Search Results for: label/solar

101 results

Our New Straw Bale Garden–Part I

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Straw Bale Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
24 Comments
Straw bales–ready to prepare. Pot in the center will be a solar powered fountain. We’re going to experiment with a straw bale vegetable garden in our backyard, inspired by Michael Tortorello’s article in the New York Times. The plan is to grow in the bales and harvest the resulting compost for use in permanent raised beds (that have yet to be built). We’ll keep growing in bales until we have enough compost for the beds. T...

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Post Petroleum Lecture

Mr. Homegrown
Miscellaneous
RLeave a comment
...’t miss this next one! From Khan’s announcement: Albert Bates is a permaculture and appropriate technology instructor at the Eco village Training Center at The Farm community in Summertown, Tennessee, inventor of solar cars, pedal flour sifters and cylindrical tofu presses, and author of eleven books, including Shutdown: Nuclear Power on Trial (1979) and Climate in Crisis: The Greenhouse Effect and What We Can Do (1990). His Post-Pet...

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Our Books

...ound up. Projects range from the simple to the ambitious, and include activities done in the home, in the garden and out on the streets. Provides step-by-step instructions for a wide range of projects, from building a 99-cent solar oven to making your own laundry soap to instructions for brewing beer. Making It is the go-to source for post-consumer living activities that are fun, inexpensive and eminently doable. Our goal in this book was to pro...

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SurviveLA Food Review: Mary Jane’s Farm Organic Buttery Herb Pasta

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness, Reviews
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...nd works very well in that capacity. That said, it is ripe for doctoring, because it is so very basic. I brought along a handful of chopped sun-dried tomatoes from the SurviveLA gardens (and dehydrated in the compound’s solar dehydrator – more on that in a future post), and that added the perfect amount of interest. Nuts, canned tuna, fresh veggies if you wanted to carry them, all would work well too. You cook this entree in its own b...

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Post Petroleum Lecture – a reminder

Mr. Homegrown
Miscellaneous
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...Habitats Lecture Series. Here’s the announcement again: Albert Bates is a permaculture and appropriate technology instructor at the Eco village Training Center at The Farm community in Summertown, Tennessee, inventor of solar cars, pedal flour sifters and cylindrical tofu presses, and author of eleven books, including Shutdown: Nuclear Power on Trial (1979) and Climate in Crisis: The Greenhouse Effect and What We Can Do (1990). His Post-Pet...

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Erik Speaking at Maker Faire

Mr. Homegrown
Events
5 Comments
I’m very excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at the Bay Area Maker Faire on Saturday May 19 at 6:30 pm on the Maker Square Stage (located in the Homegrown Village). The talk I’m giving will be about the appropriate tech projects we’ve been up to around the Root Simple compound–our new chicken run, greywater, solar cooking and Mediterranean edible gardening. I’d love to hang out, after the talk, with any...

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Hops in Containers Update

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Herbs, Hops
12 Comments
...for me as well as a restful night’s sleep. Plus the harvest window is brief and you need to keep a close eye on those cones–when the they get papery it’s time to pick them. I dry them for a few hours in our solar dehydrator, but you could also just let them dry for a few days inside with a fan pointed at them. After drying they go into bags in the freezer. 3. Plant hops in such a way that you can access them for easy harvest. H...

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Propagating herbs via cuttings

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Herbs
11 Comments
...picious at all– on one of your cuttings, pull it out. You don’t want that spreading. If the cuttings are outdoors, you also have to protect them from heat and sun. Remember, the plastic could make your tray into a solar oven. We’ve come home after a day of unexpected heat to find our cuttings steam cooked in their trays. Move them to a shady spot if the weather is expected to be warm and sunny.  They like to be warm, but not too...

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