Search Results for: label/time management

494 results

Chicken Coop Complete

Homegrown Neighbor
Animals, Chickens
7 Comments
...eet. The first four chickens have moved in and are very happy in their new home. These first four chickens needed a home and the school was happy to provide them one. In the future we hope to have up to twenty chickens at one time. There is a spacious fenced in area for them to roam in during the day, with a big old oak tree providing valuable shade. And the usually surly teenagers really enjoy the chicken’s hilarious antics. While digging...

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Vegetable Garden Update: Too Much Salad

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
11 Comments
...mbined with another 2 foot by 4 foot area of arugula elsewhere in our yard, we’ve had a whole lot of salads this winter. Mrs. Homegrown would probably say too many salads. She’s also tired of me pointing out, each time I prepare a salad, that it’s made with fancy-pants Italian varieties. But these greens are tasty and eye catching. Not even “Whole Paycheck” carries this stuff–you gotta grow it yourself. I got t...

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Fall 2012 Adobe Classes With Kurt Gardella

Mr. Homegrown
Events
RLeave a comment
I’ve taken three adobe classes with Kurt Gardella–and he built the amazing earth oven in our backyard. Kurt has a couple of classes coming up and I thought I’d help get the word out. He’s a great teacher. From an email he just sent: Dear adobe friends, Intro Fall is a great time for natural plastering and interior finishing work. Interior mud plastering and installing an earthen floor finish the normal adobe house constr...

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Hexayurt

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness
2 Comments
SurviveLA reader jbjhill, responding to our rant about designing for a world dominated by 4 x 8 building materials, sent a link to this unique yurt-shaped emergency shelter which can be built out of 4 x 8 sheets of nearly anything (the globe shaped thing on the right is an inflatable satellite dish). Designed by software engineer Vinay Gupta, who is working on this project full time, the “Hexayurt” costs somewhere between $200 and $5...

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Guerrilla Gardening: Over and Out

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Thoughtstylings
20 Comments
Seed Bombs at Whole Foods! Photo by Jimmy Chertkow Proof that all counter-cultural movements eventually get subsumed into the mainstream: a Whole Foods seed bomb display sent to me by Root Simple tipster James Chertkow, who pointed out the anthropomorphized orange with a Mohawk. Maybe it’s time to retire the whole guerrilla gardening/punk rock thing and just, well, plant some flowers and not make a big deal out of it....

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Pimp My Cold Frame

Mr. Homegrown
Design, Gardening, Seeds
19 Comments
...t a single tomato seed to germinate until late May. To head off another seedling crisis I built a simple cold frame. In order to prevent the cold frame from becoming a solar cooker (it can get over 80°F during the day this time of year) I pimped it out with an Univent Automatic Greenhouse Vent Opener . The Univent uses no electricity. As the temperature gets hotter a small piston thingy forces open the window you attach the Univent too. As t...

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Poison in the Compost

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
3 Comments
...ated with persistent herbicide residues (most often clopyralid and aminopyralid). As our reports included below indicate, these chemical residues can kill plants or severely stunt their production, costing gardeners money and time. What do you need to know about contaminated compost? Affected plants show signs of curled, cupped leaves, wilting new growth and poor germination in tomatoes, peas, beans, lettuce and other garden crops. The chemical...

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Helping the Bees with Science in your Backyard

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Bees
1 Comment
San Francisco State University associate professor Gretchen LeBuhn is currently coordinating the innovative Great Sunflower Project, enlisting gardeners around the country to plant sunflowers and count the number of bees that visit them in a set period of time. We participated this summer, planting the sunflower seeds provided by the project. It’s too late to start this year, but you can sign up for next year’s project here. When w...

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Ridin’ On

Mr. Homegrown
Bikes
RLeave a comment
...to school by foot or on bicycle. Now it’s less than 10 percent.If we make walking and biking a more practical choice for all ages, we can combat congestion, improve air quality, and promote better health all at the same time. For too long the LA Department of Transportation has treated cycling and walking as an afterthought, if they thought about them at all. We urge everyone to call, write, fax, or email LA DOT bicycle program coordinator...

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Our Keyhole Vegetable Bed: What Worked and What Didn’t Work

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
9 Comments
...t I was in a hurry. Clover in the keyhole bed did well and produced some pretty spring flowers. Conclusions Despite my mistakes, I heartily endorse the keyhole bed concept. I’d just make the sides higher and take more time putting the bed together. My neighbor Anne Hars layed her keyhole bed out more carefully and, as a result, it was more productive and more aesthetically pleasing. Part of the problem for us is that the keyhole shape, fr...

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