Search Results for: label/seeds/page/3/2011/04/making-it

485 results

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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The World’s First Lamp

Mrs. Homegrown
Design, Domesticus, How-to
15 Comments
Erik’s link to the orange lamp on Saturday reminded me to post this. This is Project #1 in Making It, and we often open our lectures by building one of these, but I realize I’ve never talked about oil lamps here on the blog. Forgive the somewhat atmospheric photo. What you’re looking at is the simplest thing in the world: an oyster shell filled with olive oil and balanced in a small dish of sand. Three pieces of cotton stri...

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I like my chamomile stressed

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Herbs, Mistakes
22 Comments
This poor, abused little seedling is flowering like crazy. Mrs. Homegrown here: I made a mistake–I predicted a while ago that this would happen, and here it is. When we remodeled the yard and I set aside space for The Phan of Pharmacy ™ my goal was to maximize the production of herbs and flowers.  I prepped the ground in the fan like a fine flower or veg bed: double dug and richly amended. It was only aft...

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Vital Farms: Pasture Raised, Organic Eggs at Whole Foods

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens, Food, Thoughtstylings
10 Comments
...Whole Foods and they have expanded into meat chickens. Now, hopefully, I can recover from the spectral celebrity hallucinations induced by downing hundreds of free samples of things like pro-biotic frozen pizza (I’m not making this up) and caveman power bars. Perhaps a pasture raised egg omelet will wipe away my açaí berry hangover. Thanks to Dale Benson for suggesting attending this event and for driving, spending a half hour finding a par...

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Salvia Means Salvation: White Sage

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Herbs, Native Plants
21 Comments
...a, we’wey (waykway) in Chumash. The most fragrant and beautiful of all Salvias. Flower of Salvia apiana, photo by Stan Shebs White sage is a native Californian plant which is grown in many places, as long as it can grown in dry conditions (overwatering will kill it quick) and the winter temps aren’t too cold. See Plants for a Future Database for details. It has beautiful soft silvery foliage and white to pale purple flower...

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Why Did We Change Our Name?

Mr. Homegrown
Miscellaneous
18 Comments
The answer is simple. To those of you who have ever tried to find an available url, you know. It’s tough. Everything is taken. When I began this blog on a whim one afternoon in 2006, I registered “survivela.com.” Our first publisher, correctly, thought that was too Los Angeles-centric and asked that we make it more universal so that we could expand our readership. Thus began the second painful search for an unused URL, followe...

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Eco Blogging, Tin Foil Hats and Convention Mania

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
7 Comments
...actually quite good. They had a bunch of great speakers and interesting exhibitors. Unfortunately, when I went to review my notes the next day I realized I had written down only the wacky stuff in the form of a diary. I chalk it up to the way my cynical Gen-X brain works. So, in the end, I guess I’m the one wearing the tin-foil hat. For what it’s worth, here’s what that diary contained: 10:15 AM Way overdue for a haircut I thro...

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Say . . . Smart Gals Speakeasy

Mr. Homegrown
Events
1 Comment
Homegrown Evolution will be making a special appearance on Sunday August 17th courtesy of the Smart Gals. We’ll be doing a hands-on apartment homesteading demo and delivering a crazed Powerpoint (hint: more info on the Texas Centaur). Here’s the 411: Sunday, August 17th, 20087:00 – 9:00 p.m.Mt. Hollywood Underground4607 Prospect Avenue, Los FelizAdmission $15.00More information and the passwords: www.smartgals.org (don’t...

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The Big To-Do List

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
27 Comments
...iece of taped together paper to come up with our version of Heinlein’s skill set. Most of the subjects on that paper, everything from vegetable gardening to cargo bikes, ended up in the book or in our second book Making It. Now, we don’t expect everyone to master all the things in our books, but it doesn’t hurt to have a cursory knowledge of, say, greywater plumbing or compost pile construction, even if you live in a Manhattan a...

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LED Light Bulbs

Mr. Homegrown
Domesticus
2 Comments
The geeks over at BoingBoing have jumped on the LED light bandwagon with a post about the C. Crane Company’s CC Vivid and CC Vivid+ LED light bulbs. While it’s great that folks are beginning to think about conservation, it’s disappointing that this interest seems to be about chasing the latest new techno-gadget. As concerns about impending climate and ecological disaster increase, it’s prudent to greet all new technical s...

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