Search Results for: label/solar cooking/page/10/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

546 results

How To Design a Garden Step IV: Clues to Care

Mr. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening
6 Comments
s to keeping the neighbors happy. Dr. Susan J. Mulley, a landscape architecture professor at Cal Poly Pomona is doing some interesting research on how people react to alternative forms of landscaping such as native plants and urban vegetable gardens. She’s doing opinion polls using Photoshopped mock-ups of residential, academic and commercial landscapes with food crops, native plantings and more conventional landscaping. The conclusion I to...

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Nominate Your Favorite Complainer

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
20 Comments
So the competition might give our complaint athletes just what they want: to be noticed. But on this blog, a yearly complaint competition would give us a way to organize and round up the most outrageous complaints. With urban homesteading activities on the rise there will certainly be more of these unfortunate situations. My personal favorite world champion complainers are the folks in one West Los Angeles neighborhood who successfully delayed a...

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Piet Oudolf’s Enhanced Nature

Mr. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening
1 Comment
” and the untidiness of the real thing. Oudolf responds with what some have called “enhanced nature.” It’s an approach that’s pragmatic, recognizing both the need for natural ecosystems within an urban environment, while at the same time providing visual interest. Oudolf’s imprint is on the landscape, but to most people that human touch will remain on a subliminal level. It’s a brilliant “third way&...

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Nutria Trappin’ by Bike!

Mr. Homegrown
Bikes, Pests
7 Comments
I like to keep up on all the “urban homesteading” trends, but bikesnobnyc beat me to this one: nutria (Myocastor coypus) trapping via bike. “We then returned with our catch and skinned them, prepared the hides for tanning and butchered the carcass and cooked up a bit of the meat. Most folks seemed pleasantly surprised at the “chicken- like” taste of the meat.” Read more about it at dellerdesigns.blogspot.co...

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Least Favorite Plant: Ficus benjamina

Mr. Homegrown
Least Favorite Plant
7 Comments
, unheralded, unfavorite curbside flora. I have no real love for these trees, per se, no sentimental attachment. They just express form and mass and scale and human intervention in a way that I enjoy, like nothing else in the urban landscape as I encounter it.” He’s wise to be neutral. A civil insurection broke out in Santa Monica over plans to replace ficus trees with ginko trees in the downtown area. Hunger strikes were threatened...

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Are Raised Beds a Good Idea?

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
44 Comments
Raised bed fail. Our appalling parkway beds. Extra demerits for having used treated lumber! * Raised beds have some pluses and minuses. Lately I’ve been thinking about their drawbacks. Namely: Cost How fast they dry out in a hot climate. Now I can also think of a few reasons one might want to grow vegetables in a raised bed: You do a soil test (and you should do a soil test, especially if you live in an urban area) and the res...

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Italian Dandelion Redux

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
7 Comments
n and an army of aphids, the Italian Dandelion seems immune to both pest and disease. And, nearby, volunteer mallow hints at a spring of easy foraging. Horace was on to something. And to all who responded to my call for urban homesteaders: I’m overwhelmed by the response (and the emails!). You are all an incredible inspiration and, like my botanical friend Cichorium intybus, a sign of abundance in the midst of adversity....

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Nesting Box Plans in SketchUp

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens
5 Comments
SketchUp is a free and easy to use 3D modeling program. And users have created a library of 3D models you can download. Up until recently most of these models were not particularly useful to DIY urban homesteady types. Enter SketchUp model contributor Rick whose collection of models includes the chicken nesting box above, raised garden beds and a couple of other useful projects. I’m really looking forward to seeing more open source projec...

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