Search Results for: label/native plants/page/3/2011/04/making-it

857 results

It’s Calendula Season!

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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...

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Summer Nights in the Garden at the Natural History Museum

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Events
3 Comments
...here we’ll be: POTTING SUCCULENTS! They’re one of the most low maintenance plants out there, and one that’s perfect for our dry L.A. climate. Urban homesteading experts Erik Knutzen and Kelly Coyne are here to help you plant your own succulent and give you tips on keeping them alive. Supplies are limited. Available to participants on a first-come, first-served basis PAINTING! Don’t have a green thumb? Stop by the painting booth and that can soon b...

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Cat Litter Compost, Installment #3

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Animals, Cats, Composting, Gardening
29 Comments
...years at least before you spread it. And then spread it around non-edible plants, or under fruit trees. The fruit trees won’t uptake anything nasty. It’s totally do-able and I’d do it again. But I’d rather do it again in a larger yard, where I could have a big, accessible compost bin. So now I’m doing something new. The New Paradigm I heard about a new kind of litter tray made specifically to work with pine pellets. I hate to be advertising–I get...

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Flowers from Vegetables

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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...

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Humanure Dry Toilet Made From a Milk Crate

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Composting, Design, How-to, Humanure
157 Comments
...nvironment of a bathroom. Even with a coat of paint wood gets grungy. Alternatively, you can buy plastic camping toilet seats that will clamp on to a five gallon bucket but they have, in my opinion, an unacceptable wobble when you sit on them. For these reasons I designed a sturdy dry toilet making use of a scavenged milk crate. Even if the idea of humanure grosses you out (and it’s definitely the most controversial subject in our book), our milk...

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