Comments
Via BoingBoing a clever re-purposing: “Evil Mad Scientist Labs wants you to proudly label your organic garden with these handsome “Now Slower and with More Bugs!” stickers, originally produced to adorn software products. The influence of the Slow Food movement is increasing, and gardening is getting ever more popular. Even the tech bloggers are posting about local pollinators and getting beehives. In this environment, it is fi...

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Noodler’s Ink Reusable Fountain Pen

Eric Thomason
Domesticus, Reviews
12 Comments
Julia just wrote a post on Ramshackle Solid about our newest solution to the frustration of disposable pens: Noodler’s Ink and fountain pens. From the Noodler’s website: Why Noodler’s? “Noodler’s Ink” has the lowest cost per volume in stores that carry it and it’s 100% made in the USA from cap to glass to ink. The ink with the catfish on the label symbolizes a southern sport that attempts to equalize the struggle between man a...

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What Mountaineering Accidents Can Teach Us About Food Preservation

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation
13 Comments
Would you eat pickles made by these two? Each year the American Alpine Club publishes a book detailing all the mountaineering accidents in North America. The club’s goal is simple, as they put it, “to help you learn from the mistakes of others.” I’ve often thought that the same approach should be applied to many of the activities we love in the homesteading movement, especially food preservation. Now, I think t...

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Tracking the Mood of the Gardener

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
7 Comments
Swiss chard from the winter of 2010 A Root Simple reader I ran into this weekend took issue with my assertion that fall is the best time to start a vegetable garden in Southern California. Thinking about it some more I think she may have a point. Some of you may have noticed that we have a new feature on the blog–if you click on an individual blog post you’ll see a list of related posts at the bottom. Looking at some of those older p...

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Saturday Linkages: Cat Houses, Office Gyms, Cooking in Compost and More . . .

Mr. Homegrown
Miscellaneous
1 Comment
A cat house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright Makin’ Gourmet meal cooked in compost: http://www.7dvt.com/2012earthiest-roast … The Fixer’s Manifesto http://manifesto.sugru.com  Short film about Safecast, the hackerspace-created, crowdsource radioactivity monitoring project http://boingboing.net/2012/11/21/short-film-about-safecast-the.html … Vintage Cat House Designed by the Office of Frank Lloyd Wright – http://www.moderncat.net...

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Los Angeles School Board Cancels Tyson Contract

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens, Thoughtstylings
27 Comments
Thanks to the hard work of local food activists, including my neighbor Jennie Cook, the Los Angeles Board of Education voted this past week to withdraw its five year contract with Tyson Foods Inc. It’s a multi-million dollar loss for Tyson which provides chicken, or.what they refer to on their own website as “protein products” to the Los Angeles Unified School District. Tyson was to have been a part of a contract divided betwe...

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Picture Sundays: Bike Rack With Bee Smoker

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Bees, Bikes, Picture Sundays
2 Comments
Bike Snob NYC predicted back in 2010 that beekeeping would be the new fixed-gear. Don’t know where I found this picture (Facebook?) but it looks like bikes and bees are achieving a kind of synergy. I think this is a custom rack just for that handsome Dadant smoker, which like the design of the bicycle, has not changed much in a hundred years: Dadant smoker in 1910. Does this mean that Dadant will come out with a titanium smoker?...

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Pimp My Cold Frame

Mr. Homegrown
Design, Gardening, Seeds
19 Comments
While the climate here in Los Angeles is exceedingly mild–it rarely gets much below freezing–springtime can, some years, be too cold to get good germination of summer vegetables such as tomatoes and peppers. This was the case in 2010 when I was not able to get a single tomato seed to germinate until late May. To head off another seedling crisis I built a simple cold frame. In order to prevent the cold frame from becoming a solar...

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Dave Wilson’s Top 21 Fruit Trees for the Southwest US

Mr. Homegrown
Fruit Trees, Gardening
11 Comments
A Necta-plum from our tree harvested in July 2010. Do you live in a warm climate and have less than 500 chill hours? “Rock star orchardist” Tom Spellman, with the Dave Wilson Nursery, has some suggestions for low chill fruit tree varieties based on productivity and performance. His recommendations: Dorsett golden apple Fuji apple Pink Lady apple Cot-N-Candy Aprium Flavor Delight Aprium Minnie Royal cherry Royal Lee cherry A...

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