Search Results for: label/pirate gardening/page/3/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

548 results

Eat Your Pests

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Pests
13 Comments
Grubs anyone? Responding to our anti-squirrel post a few days ago Root Simple reader Chile pointed to a post on the her blog “Pests . . . and how to eat them“. She makes the excellent point that most of our dreaded garden pests, including insects are edible. Now if I could only overcome my squeamishness about eating insects. I had to deal with lots of wax moth larvae this week and remembered that in parts of Asia they are s...

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Interview With Apartment Gardener Helen Kim

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Herbs
1 Comment
We got a lot of emails after posting the image above of Los Angeles based photographer Helen Kim’s astonishing windowsill garden. It’s a great example of what you can do with a small amount of space, and brings to mind William Morris’ advice, “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”. Helen graciously sat down for an email interview to talk about her beautiful and useful garden...

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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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Speakeasy – this Sunday

Mr. Homegrown
Events
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Just a reminder that Homegrown Evolution will be speaking at the Smart Gals Speakeasy this Sunday August, 17th at 7 p.m. in Los Feliz. We’ll do some hands-on apartment gardening, play some games and listen to the music of our friends Triple Chicken Foot, who will bring their brand of foot stomping roots music to what will be a fun evening. Location and details:Mt. Hollywood Underground4607 Prospect Avenue, Los FelizAdmission: $15.00Informa...

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UMass Soil Testing

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Soil
1 Comment
I finally got around to trying out the University of Massachusetts’ soil testing service and can report that it’s fast and cheap. I tested two areas of my yard for both nutrients and heavy metals and found out, more or less, what I expected, that I need to add a small amount of nitrogen. Surprisingly, for having such an old house, I don’t have a lead problem. It costs just $9 for the basic test and $13 for the basic test + hea...

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Cooking Classes via Silver Lake Farms

Mr. Homegrown
Events
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Not to be missed if you’re in the LA area. From our friends at Silver Lake Farms: Cooking Classes!! Go to the Silver Lake Farms website to register. Here’s the 411: “Inspired by a funny conversation with CSA shareholders about what to do with celery when there’s no more peanut butter in the house… All About Seasonal Vegetables I’m introducing a series of fun, affordable cooking classes designed around cookin...

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Stella Natura: Planting by the Signs

Mr. Homegrown
Biodynamics, Thoughtstylings
20 Comments
Judging from the hostile reaction the last time I posted about Biodyamamics, we need some kind of woo-woo alert for this type of post. Perhaps an animated flash animation, like those mortgage ads, of Stevie Nicks dancing to Rhiannon . I’ll get the Homegrown Evolution IT department on it right away. On to the post: Timing planting according to moon, sun and zodiacal cycles is a very old tradition. Farmers and gardeners have consulted mys...

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Seeds are from Mars

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
17 Comments
You gotta be a modern day Pythagoras to parse out the moral geometry of our complex food system. Our hasty blog post on growing Dragon Carrots from Seeds of Change prompted a few comments and a phone call alerting us to ethical concerns about the seed company. Knowing the diversity of readers of this blog, we’re simply going to toss out the issues and let you all make up your own minds. Seeds of Change began as a small New Mexico based com...

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Our New Straw Bale Garden–Part I

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Straw Bale Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
24 Comments
Straw bales–ready to prepare. Pot in the center will be a solar powered fountain. We’re going to experiment with a straw bale vegetable garden in our backyard, inspired by Michael Tortorello’s article in the New York Times. The plan is to grow in the bales and harvest the resulting compost for use in permanent raised beds (that have yet to be built). We’ll keep growing in bales until we have enough compost for the beds. T...

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Tomato Report: Blush

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Tomatoes, Vegetable Gardening
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I think I’ve tasted my new favorite tomato variety: Blush. I got to tuck into a box of these delicious tomatoes at the farm of Shu and Debbie Takikawa near Los Olivos. Yellow with red streaks, Blush tomatoes have the perfect balance of sweetness and acidity. The blush tomato was developed by geneticist and tomato geek Fred Hempel and are available via Seeds of Change. Due to a series of gardening blunders that I’ll blog about at s...

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