Search Results for: label/native plants/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

594 results

Weeds into Fertilizer

Homegrown Neighbor
Gardening
21 Comments
Homegrown Neighbor here: Nettlemania continues here at Homegrown Evolution. It is raining which means even more nettles are on their way! My plants have set seed and there are tiny nettle plants popping up all over the place. But I want to tell you about my latest nettle experiment. I am going to ferment nettles into a liquid fertilizer. I placed a bunch of whole nettle plants into a large plastic trash can. I am going to stir the mixture eve...

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The Brooklyn Bee

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Bees
1 Comment
“if bees were to disappear, man would only have a few years to live” -Albert Einstein Homegrown Revolution spoke to urban beekeeper John Howe today who keeps a couple of hives high atop the roof of his home in Brooklyn New York. He got the idea to take up urban beekeeping when one day a bee landed on his plate while he was eating at an outdoor restaurant and now his hives produce around 150 pounds of honey a year which he sells a...

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Urban Foraging with Nance Klehm

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Foraging
RLeave a comment
Via The Little Green People Show, a podcast with Chicago’s urban forager Nance Klehm: “We’re not talking gardens or dumpster diving. This is a discussion of the riches that grow in our highway medians, city planters, backyards and rail lines. Expert forager, Nance Klehm, sheds light on the city’s bounty, from medicinal plants to tasty greens. Getting to know the foraging landscape takes some time and energy, but gives bac...

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Looking for the Union Label

Mr. Homegrown
Domesticus
3 Comments
We’ve got a bad case of Ohrwurm, a German expression translated as “earworm” and used to describe a song stuck in your head. Our earworm came after a search for union made socks and underwear on the internets recalled a highly catchy ad jingle from the roller disco era, “Look for the Union Label” (youngsters can watch it on youtube here). We looked for the union label and we were surprised to find it via a company c...

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Picture Sundays: A Native Bee Hotel

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Bees, Picture Sundays
13 Comments
Don’t know much about this native bee house other than that it’s near Paris. For more info on native bee habitats, see our post from earlier this year. Update: reader Drew left a comment to say that this habitat is in the Jardin des Plantas in Paris which is attached to the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (http://www.mnhn.fr/le-museum/). Thanks to David Dalzel for the tip....

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White Sage and Bees and our other sage friends

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Herbal Medicine, Herbs, Native Plants
19 Comments
One of my favorite plants in the garden (I’ve posted about it before) is in bloom right now: the white sage, Salvia apiana.  Salvia apiana means “bee sage” and boy howdy did they get that one right. This sage puts up tall spikes covered with small white flowers that bees can’t resist. Unfortunately, our white sage is situated right by the garden path. So these days, every time I go into the garden I have to squeeze past...

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How to Homestead

Mr. Homegrown
Self Watering Containers
RLeave a comment
Homegrown Evolution’s Self Watering Container video is up on the brand new site How to Homestead, described by its creators as: “the only site on the web providing you with a collection of how to homestead videos to stream or download. No longer relegated to the rural sphere, homesteading can be done anywhere and we are here to show you how.” With many homesteading activities, from chicken slaughtering to tortellini making, int...

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Mullein (Verbascum thapsus)

Mr. Homegrown
Herbal Medicine, Herbs
10 Comments
Every time we visit the nice folks at Petaluma Urban Homestead they send us home with some strange plant. Thanks to PUH, who are busy actually doing things as opposed to blogging about doing things, we now have a beautiful flowering mullein plant (Verbascum thapsus). Verbascum thapsus is one of those plants that most people think of as a weed. Native to Europe and Asia, Verbascum thapsus was introduced to North America because of its many medic...

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Gift Suggestions, from the Other Half

Mrs. Homegrown
Reviews
3 Comments
Mrs. Homegrown here: Of course Mr. Homegrown didn’t ask me for input on “our” holiday gift guide. Not that I dispute his choices…but I do have some of my own. These are the 4 most thought provoking books (in this topic area) I’ve read this year: The first two are closely related, as they are about the horticultural practices of Native Americans in California. You might remember me writing about them earlier.  A...

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A Common Sense View of Invasive Plants

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Thoughtstylings
10 Comments
Via the Garden Professors blog a sensible letter in Nature from Mark Davis and 18 other ecologists on the tired, in my opinion, native vs. invasive species debate: It is time for scientists, land managers and policy-makers to ditch this preoccupation with the native–alien dichotomy and embrace more dynamic and pragmatic approaches to the conservation and management of species — approaches better suited to our fast-changing planet. Clearly, natu...

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