Spreadin’ Seed

February 2, 2009

Seeds

...ic material around. No, we weren’t backstage with Metallica. We’re talking plants. Here’s a few ways we’ve been spinning the genetic biodiversity wheel in the past week: Seed Swaps Yesterday was International Seed Swap Day of Action, sponsored by Food not Lawns. We celebrated the day in Altadena with a bunch of local gardening enthusiasts and countless boxes of seeds. We got seeds for Armenian cucumbers, red ruffled pimento peppers, feverfew, echi...

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Planting a Mini-Orchard

Mr. Homegrown

March 19, 2008

Gardening, Water and Power, Water Conservation

2 Comments

...p two was matching that washing machine water output to the right kinds of plants for the mini-orchard. We settled on the three “Ps” — pomegranate, persimmon, and pineapple guava, plus a mission fig tree to replace the substandard one we cut down (even though God Hates Figs!). The advantage with these four trees is that they can survive, once established, should we find ourselves unable to use any water due to the aforementioned bad-ass draught sc...

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069 Understanding Roots with Robert Kourik

Mr. Homegrown

December 2, 2015

Fruit Trees, Gardening, Podcasts, Vegetable Gardening

8 Comments

What do roots tell us about how to take care of plants? That’s the topic of this week’s Root Simple Podcast with our guest Robert Kourik. Kourik is the author of many books including Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally and Drip Irrigation. The discussion begins with the remarkable tree root diagrams pioneered by Dr. John Weaver in the 1920s and 30s and featured in Kourik’s new book Understanding Roots. From there we touch on...

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Using Greywater from your Washing Machine

Mr. Homegrown

December 15, 2007

Water and Power, Water Conservation

9 Comments

...greywater systems. Regular “eco” detergents, while not harmful to aquatic plants, often contain substances that will kill terrestrial plants so you must use a greywater specific detergent. Our next step will be to figure out some plantings that will take advantage of our laundry schedule, and to construct some simple earthworks and mulch basins to accommodate the water flow. Right now we just let the water percolate into the front slope, and our...

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Defining a Garden’s Purpose

Mr. Homegrown

July 8, 2013

Garden Design, Gardening

13 Comments

...ween Bakersfield and Fresno, had a walled garden protecting lush marijuana plants. Other than the food gardeners (a small minority even in rural areas) there was little evidence that people ever went into their yards. It confirms what a UCLA anthropology team discovered when they placed cameras in 32 Los Angeles homes to see how people used their houses and back yards, “More than half of the families in the Los Angeles Study spent zero leisure tim...

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