Garden Like a Pirate

...ns, broccoli, and assorted greens. We’ve encouraged neighbors to help themselves to vegetables from the parkway garden, though few have. What has been nice has been the conversations We’ve had with neighbors while watering and tending the space. Several neighbors have said that it encouraged them to plant their own vegetables, albeit in their back yards. With more people growing vegetables our neighborhood becomes more self-sufficient...

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Homegrown Revolution at the Silver Lake Film Festival

Thanks to the cinematic revolutionaries at the Echo Park Film Center, Homegrown Revolution’s debut video “How to Build a Self Watering Container” will premiere at the Silver Lake Film Festival, as part of the Sustainable LA program on SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY May 6th at 11:30 a.m. at the LosFeliz 3 (1822 North Vermont Avenue-map). We’ll be sharing a program with composting Culver City comrade Elon Schoenholz, the Fallen Frui...

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World’s Largest Chard Grows in SIP

...this time SuperChard was so magnificent I couldn’t kill him (around this time I began to anthropomorphize the chard), so I trimmed off his outer leaves (some of which were as long as my arm) and transplanted him into a self-watering container (SIP). I knew that transplanting such a big, established plant would be difficult, but by this time I really wanted to harvest this plant’s seed. So I told him that I wanted to preserve his gene...

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Grow the Soil

Above, proof of the adage that you grow the soil not the plants. On the left a vigorous eggplant growing in high-end potting soil in a self-watering container. On the right a spindly, nitrogen starved specimen of the same variety of eggplant, planted at the same time, in our parkway garden. The container eggplant on the left is larger, has greener leaves and is obviously more healthy. The stunted eggplant on the right is the victim of depleted s...

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SUSTAINABLE LA @ Farmlab/Under Spring

...so please bring food to share. Approximate Program Times: This Is The LA River: 7:30 Sustainable LA Shorts: 8:30 More info: www.farmlab.org On the program will be Homegrown Revolution’s short about how to build a self-watering container as well as comrade Elon Schoenholz’s “You Can’t Compost Concrete” and a little something from the Wolfpack Hustle kids. From the announcement: Sustainable LA is a celebration...

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Holy Crap! What a Nice Rooftop Garden!

Photo by antifa123 Check out how these enterprising Chicagoans responded to the “but I don’t have room for a garden” argument via antifa173′s informative rooftop gardening Flickr set. Not only do you get to see their beautifully designed self-watering container system, but they tell you how to do it with detailed instructions!...

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The Three Sisters

...bee plant (Cleome serrulata) which attracts pollinating insects for the corn and squash. We added a drip irrigation system on a timer (more on that in a later post) which has seemed to keep the plants healthier by preventing watering mishaps due to those flaky hung-over mornings. We planted corn seeds from the Not a Cornfield project, a variety of squash called Cucuzzi, and two beans from seeds we saved from last season (the tasty Borlotto Lingu...

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Why not plant some Calendula?

...ou down. It’s technically a short lived perennial, so in very mild climates it might be a permanent garden flower, However, it doesn’t live through freezes or extreme heat. Here is southern California it’s a self-seeding annual. It seeds like crazy, so if you don’t want volunteers all over your yard, trim off the spent blooms–”deadhead” them–before they go to seed. (Calendula seed is trippy: big, gn...

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Toby Hemenway On How Horticulture Can Save Us

...agriculture which Hemenway considers to have a destructive influence on ecosystems, human health and culture. Hemenway also, justifiably, critiqued some corners of the urban homesteading movement for promoting an egocentric self-sufficiency–”MY food on MY land” as he put it–a kind of industrial farming on a household level. While “self-sufficiency” appears in the subtitle of our first book (our publisher̵...

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On Living in Los Angeles Without a Car: A Debate

...7;t been doing much driving. In short, we get to claim the olive wreath of eco-smugness: living car-free in the epicenter of car culture, Los Angeles. Not even the electric car driving Ed Begley Jr. can aspire to our level of self-righteousness. I’d like to continue the experiment. Kelly:  Hmmm….do I get to be the bad guy in this debate? The car partisan? To me, it’s not so much a question of car or no car. I don’t like ca...

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