Search Results for: label/medicinal plants

287 results

Essential System #4 – Illumination

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness
RLeave a comment
...ounts of mercury that compact fluorescents contain contaminating landfills. Still, compact fluorescents are far better than incandescents since they consume less power and hence create less greenhouse gas. Remember that power plants are America’s single greatest producer of greenhouse gases. And as far as conservation goes, it’s estimated that if every American replaced one bulb with a compact fluorescent it would be the energy equiva...

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Straw Bale Gardens

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
20 Comments
...lopyralid. This is a type of herbicide that is not broken down by composting. It’s not even broken down in an animal’s digestive track. It can linger in organic matter for a year or two, stunting the growth garden plants. (See Killer Compost). Despite this risk, we’re going to go ahead and grow some food in bales anyway and see what happens. We’ll also be testing our straw. So, off we go into another gardening adventure/re...

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Allium ursinum

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening
1 Comment
Allium ursinum, a.k.a. Ramsons (in English), and Bärlauch (bear leeks, or wild garlic in German), are a member of the chive family so named because they are a favored food of bears and wild boar. People can eat em’ too, with both the bulb and leaves making a tasty addition to a number of dishes (see a detailed report on Allium ursinum in the Plants for a Future website). Favoring semi-shade, Allium ursinum thrives in moist, acidic soilR...

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Kelly’s Shibori Challenge

Mrs. Homegrown
Domesticus
20 Comments
...ing.  As I execute this plan, I’ll post some more and so hopefully will share some useful information with you along the way, The plan is in three parts: Part the First: I’m going to make natural dyes using common plants like red cabbage and sour grass, following the instructions in The Handbook of Natural Plant Dyes: Personalize Your Craft with Organic Colors from Acorns, Blackberries, Coffee, and Other Everyday Ingredients by Sasha...

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Rearranging the yard, yet again!

Mrs. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening
11 Comments
...he “people space” is established, all the rest of the garden becomes useable plant space. We actually have more growing space now. 2) Perennials: The last redesign put a lot of emphasis on growing space for annual plants. In turned out to be a little more space than we needed. Annuals are a lot of work, especially here, where we garden year round and a bed can cycle through 4 crops a year. We’ll still have dedicated annual beds,...

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Mulberries

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Foraging
8 Comments
The Mulberry trees (Morus nigra) along Houston’s Buffalo Bayou are producing their delicious fruit. The picture above is an immature berry–this particular tree produces a dark purple berry when ready to eat. Some sources on the internets, as well as Delena Tull’s excellent book Edible and Useful Plants of Texas and the Southwest warn against consuming the unripe fruit, claiming that doing so produces an unpleasant, mildly psyc...

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Magenta Spreen Lambsquarter

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
6 Comments
...d be a problem if it’s all you ate. Even though I’m prone to kidney stones I’m not concerned about oxalic acid in moderation. Cooking reduces oxalic acid as well as saponins that the leaves also contain. The Plants for a Future database entry on Chenopodium giganteum has a few cultivation details, “An easily grown plant, succeeding in most soils but disliking shade. It prefers a moderately fertile soil. This species is clo...

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Derek Jarman’s Garden

Mr. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening
1 Comment
Photo by angusf Avant-garde filmmaker Derek Jarman spent the last years of his life, after an HIV diagnosis, tending a bleak, wind-swept patch of land opposite a nuclear power plant on the southern coast of England. With just a few hardy plants and some scavenged pieces of wood he put together a stunning garden. He wrote a book about it called, simply, Derek Jarman’s Garden. You can also view a flikr photo set here. Photo b...

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Essential System #9 – Hydration

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness
RLeave a comment
...e our foundation repairs, is the construction of a rainwater storage system. We plan to feed one of our roof downspouts to several fifty gallon plastic drums that will be linked together. We will use this water for irrigating plants in the front yard. While, admittedly, we don’t have room for much rainwater storage to make a big difference, we plan on filling these drums with municipal water after the rainwater runs out. That way we will al...

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Genetically-Engineered Organism Secretes Diesel

Eric Thomason
Solar
13 Comments
...n produce 15,000 gallons of diesel fuel per acre annually, over four times more than the most efficient algal process for making fuel. And they say they can do it at $30 a barrel. Normally I am opposed to genetically modified plants but this would appear to be a contained situation. Would it be a good thing for the planet if we had unlimited diesel fuel? I would guess that the CO2 would be net neutral whatever escapes the exhaust pipe would have...

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