Search Results for: label/solar/page/5/2011/04/making-it

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Saturday Linkages: Naked Gardening, Ticks, Walking in LA and Eating Giant Rats

Mr. Homegrown
Saturday Linkages
7 Comments
Couple gets booted out of the first world naked gardening day. Watch out for the nettles . . . World naked gardening day–May 4: http://www.wngd.org [Editors note: NSFW and no we won't be participating in WNGD, but I once saw a neighbor doing so while I was walking our dog a few years ago.] Making Things Paul Elkin, Maker of Many Things http://lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.com/2013/04/paul-elkin-maker-of-many-things.html#.UYSMGz1dyX8.twitter...

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Grow the Soil

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening
3 Comments
...and soil-busting mix of clovers and legumes. Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply has a nice selection of annual cover crops here. We used their dryland mix to deal with the bad soil in our front yard and we’ll re-sow it again this fall. Cover crops send down roots that break up soil, with the legumes used to fix nitrogen–it’s a great way to amend a large area with almost no work involved. Here at Homegrown Evolution we don...

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Did Kelly follow her 2012 resolutions?

Mrs. Homegrown
Miscellaneous
11 Comments
I cringed when Erik said he’d be reviewing his resolutions today, which meant I’d have to take the walk of shame and review mine. Actually, I couldn’t even remember what I’d said I’d do, but at the same time, I was pretty sure I’d not done any of it. If 2012 had a theme, it would be “wheel-spinning” — or at least that’s how it felt to me. Now that I’ve read over what I wrote last...

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It’s Calendula Season!

Mrs. Homegrown
Body Care, Domesticus, Gardening, Herbal Medicine, Herbs
17 Comments
Just a reminder to you all that Calendula officinalis (aka Pot Marigold) is super-easy to grow in the garden. Why should you grow Calendula? To make Calendula infused olive oil, of course– as I’m doing above, with inevitable feline assistance. Well, that’s why I grow it. Calendula infused olive oil is the base of all my lotions and potions, because it is such a potent healer of dry, itchy, burnt or otherwise irritated skin. I&...

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Trapping bees out of a kitchen vent

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Bees
3 Comments
...c” box (a cardboard box that holds five frames) that contains open brood comb, cells with eggs and larvae, from another hive. The workers can’t get back into their old home, adopt the brood comb in the box and use it to create a new queen. The process takes at least four to six weeks since you have to wait for the old queen to stop laying eggs and for all the bees in the wall to make their way out. At then end of the six weeks the bee...

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Roughin’ It

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness
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SurviveLA is off to Joshua Tree this weekend for the graduation ceremonies of the Sierra Club’s Wilderness Travel Course. We took the WTC class earlier this year both for tips on backpacking and for gaining general self-sufficiency. The Sierra Club’s approach to roughing it is to, well, not really rough it but to go down to REI and load up on all the latest stoves, tents and “technical” fabrics. This contrasts starkly wit...

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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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Grab and Go

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness
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So it’s time to go over what’s in the SuriviveLA compound grab and go bags. These are the backpacks we have for each person here just in case we find ourselves surrounded by zombies and decide its time to run. Conveniently our grab and go bags are the same ones we use for hiking and backpacking. In fact the contents of the bags are based on what the Sierra Club used to call the “Ten Essentials“, which has now been expande...

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The Sound of One Hand Snapping

Mr. Homegrown
Tools
1 Comment
...as a spring connecting the two ends which consist of a center punch and a nail set. You hold one end against a nail and pull the spring back. The spring bangs one end into the other, thereby driving the nail. We’ve used it for years, and driven hundreds of nails with it, hanging molding, fixing windows, making furniture, and countless other tasks. It’s possible, in fact, to drive nails with this thing without using a hammer and itR...

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Return of Recipe Friday! Spicy Korean Tofu

Mrs. Homegrown
Food, Recipes
7 Comments
Ummm…Our food stylist is on vacation! This was lunch today. It would look much better if the tofu sheets were reclining whole on snowy rice and artfully sprinkled with green. We’ve been eating a lot of this lately. It’s Erik’s favorite meal these days, in fact. I make it for him whenever he’s grumpy and he perks right up. I like it too, and I especially like that it’s fast cooking and I usually have a...

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