Search Results for: label/medicinal plants

293 results

Salsa Dancing in a World Without Oil

Mr. Homegrown
Events
1 Comment
...ing the citizens of Los Angeles to come make and taste tomato salsas while listening and dancing to salsa music. SALSA SALSA is a celebration of public space and the culmination of the LOVE APPLES project in which 72 tomato plants were installed on 12 traffic islands in LA and carefully tracked to see which thrive and which perish, à la Survivor. LOVE APPLES is a collaboration between the art collective Fallen Fruit (www.fallenfruit.org) and I...

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Mistakes we have made . . .

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens, Permaculture, Thoughtstylings
13 Comments
...s. They’re dependable layers and don’t make much of a fuss. 3. Planting stuff that doesn’t grow in our Mediterranean climate As our permaculture friend David Khan likes to say, “work makes work.” Plants that need lots of tending and attention, nine times out of ten, end up unhappy. When they croak it leads to a downward spiral of disappointment and frustration. Just recently a hops plant I tried to grow up and died o...

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Laundry to Landscape 2.0

Mr. Homegrown
Water and Power, Water Conservation
13 Comments
...projects I’ve done. No cursing whatsoever! Now Lora can’t wait to do the laundry. She, of course, uses only Oasis Biocompatible Laundry Detergent. Note that many “eco” detergents will kill terrestrial plants–I’ll do a blog post on this shortly, as I discovered one major manufacturer claiming that a detergent was safe for greywater only to discover that it contained several different sodium compounds, definitel...

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Saturday Linkages: Hiding Spots, Bedbugs and Rodents of Unusual Size

Mr. Homegrown
Saturday Linkages
2 Comments
...opped Bedbugs in Their Tracks http://nyti.ms/12H9HDI Gardening All About Gabions : Cheap Retaining and Other Garden Features http://shar.es/JHCQS  New killer compost problem–Imprelis: http://ow.ly/1UWcBj How to protect plants from frost: http://ow.ly/1UMWLG Farmers tackle pests with colas: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3977351.stm … Rodents of Unusual Size – a documentary about 20-lb rats in Louisiana – Boing Boing http...

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Eco Blogging, Tin Foil Hats and Convention Mania

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
7 Comments
...erbaric chamber. 12:15 PM I step into the Inner Traditions book booth which is having a half-off sale and go nuts. I pick up a German herbalism book called Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants and Prickly Pear Cactus Medicine: Treatments for Diabetes, Cholesterol, and the Immune System to add to my collection of prickly pear cactus books. 12:30 I’m still hungry–the bagel and whipped coconut b...

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Growing and Preparing Cardoons (Cynara cardunculus)

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
21 Comments
...lightest of breezes. Charles Darwin mentions cardoon in The Voyage of the Beagle, “In the latter country alone [Uruguay], very many (probably several hundred) square miles are covered by one mass of these prickly plants and are impenetrable by man or beast. Over the undulating plains, where these great beds occur, nothing else can now live.” My own thoughts about “invasives” are closer to David Theodoropoulos...

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Greywater Guerrillas in LA this Weekend

Mr. Homegrown
Water and Power, Water Conservation
4 Comments
...imited so register early! Workshop will include a presentation on greywater reuse, the design process of the system we’ll be building, and the construction of a greywater system from the washing machine to ornamental of plants. Activities will involve digging, measuring, cutting pipes, observing, and more! Sunday July 20th: Presentation: How to Disengage from the Water Grid: With Greywater, Rainwater, and Composting Toilets. Time: 7:30- 9:0...

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Tips on Composting from Will Bakx of Sonoma Compost

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Gardening
2 Comments
...een unable to verify this–if any of you know about this issue, please leave a comment. Alleopathic plant material such as eucalyptus leaves and walnut leaves, on the other hand, are ok to add. Bakx cited studies where plants were successfully grown in leaf litter made entirely out of eucalyptus leaves. He suggested keeping such alleopathic material to less than 15% of the pile. Web links Sonoma Compost’s website: www.sonomacompost....

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Toby Hemenway On How Horticulture Can Save Us

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Permaculture, Thoughtstylings
6 Comments
...t by “horticulture” is not, say, propagating begonias. Rather, he defined horticulture as gardening, the kind of gardening some indigenous people did when they influenced the landscape to produce useful and edible plants. In other words, what we in the West would call permaculture. This is in contrast to agriculture which Hemenway considers to have a destructive influence on ecosystems, human health and culture. Hemenway also, justif...

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Whiteflies

Mr. Homegrown
Pests
2 Comments
...might have had a bigger problem on our hands, but biodiversity in our tiny backyard means that the whiteflys don’t have many other options for feeding. What we could have done better is to have kept a closer eye on our plants. Daily inspection of more sensitive vegetables is always a good idea, but something we’ve been lax about lately. Keeping intensively planted annual vegetable beds close to places of daily activity means being ab...

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