Search Results for: label/trees

142 results

Laundry to Landscape 2.0

Mr. Homegrown
Water and Power, Water Conservation
13 Comments
...g suggests a 3/8-inch hole. We simply drilled 3/8-inch holes in the bottom of the PVC pipe that we ran out into the garden. The outlets flow into mini-mulch basins along the side of some perennial shrubs and a few small fruit trees. Altogether it took just a few hours. Lora ran a load of clothes immediately and it worked perfectly. It was one of the easiest home improvement projects I’ve done. No cursing whatsoever! Now Lora can’t w...

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Homegrown Evolution in the LA Times

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
11 Comments
...d dandelion greens, collards, garlic and more sweet peas. Last summer we had a mini corn field. Lastly, a shot from the summer of 2006 of tomatoes supported by one of the obelisks. With a backyard dominated by two large shade trees, the parkway, with its excellent sun exposure, is the best location for us to grow food. We invite neighbors to share our harvest, and to answer a commonly asked question, we’ve never had a problem with anyone ge...

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Book Review: Attracting Native Pollinators: The Xerces Society Guide to Conserving North American Bees and Butterflies and Their Habitat

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Bees, Reviews
8 Comments
...ate the damage we cause through the use of pesticides. Do we really want to live in a toxic world? A world, like China’s Sichuan Province, so choked with poison that apple farmers have to climb ladders to hand pollinate trees? And we’re not just talking about honeybees. Attracting Native Pollinators delves into the fascinating world of native bees, bumblebees, wasps, moths and flies, providing a detailed guide on how to tell these spe...

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Roundin’ up the Summer Urban Homesteading Disasters

Mr. Homegrown
Bread, Food, Gardening, Mistakes, Vegetable Gardening
16 Comments
...and the other that never fully matured before the vine crapped out. The immature squash was still edible, but bland. Moral: winter squash just ain’t space efficient. Next year I’ll tuck it around other plants and trees rather than have it hog up space in my intensively planted veggie beds. Luscious compost tomatoes. Unintentional Gardening I built a cold frame this spring so that I could get a head start on propagating my to...

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Italy Questions Neonicotinoid Pesticides, California Department of Food and Agriculture Loves Them

Mr. Homegrown
Pests, Thoughtstylings
8 Comments
...estioning he admitted that the “alternative” was a pellet version of imidacloprid–not an alternative at all, just the same insect neurotoxin in another form. 4. Ran out of pesticide. There are so many citrus trees in our neighborhood that the CDFA ran out of their precious imidacloprid tablets. They never returned to finish the job leading me to conclude that the operation was a kind of pesticide theater, a way to both justify t...

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What To Do With Old Vegetable Seeds

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Permaculture, Vegetable Gardening
14 Comments
...her radishes to break up hard soil Sow before weeds emerge Scott Kleinrock has used the same strategy at the Huntington Gardens. Here’s what his semi-wild vegetable garden, growing in the understory of some small fruit trees, looked like in January of this year: And there you have it–vegetable gardening with a fraction of the work....

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Compost Outlaws

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Thoughtstylings
15 Comments
...217;re an outlaw. It’s a law that benefits the status quo, where the the city and private contractors haul away all that perfectly good organic matter that could be nourishing our neighborhood gardens, parks, and street trees and stuff it in . . . the dump. There’s a dirty little secret with what happens to the organic matter we all some of us put in the green bin (a trash can provided by the city some municipalities to separate out y...

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Pee on your Compost

Mr. Homegrown
Composting
RLeave a comment
...be at least 10 parts water to one part urine. Peeing directly on plants can burn them as anyone who owns a dog already knows about. Urine is easiest to apply to non-food crops, though it’s perfectly safe to use on fruit trees and bushes. Applying it to root crops is more controversial, and frankly seems like a practice best left to hippies, so if you try this at least cease application at a respectable interval before harvesting. There is e...

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