“Urban Homesteading” belongs to us all

...r Urban Homesteading, for winning the right for all of us to use the term “urban homesteading” freely from now on out. Longtime readers may remember that back in 2011, the Dervaes Institute sent notices to a dozen or so organizations, informing them that they could no longer use the terms “urban homestead” and “urban homesteading” unless speaking about the work of the Dervaes Institute, as they had registered trademark on both terms. Beyond that,...

Read…

Grow the Soil

...no work involved. Here at Homegrown Evolution we don’t believe in tilling soil. Tilling soil disrupts the natural balance of soil microbes and minerals and requires hard physical labor, thus interfering with other important activities such as cocktail hours and general laying about. It’s better to let nature do the work for you. Both sheet mulching and cover crops mimic the way forests and chaparral ecosystems take care of themselves. In natural...

Read…

The Homegrown Mailbox: How and Where Do I Get My Soil Tested?

...aboratories 365 Coral Circle El Segundo, CA 90245 (310) 615-0116 www.bettersoils.com Test results very scientific No recommendations Soil and Plant Laboratory, Inc. 1594 N. Main Street Orange, CA (714) 282-8777 FGL Environmental 853 Corporation Street Santa Paula, CA (805) 525-3824 USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service 44811 N. Date Avenue Lancaster, CA 93534-3136 (661) 945-2604 Here’s a dirt cheap (pun intended) test for soil ph that you ca...

Read…

The Urban Homestead

...and your local indie bookstore This celebrated, essential handbook for the urban homesteading movement shows how to grow and preserve your own food, clean your house without toxins, raise chickens, gain energy independence, and more. Step-by-step projects, tips, and anecdotes will help get you started homesteading immediately. The Urban Homestead is also a guidebook to the larger movement and will point you to the best books and internet resources...

Read…

What is green water?

...and hold rain water rather than ejecting it straight to the street. We leave the leaves. We keep our clippings and fallen leaves on our land, and let them return to the soil. Mulch is is vital to living soil, while bare soil is dead soil. We make our yards lush. Soil life occurs around the root zones of plants, so more plants means better soil. We plant trees, which the founder of TreePeople, Andy Lipkis, calls “living cisterns.”...

Read…