Water your Trees with Greywater

February 5, 2018

Gardening, Trees, Water and Power, Water Conservation

...e Brad Landcaster’s thoughts on soaps and detergents. Let me also note the utility of Landcaster’s books and website when it comes to all things water conservation related, especially how to grade and configure tree plantings to optimize rainwater irrigation. One last and rarely mentioned issue, is if “greywater” should be one word or two or, in the neologistic spirit of “apisoir,” perhaps we need to invent a sexier word for reusing our water. Gre...

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Garden Update Part II: The Good the Bad and a Lot of Ugly

Mr. Homegrown

March 4, 2019

Gardening

11 Comments

...nts. Part of the reason for the lushness of the yard is that we divert the rainwater from the roof to a pipe that runs 20 feet away from the house and into the center of the yard. We get a lot of rain concentrated in February and March and it’s a whole lot easier to store it in the earth than to try to capture it in a tiny barrel. Said pipe awkwardly crosses a path, however, something our landscape professional Laramee Haynes will address. The pip...

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Pee on your Compost

Mr. Homegrown

January 24, 2007

Composting

1 Comment

...f you try this at least cease application at a respectable interval before harvesting. There is even a book called Liquid Gold on the subject of pee as fertilizer and the ever more resourceful Europeans have developed a number of urine diverting flush toilets similar to the one we profiled earlier to take the labor out of urine saving. Perhaps the most convenient way to use urine is to simply pee on your compost pile. That way you don’t need to wo...

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How Can We Fix Our Public Landscaping?

Mr. Homegrown

July 8, 2014

Design, Gardening, Thoughtstylings

11 Comments

...ow. The Ecology Center has a spectacular garden that shows do simple water harvesting to create a beautiful landscape with drought tolerant plants that attracts beneficial wildlife. We need similar organizations in Los Angeles. We have an immense pool of talent here that could fix that terrible purple gravel and artificial turf atrocity and go on to do so much more. Who’s in? And to those of you reading this elsewhere in the word, feel free to lea...

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Sourdough Rye Bread Class at the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano

Mr. Homegrown

June 16, 2014

Bread, Events, Food

6 Comments

...o bake in your oven. You can’t buy this kind of bread so you better learn how to bake it yourself! By baking bread at home, you’re in charge of what goes into every loaf and can choose to incorporate local and organic ingredients. Other benefits of baking at home include using less energy (used in harvesting, processing, and shipping store-bought bread), using less plastic packaging, and spending less money. Become a baker and join us for the rye...

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