Search Results for: label/tomatoes

114 results

Deadly Nightshade vs. Black Nightshade

Mr. Homegrown
Foraging
16 Comments
...er the world, though many sources continue to describe it as toxic. As with all members of the Solanum family there’s still a great deal of superstition when it comes to toxicity. Remember that many Europeans considered tomatoes to be poisonous well into the 18th century. Even today tomato leaves, used by my Filipino neighbors as a seasoning, are still labeled by many as poisonous. An interesting article in the New York Times “Accused...

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Gardening Tip: Senecent Seedlings

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Seeds
9 Comments
...don’t like being root bound either, but the outcomes are not as extreme. In addition to long roots, also look for tell-tale signs of maturity in a vegetable, like flowers or fruits. Tomato plants already bearing tiny tomatoes are not a good thing. Cukes that are flowering are not a good thing. Look for the smallest, youngest seedlings you can find. Teeny tiny is good. The more leafed out they are, the longer their roots will be. If y...

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Beans 101 (Return of Bean Friday!)

Mrs. Homegrown
Bean Fest, Food, How-to
16 Comments
...tahini (sesame paste). Lacking tahini, you can make the dip tasty by adding, say, roasted garlic and lemon juice. Or maybe a spoonful of something in a jar, some little jar malingering in your fridge, like pesto or sun dried tomatoes in oil or olive paste. Stuff beans into pita pockets along with some salad stuff for lunch. Okay, you get the idea. Oh, and you might ask why you can’t use canned beans from the store for all of the above. Th...

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

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness, Reviews
RLeave a comment
...tte is not as adventurous as it might be ordinarily. This is comfort food, and 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 want...

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Survival Gardening

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Preparedness, Thoughtstylings, Vegetable Gardening
27 Comments
...rson mini-farm” scheme, 60% of your growing area is devoted to these compost and calorie crops. The remainder is planted in 30% high calorie root crops, such as potatoes, with just 10% of the garden devoted to the usual tomatoes and greens. The residents of Biosphere 2, using Jeavons’ techniques claimed that enough food could be grown for one person on as little as 3,403 square feet. Jeavons has shown that you could use less space, bu...

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Get Off Your Ass and Plant a Survival Garden!

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
RLeave a comment
...can get complicated especially if you want to keep a steady stream of produce on the table. In general, remember that winter here is the best time for most crops with the summer reserved for stuff that can take the heat like tomatoes and basil. So get out there and plant your own food and remember our rule here around the Homegrown Evolution homestead: if you gotta water it you gotta be able to eat it....

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A Prickly Situation

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Foraging
RLeave a comment
...t produces new leaves which can be harvested and eaten. Stores and street vendors sell them as “Nopolito”. Nopolito, tastes a bit like a slightly slimy green pepper and can be used in scrambled eggs and mixed with tomatoes and onions in a salsa. During the summer the very tasty fruit matures and can be eaten raw, although the abundant seeds make it a bit of an acquired taste. The fruit can be made into a jam, a drink, or a salad dress...

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Without Merit: poison in your compost

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Gardening, Thoughtstylings, Vegetable Gardening
7 Comments
...m fond of using a bit of horse manure in my compost pile. It’s free for the taking and helps heat up the pile. But if the horses were fed hay grown on land sprayed with aminopyralid I could lose my veggies, particularly tomatoes, lettuce and legumes which are highly susceptible to this chemical. So what can we do? First the practical: test your compost. Washington State University has instructions for performing a simple test here (pdf). B...

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Vegetable Gardening in the Shade

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
21 Comments
...In fact, the sun is so harsh here that partial shade can be a good thing, in that it keeps more delicate veggies from drying up and blowing away. What has worked in our partially shaded beds: New Zealand spinach cucumbers tomatoes (not as much growth as in the sun, but they are fruiting) lettuce Swiss chard dandelion greens raspberry Growing but struggling: bush beans (cover crop) For more information on growing in the shade, check out...

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Dry Farming

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening, Water and Power, Water Conservation
19 Comments
...ider ways to grow edibles without supplemental irrigation. This may sound absurd at first, but I’ll note that in our garden we’ve discovered, quite by accident, that many plants such as prickly pear cactus, cherry tomatoes, cardoon and pomegranates will do just fine in a climate where it doesn’t rain for six months out of the year.  Scott Kleinrock at the Huntington Ranch proved that you can grow chard in Southern California wit...

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