Straw Bale Gardens

March 25, 2013

Tasha Via’s straw bale garden. Michael Tortorello (who profiled us when Making It came out) is one of my favorite writers covering the home ec/gardening subjects we discuss on this blog. He had an article last week in the New York Times, “Grasping at Straw” on straw bale gardening. We’ve very tempted to give the practice a try in our backyard. Why? We have lead and zinc contaminated soil so growing veggies in the ground is questionable. We live o...

Read…

How to Search for Science-Based Gardening Advice

Mr. Homegrown

February 24, 2014

Gardening

13 Comments

...may need to enter, for example, both “hydrogen peroxide” and “H2O2.” With plants you may need to use both the popular and scientific names. Unfortunately, as Chalker-Scott noted, there’s a lack of practical small-scale gardening advice in peer reviewed literature. But a search of the research literature is a start and can help screen out bogus info (a lot of which comes from people trying to sell things). And knowing that there are no studies can...

Read…

Flowers from Vegetables

Mrs. Homegrown

July 22, 2014

Gardening, Permaculture, Vegetable Gardening

12 Comments

...the birds will move in. Of course this means that I’m “wasting space” and making my garden “unproductive” but the rewards outweigh any inconvenience. New gardeners are often surprised to see what amazing flowers different vegetables make. People with no connection to food plants whatsoever may not even know that vegetables make flowers, so it’s fun to show them a carrot flower, a squash blossom, a bean flower. My new favorite garden flower comes...

Read…

It’s Calendula Season!

Mrs. Homegrown

May 8, 2013

Body Care, Domesticus, Gardening, Herbal Medicine, Herbs

17 Comments

...ful herb. Here’s a couple of profiles to check out if you need convincing: Plants for a Future; University of Maryland It takes about 60 days for Calendula to reach maturity from seed, so if it’s spring where you live, now is a good time to plant it. Note that Calendula is a happy volunteer. Once you plant it, you may never have to plant it again. The volunteer flowers are not as big and fancy as their parent flowers–they revert to their wild form...

Read…

Tolkien and Trees

Mrs. Homegrown

September 8, 2016

Nature Awareness, Thoughtstylings, Trees

6 Comments

...abashed partisan of trees. A couple of quotes from him regarding trees are making the rounds on the internet, but I’ve learned to distrust popular quotations. They are often misattributed or downright made up. So I searched his edited letters for references to trees. There are many–he always mentions trees when he describes places, has funny things to say about artists who can’t draw trees, and has many trees of significance in his books, which he...

Read…