Mown and Blown: The Problem With Leaf Blowers

October 6, 2014

...aintain ecologically beneficial landscapes. Homeowners who couldn’t afford gardening services would discover the joy of gardening. I’ve also thought of getting our neighbors together to discuss the issue and come up with alternatives, but I’m not sure this would work. So I’m going to toss the issue out to you, our dear readers. Do you have a leaf blower problem where you live? Is this just an LA problem, or is it a national or international proble...

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Back to the Garden

Mrs. Homegrown

March 12, 2015

Back to the Garden, Thoughtstylings

22 Comments

...en. This idea haunts me. I find references to this song, to the Garden and gardening and Eden everywhere I turn, as if the universe is whacking me upside the head, saying, “Pay attention!” Genesis tells the tale of humankind’s expulsion from Eden. It is a myth. The definition of a myth is a tale which is not factual, but which is true. In our age of empiricism this can seem like a contradiction of terms, but it isn’t. A myth is a truth which is al...

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Bee Idle

Mr. Homegrown

April 3, 2015

Thoughtstylings

5 Comments

...weekend. Lastly, this bit of pure genius: On Monday I went up to visit the gardening writer and TV presenter Alys Fowler on her allotment in Birmingham, where we spent the day filming the first two instalments of our new online gardening course for eco-idlers. The principle is low effort, high productivity. Alys is a brilliant instructor and I wish I’d consulted her before I started growing vegetables and herbs. It would have saved me a lot of pai...

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On why our vegetable garden is such a disaster this year . . .

Mr. Homegrown

January 15, 2013

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

37 Comments

...think, are causing the gap in the middle of the bed. I’m having my annual gardening-caused mental meltdown. When it comes to vegetables this winter (the best time to grow them here in Los Angeles) if it could go wrong it did. Vegetables are needy, fussy plants and we’ve not had much luck with them recently. So I thought I would list the factors, natural and human that went into this year’s lackluster veggie garden in the hopes of preventing futur...

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The Food and Flowers Freedom Act

Mr. Homegrown

August 10, 2009

Events

9 Comments

...website: Problem: In 1946, a Los Angeles municipal code known as the Truck Gardening Ordinance was written to allow the growing of vegetables in a residential (R1) zone for sale off-site. What this means, however, is that it is prohibited for city dwellers in R1 zones to grow fruits, nuts, flowers or seedlings and sell them off-site – at local farmers’ markets for example. Furthermore, no one at City Hall can agree on what Truck Gardening is. We t...

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