Search Results for: label/rainwater harvesting

73 results

Los Angeles Bread Bakers Blog

Mr. Homegrown
Bread, Food
RLeave a comment
...Farm in Agoura Hills, a suburb of Los Angeles on the western end of the county. It’s the second year that we’ve helped farmer Nathan Peitso with planting wheat. We got no crop last year due to either birds or not harvesting the wheat soon enough. We’re hoping for better luck this year. Thanks largely to Mark Stambler, California has a cottage food law and Paul is also posting videos of a presentation that took place this weeken...

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Pee on your Compost

Mr. Homegrown
Composting
RLeave a comment
...ly safe to use on fruit trees and bushes. Applying it to root crops is more controversial, and frankly seems like a practice best left to hippies, so if 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...

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Spigarello: Nature’s way of saying that broccoli is so over

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
22 Comments
...te more leaves. Eventually it produces tiny white flowers the bees love. We’ve never had any luck growing regular broccoli–I really resent fighting off aphids and cabbage worms for months, all for the privilege of harvesting one lousy head somewhere down the line. For that reason, we’ve always grown broccoli rabe instead, and I like that too, but rabe has a more aggressive flavor than either broccoli or spigarello, while spigare...

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4 Vermicomposting Tips

Mrs. Homegrown
Composting, Gardening, Vermiculture
11 Comments
...because the deeper that material, the more likely the bottom is going to turn nasty and anaerobic. What we’re talking about here is filling the empty air space with dry matter–sort of like an insulation layer. 2) Harvesting worm castings (separating the worms from the castings) is always a bit of a challenge. Well, not challenging as in hard, but challenging as in requiring patience. Our method has been to mound the castings into a p...

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Mongolian Giant Sunflower

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening
5 Comments
Nothing much to say about the Mongolian Giant Sunflower other than, “wow”. I got these seeds from Seed Savers Exchange and they have lived up to the “giant” in the name. I’m going to have to climb a ladder to harvest the seeds. Though I don’t see the need to get competitive with my sunflowers, Renee’s Garden has some good harvesting advice, As the petals fall off, the center florets dry up and the seed...

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Survival Gardening

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Preparedness, Thoughtstylings, Vegetable Gardening
27 Comments
...es you can squeeze from small spaces. What gets left out in the “survival garden” sales pitches is that, if you want real self-sufficiency, you’ve also got to maintain the soil fertility that you deplete by harvesting. To do that you need to grow all your own compost. For this, Jeavons suggests what he calls “carbon and calorie crops” things like corn and wheat where you get both something edible and a lot of biomas...

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Borlotto Bean Lingua di Fuoco

Mr. Homegrown
Vegetable Gardening
1 Comment
...lly use them in soups. We’re considering growing an edible wall of beans along the south side of our house this spring in order to see if we can grow enough to collect dried beans and make some soup. For cultivation and harvesting details for dry beans click on over to the Thomas Jefferson Agricultural Institute. It may seem like we’re pimping for Seeds from Italy, but these beans are yet another success we’ve had with the Fran...

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The Austrian Scythe is the New Weed Whacker

Mr. Homegrown
Tools
8 Comments
...o smooth out nicks). Scythes come in European and American styles. The European configuration is ergonomic and the American style is clunky and uncomfortable to use. There’s also several different blades for weeding and harvesting and, like a bicycle, it’s crucial that your scythe fit your height. Scythe use is intellectual for me since years worth of mulching, a dry climate and a very small yard means that I don’t have any stan...

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Hops in Containers

Mr. Homegrown
Beer, Gardening, Herbs, Hops, Self Watering Containers
5 Comments
...ll also to be able to continuously harvest rather than having to cut down the entire plant. Alternately I’ve seen hops trellises rigged with pulleys so that you can lower the “bines”, as they are called, for harvesting. Hops farmers in England demonstrating why you need to think about trellising. With a western exposure the hops get morning sun and shade in the afternoon, which seems to be perfect in our sunny, dry and hot Sou...

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The World’s Most Beautiful Okra

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
9 Comments
...a very stunning plant for your vegetable garden. While not as striking, this year I grew Clemson Spineless okra from seeds I saved. And thanks to a tip (can’t remember where I heard this) I’m having an easier time harvesting the pods. One of the problems with a small patch of okra is that, initially, you get a sporadic harvest. And you’ve got to pick the pods before they get too big and tough. So I’ve been picking a few an...

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