Search Results for: label/urban homsesteading resources

342 results

Mulberries

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Foraging
8 Comments
...nd and become convinced you’re going to croak. We wonder if this is a myth, like the story about boy scouts roasting hot dogs on Oleander sticks (yes, Oleander is very poisonous, but apparently the boy scout story is an urban legend). We found the Mulberries sweet and delicious. It’s a fruit that doesn’t ship well, hence its absence in our crummy supermarkets....

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A Review of Williams-Sonoma’s Agrarian Line

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
21 Comments
Last week upscale retalier Williams-Sonoma announced an urban homesteady line of goods they call “Agrarian”. A number of Root Simple readers responded to the news after I linked to a Wall Street Journal article about the Agrarian line. One reader likened the “Agrarian” items to Marie Antoinette’s 18th century cosplay mini-farm. Another hoped that mainstream acceptance of things like chicken coops and beehives might...

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Saturday Linkages: The Calm After the Storm

Mr. Homegrown
Saturday Linkages
2 Comments
...getable_garden?id=YHQNAQAAMAAJ  …  Bikes ‘Getting Jerry Browned’ and other new phrases for Californians http://www. latimes.com/news/opinion/o pinion-la/la-ol-getting-jerry-browned-20121024,0,2854852.story  … New Urban Velo issue free online: http://www. urbanvelo.org/issue34/  The fox is guarding the hen house ! How the sugar industry defends itself against claims that sugar is unhealthy: http:// boingboing.net/2012/10/31/how -the-...

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Introducing Nancy Klehm With Tips on Growing Jerusalem Artichokes

Nancy Klehm
Gardening, Permaculture, Vegetable Gardening
10 Comments
Photo by Ann Summa We’re very proud to welcome to the blog our good friend Nancy Klehm. Nancy is a radical ecologist, designer, urban forager, grower and teacher. Most importantly, unlike Kelly and I here in Los Angeles, she lives in a place subject that odd meteorological condition called “winter”, namely Chicago. We asked her to write posts for us for on gardening in a four-season climate and to add her expertise to...

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Essential System #4 – Illumination

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness
RLeave a comment
It’s all about LEDs my friends. LEDs are the way to go, lasting nearly forever and using very little battery power (make sure, of course, that you have batteries on hand). We have LED headlamps in our grab and go bags, but we also are looking into a new generation of LED bulbs for our Urban Homestead’s interior lighting. As far as house lighting goes, while LED efficiency is rapidly advancing, compact fluorescents are still better fr...

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Content Mills: Pimples on the Information Superhighway

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
8 Comments
Yes, there really is a “How to Get Rid of Pimples on the Buttocks” video on eHow. If only they had a how to get rid of eHow article. Google’s powerful search engine has become an essential component of the urban homesteading toolbox. From diagnosing tomato diseases to cooking Ethiopian injera Google has the answers. In recent years, unfortunately, low quality “content mills,” such as ezinearticles and suite...

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Essential System #10 – Shelter

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness
RLeave a comment
...ithout shelter, three days without water, and three weeks without food. In addition to having a place in our grab and go bag the concept of shelter figures into our policy of having a back-up system for every necessity at our urban homestead. We like things lightweight for our grab and go bags, so we purchased a three pound backpacking tent, the two person MSR “Missing Link”. This tent is spacious for its low weight and uses either hi...

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Far Side of the Stairs

Mr. Homegrown
Fitness
2 Comments
...emergency-room”. But the brave folks at SoapboxLA were clearly up to the challenge and took first place in the categories of non-crocodile wrestling Australian and fiery high-horse Hungarian. But seriously, part of this urban homesteading thing is about whipping our communities into shape and LA needs a serious thrashing, and I don’t mean the sort delivered by the ladies in the back of the LA Weekly. We need to make LA a walkable, bik...

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Mistakes we have made . . .

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens, Permaculture, Thoughtstylings
13 Comments
...fruit reliably every year while growing in terrible alkaline soil with no added water or fertilizer. The problem with the prickly pear is that it is too prodigious, and that’s the kind of problem you can hope for as an urban homesteader. 3. Newspaper seed pots Those newspaper seed starting pots we linked to earlier this year . . . well, there seems to be a problem with them. I think the newspaper is wicking the water away from the soil. Wh...

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The High Cost of Golf

Mr. Homegrown
Lawns, Thoughtstylings
14 Comments
...possible to trace Tiger Woods wannabe. We circled back to the club house to file a report with the manager of the course and begin the long tedious process of settling the insurance claims. So what does this have to do with urban homesteading? A lot. It’s time for another anti-golf rant. Here are my problems with golf (especially municipal golf courses): 1. The colossal mis-allocation of land. Wouldn’t a lot more people benefit from...

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