Search Results for: label/medicinal plants

287 results

The glass is half full–even if it’s full of greywater

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Food, Gardening, Mistakes, Thoughtstylings
17 Comments
...nd the successes with a clear eye. It did me good to see these photos, which I’m going to share with you: The front yard isn’t looking bad. Not organized, but at least not barren. Lesson the First: make weed-like plants the backbone of your yard, meaning edible plants that grow no matter what–which kind of plants will vary by region. Grow fussy annuals too, if you want, but have these survivors as back up. And learn how to cook...

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Poo Salon and Urban Forage Classes with Nancy Klehm

Mr. Homegrown
Events
5 Comments
...n email with “Poo Salon waiting list” in the subject line to: [email protected] Class #2 Urbanforage with Nancy Klehm (aka Weedeater)Sunday, February 27th 2-4:30 pm, Echo Park, $25 Learn about the plants that share this city with us! Urbanforage is an informally guided walk through the spontaneous and cultivated vegetation of the urbanscape. Along the walk, we learn to identify plants, hear their botanical histories...

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Dumpster Herb Score

Mrs. Homegrown
Foraging, Gardening, Herbs
12 Comments
Mrs. Homegrown here: Scored big at Trader Joes yesterday. Love a good dumpster find, almost as much as finding good feral fruit.  It looks like they were clearing out their plants and flowers for Valentines Day, because out by the cardboard piles we found a grocery cart heaped full of wilted flowers and random potted mums. (Joes really needs to start a composting program, don’t you think?) We sorted through the cart and found fou...

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Showers to Flowers

Mr. Homegrown
Water Conservation
1 Comment
...valve like the one pictured above, so that water can be shifted back to the sewer, if needed, such as during a long rainy period. Keeping the minimum fall rate in mind, run the pipe out to where you want to water. 3. Choose plants whose watering requirements match the amount of water coming out of your shower. To do this you’ll need to estimate how many showers and how much water you use per shower. Odds are it will be water hungry plants...

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Peat-free Planting Mix Recipe With Coconut Coir

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, How-to, Soil, Vegetable Gardening
21 Comments
Nancy’s coconut coir-based planting mix. Here she’s doing the squeeze test, which we talk about below. From an environmental perspective peat moss is a nightmare. Mining of this material is unsustainable, contributes to global warming and destroys habitat for many plants and animals. But, for starting seeds, we’ve used it for years. Our friend Nancy Klehm taught us recently how to make a seed starting mix with coconut...

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Roundup

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
1 Comment
...al that Roundup, the most widely used weedkiller in the world, poses serious human health threats. More than 75 percent of genetically modified (GM) crops are engineered to tolerate the absorption of Roundup—it eliminates all plants that are not GM. Monsanto Inc., the major engineer of GM crops, is also the producer of Roundup. Thus, while Roundup was formulated as a weapon against weeds, it has become a prevalent ingredient in most of our food c...

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The Barrier Method

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Pests
6 Comments
Over the years we’ve lost countless plants to digging, chewing, trampling and sucking critters, mammals and insects both. We finally got smart. It makes sense to invest a little extra time and money to protect your crops and your livestock with physical barriers. This practice started sort of piecemeal around here, with us only exerting ourselves over particularly problem-prone situations. Nowadays protection is standard for every bed we p...

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Book Review: A Feast of Weeds by Luigi Ballerini

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Foraging
7 Comments
The evening a review copy of A Feast of Weeds: A Literary Guide to Foraging and Cooking Wild Edible Plants came in I couldn’t put it down. I chased Kelly and our guest Nancy Klehm around the house to read excerpts: on the obscene etymology of the Italian word for the Strawberry Tree (Arbutus unedo), on the history of Mallow (Malva parviflora). And who knew that Italians eat red poppy leaves? Ballerini is a professor of Italian at the Univ...

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Vertical Micro-Farming

Homegrown Neighbor
Vertical Farming
14 Comments
.... They sell the produce at the adjacent farm store. From looking at it I can tell that this setup is meant to utilize vertical space and grow vegetables in a small footprint. Water drips down from the top, irrigating multiple plants on its way down. The plants are not only stacked vertically, but radiate around the central axis, maximizing horizontal space as well. In this photo they are growing hot chili peppers. I also saw basil and sweet peppe...

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Mahonia gracilis – Mexican Barberry

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening
5 Comments
One of the biggest challenges at the Homegrown Revolution compound has been finding useful plants that will grow in our shady backyard. Not having to provide supplemental irrigation would be another definite plus. Unfortunately very few plants fit those stringent requirements. We came across some seeds recently for a plant called Mahonia gracilis or Mexican Barberry, but there’s very little information about this medium sized shrub, native...

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