Search Results for: label/rooftop gardening/page/2/2011/04/making-it/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

733 results

Indigo 101

Mrs. Homegrown
Domesticus, Gardening, Herbs
5 Comments
Graham stirs the vat with his “witchy stick” –which is tinted many beautiful shades of blue. One of the primary lessons of gleaned from my Shibori Challenge is that cotton is difficult to dye with natural dyes, whereas wool and silk take these colors beautifully. Know your materials! Building on that, I’ve also figured out that the reason indigo dye is the favored dye for shibori techniques is because indigo ge...

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Bean Fest, Episode 4: Frijoles Refritos

Mrs. Homegrown
Bean Fest, Food, Recipes
7 Comments
Refritos are not photogenic, so I decided to show the more tempting end use. Photo by Ernesto Andrade. Mrs. Homegrown here: I can’t believe I’ve never made frijoles refritos--refried beans–before. All these years of scooping that suspicious stuff out of the can–what was I thinking??? Now I see refritos as the natural destiny of any leftover beans. Refried beans (that name is a mistranslation–refrito me...

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Humanure Dry Toilet Made From a Milk Crate

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Design, How-to, Humanure
29 Comments
Modern toilets take two valuable resources, water and nitrogen rich human waste, and combine the two to create a problem: sewage. In a dry or “humanure” toilet, you cover your deposits with a layer of non-toxic sawdust. Once the toilet is full you dump the contents into your outdoor humanure pile and compost the waste at high temperatures for at least a year. You can then use that compost as fertilizer for plants. The ubiquitous fiv...

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My Big Fat Greek Squash

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
12 Comments
Every time I visit my mom, her Greek neighbor pops over the fence to offer me seeds and plants. He visits Greece each summer and comes back with seeds for plants whose names he can’t translate into English. As a result I always have a few mystery Greek vegetables growing in the garden. This spring he gave me a squash seedling he had propagated. It grew into a massive vine and produced two winter squashes whose weight exceeded the capacit...

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Stinging Nettles and Cat Allergies

Mrs. Homegrown
Domesticus, Herbal Medicine, Herbs
40 Comments
Facebookers have already seen these pics. Kitty, being a fast moving black hole, is very hard to photograph. Mrs. Homegrown here: Sorry this is sort of rambling, but context is everything. Our friend Anne, of the pea-eating-Chihuahua fame, and the chicken-sitting-on-kitten fame, and various other fames, is a frequent animal rescuer. She came over to our house maybe 2 weeks ago with a pet carrier. She said, “Someone dropped this of...

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The Sundiner–A Groovy 1960s Era Solar Cooker

Mr. Homegrown
Appropriate Technology, Solar, Water and Power
5 Comments
Backywards beekeeper Dennis of The Buzz in the Dale, was nice enough to gift me his vintage Sundiner solar cooker that he found at a garage sale a few years ago. Resembling a cross between a portable 1960s record player and a satellite, the Sundiner is compact, light and easy to carry. A built in thermometer lets you know when you have hit cooking temperatures. The unit is so efficient, that when I set it up at noon it hit 350° F within minut...

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An open letter to Trader Joes

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens
15 Comments
Dear Trader Joes, First off we’re not an animal rights activists, nor are we even vegetarians. We’re just people who like honesty in packaging. So let’s take a look at the carton for your Grade AA Cage Free eggs and assess the truthfulness of the illustration on its cover. Now conventional wisdom says that you are to be congratulated for selling only cage free eggs in contrast to many other food retailers who continue to sell e...

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Citron

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Gardening
5 Comments
The Citron (Etrog) and its anatomy. I just attended a fascinating lecture by fruit expert David Karp on the history of the citron (Citrus medica) or etrog in Aramaic. I’ve only encountered citron in a candied form buried deep within a fruit cake. I’ve also seen the bizarre Buddha’s Hand, another kind of citron popular in Asia as both food and medicine. What I did not know is the significance of citron in Jewish history...

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Phoebe Update and a Question: Is Pet Insurance Worthwhile?

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Cats
29 Comments
...njoy every day we have with her, but that we should not expect her to live for more than nine months from now. She is on a few inexpensive medications to make her days comfortable. She’s slowed down a bit and is showing the first signs of heart failure (an occasional cough), but otherwise acts like a normal cat, playing with Trout and enjoying long afternoon naps. She is a daily reminder that we should not take life for granted, that we hav...

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Why are the pockets on women’s clothing so lame?

Mrs. Homegrown
Domesticus, How-to, Thoughtstylings
19 Comments
Trout likes himself a sewing project. Especially one he can lay on. Or gnaw on. What is with women’s clothing? Why are all of the pockets sized somewhere between tiny and non-existent? There seems to be some misguided belief that women inherently carry lots of stuff, therefore must carry bags, therefore do not need pockets. This is false. Women carry bags because we have inadequate pockets, and we figure we may as well carry extra stuff...

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