Search Results for: label/soil

220 results

How To Design a Garden Step IV: Clues to Care

Mr. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening
6 Comments
...re. In general, most folks don’t like a residential front yard that looks like a farm, or anything that looks too “wild.” Clues to care include: Defined pathways Raised beds Mulched beds and paths (vs. bare soil) Artwork Trellises and other attractive supports Birdbaths Benches While the above items fall under the category of hardscape, clues to care also include aesthetic choices in planting and arranging the yard. For instan...

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Seeding Change

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
5 Comments
...good moment to point out the reasons it’s best to grow from seed rather than buying seedlings at your local nursery. You get many orders of magnitude more selection, it’s much cheaper and you prevent the spread of soil diseases. Last year a fungal disease, late blight, infected gardens due to seedlings grown at large nurseries in the south and sold at big box retailers up and down the east coast (read more about that in an excellent e...

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Growing Greens Under Fruit Trees

Mr. Homegrown
Fruit Trees, Garden Design, Gardening, Permaculture, Vegetable Gardening
9 Comments
In the photo above is Scott Kleinrock showing off a section of the edible garden he designed at the Huntington Gardens. At first glace it looks like a lot of weeds, but it’s a clever idea: growing greens in the understory of fruit trees. In this picture, which was taken last weekend, you see a field of: mallow daikon radish arugula mustard  vetch calendula cabbage Except for the vetch, which helps build soil, all are edible and nutrit...

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National Wildlife Federation Teams with Scotts

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
8 Comments
Time to take down those “certified wildlife habitat” signs as it seems the National Wildlife Federation has entered into a “partnership” with Scotts, manufacturers of a host of wildlife unfriendly synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Some thoughts: Scotts products do grave injury to microbial and fungal life in the soil to say nothing of insects. The NWF has too narrow an idea of what constitutes “wildlife”...

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Stella Natura: Planting by the Signs

Mr. Homegrown
Biodynamics, Thoughtstylings
20 Comments
...ly essays. This month’s, by Laura Riccardi, says exactly what I’ve been thinking of late, “I do answer with practical, logical, agricultural language most of the time. There is plenty to talk about regarding soil building, diversity, insect and drought resistance, quality, microbial life, nutrient availability. I am beginning to feel justified and unembarrassed to speak about subtle life forces, to say that everything is connect...

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A Question About Gophers

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Pests
17 Comments
Pocket gopher, courtesy of Wikipedia We’re putting together a short vegetable gardening pamphlet and could use some advice, specifically about gophers. Thankfully, we don’t have any experience dealing with them. Something about our neighborhood, either the lead in the soil or the police helicopters, seems to have made gophers extinct here. Standard advice when planting a tree or installing a raised bed in gopher infested a...

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Reasons and Resources for Growing Your Own Grains at Home

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Resources
9 Comments
The world’s smallest patch of Sonora wheat Reasons to grow grain Why grow some of your own grain? I can think of a bunch of reasons: You can plant unusual varieties The large amount of biomass for your compost pile Forage for livestock Easy to grow and maintain Part of a rotational strategy for maintaining healthy, disease free soil Know that your grain is not contaminated with pesticides How to grow grain  Growing grain is p...

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Los Angeles Earthen Oven Class – May 25-27, 2012

Mr. Homegrown
Events
2 Comments
...r-selfers, and is a great introduction to adobe construction and earthen plasters covered in more depth in adobeisnotsoftware’s other classes. Topics Include: Local considerations and the siting your earthen oven Soil and material selection, sourcing and testing Foundations and oven base design and materials Sizing Sand Form and Oven Domes Natural oven plasters and finishes Firing and baking in your oven. Instruction Type:...

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Roundin’ up the Summer Urban Homesteading Disasters

Mr. Homegrown
Bread, Food, Gardening, Mistakes, Vegetable Gardening
16 Comments
...a head start on propagating my tomato seedlings. So guess which tomatoes did better: the ones I carefully propagated from seed and transplanted to richly amended vegetable beds, or the ones that sprouted randomly in compacted soil? You guessed it, the ones that grew on their own. Moral: nature knows best when to start seeds and where to plant them than us homo sapiens. Maybe there is something to that permaculture thing . . .  Our Hameau de la...

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