Kickstart the North Memphis Farmers Collective

July 31, 2015

...stories, there’s a happy ending. What began in one yard has grown into an urban farming movement transforming vacant lots into sources of food and jobs. There’s a Kickstarter: The City of Memphis faces many challenges. Among them are blighted vacant lots, food deserts, health challenges, and unemployment. North Memphis Farmer’s Collective seeks to take these challenges and turn them into solutions by using what others see as waste as the fertiliz...

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Nance Klemn is in Los Angeles and She’s Teaching Classes!

Mr. Homegrown

February 3, 2015

Events

...checks upon confirmation. CONTACT DELIA : [email protected] February 22: Urban Forage Walk More info here. Bio Nance Klemn is an ecological systems designer, landscaper, horticultural consultant, and permaculture grower, as well as a consultant, speaker, and teacher. Based in the Midwest, she lives and works in a diverse neighborhood in the heart of Chicago, and is developing a farm on her land outside the city. She is founder of Social Ecologie...

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A Visit to the Reversible Destiny Lofts

Mr. Homegrown

March 21, 2024

Design

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...onaventure could equally apply to the Reversible Density Lofts and Tokyo’s urban hyperspaces that have, “finally succeeded in transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself…in a mappable external world.” One of the first things you notice on arrival at the Lofts is Arakawa and Gins’ vibrant color scheme. In their instructions they suggest, “Use your loft’s brightly colored shaped volumes to structure and compose your own...

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Hipster Compost

Mr. Homegrown

June 30, 2014

Composting, Gardening

18 Comments

An updated, urban version of the soil food web. In the nearly sixteen years we’ve lived here we’ve seen our local stretch of Sunset Boulevard go from boarded up storefronts and auto body shops to restaurants, bars and cafes. Along with those new businesses and artisinal facial hair, comes a great new set of compost sources. Some of my enterprising neighbors, one in particular, have been creating what could be called hipster compost or, at least,...

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How to Get Skunks Out of Your Basement and Yard

Mr. Homegrown

March 19, 2014

Animals, Gardening, Pests

4 Comments

Basements and crawl spaces under houses make idea dens for urban critters. If we could charge rent for all the skunks, raccoons and feral cats that have taken up residence under the house we’d have paid off the mortgage by now. Our particular crawl space critter B&B was opened by virtue of a flimsy access door. Some animal, most likely a raccoon, pried it open. The problem with this situation is that you can’t just close up the door. Some poor cr...

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