Search Results for: label/uses for used tires/page/3/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

696 results

A Redneck Rocket Stove

Mr. Homegrown
Rocket Stove
8 Comments
From Wes Duncan, the “High Tech Redneck,” a rocket stove made out of cinder blocks. I’ve built one of these too and can confirm that they work great. And you can’t beat the price. Time for some redneck cookin’! Update: As several readers have pointed out, this design ain’t safe. Cinder blocks can explode and were not meant to be placed next to a heat source–that’s what fire bricks are for. See ou...

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Food Storage as Art

Mr. Homegrown
Design, Food, Food Preservation
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Artist Jihyun Ryou’s work uses food storage techniques from the pre-refrigerator era in a way that’s both useful and beautiful. Her goal is to, “Try to bring your food in front of your eyes” to counteract that tendency we all have to make our refrigerators unintentional composters. The techniques she demonstrates include: Evaporation Sand, both to keep vegetables vertical and to decrease humidity Using the ethylene...

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LA Times Calls Vertical Gardens in a Dry Climate a Bad Idea

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Thoughtstylings, Vegetable Gardening
7 Comments
Wooly Pockets at Homeboy Industries Writing for the LA Times, Emily Green has penned a skeptical look at wall-based growing, “The Dry Garden: A skeptic’s view of vertical gardens.” I’m in complete agreement with Green and wrote about this silly trend back in July. Says Green of a garden in Culver City that uses the Wooly Pocket vertical system, “The concrete wall behind the bagged-and-hung garden is wet wi...

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Self Watering Containers

Mr. Homegrown
Self Watering Containers
18 Comments
Today, something for our apartment homesteaders. If you’ve got a patch of sun and want to grow some food crops container gardening is the way to go. But container gardening has several drawbacks. Containers dry out quickly and if you forget to water, especially with vegetables, you can easily kill your plants. In fact inconsistent watering is probably the number one cause of container plant failure. Container gardening also uses a lot of...

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Gift Suggestions, from the Other Half

Mrs. Homegrown
Reviews
3 Comments
Mrs. Homegrown here: Of course Mr. Homegrown didn’t ask me for input on “our” holiday gift guide. Not that I dispute his choices…but I do have some of my own. These are the 4 most thought provoking books (in this topic area) I’ve read this year: The first two are closely related, as they are about the horticultural practices of Native Americans in California. You might remember me writing about them earlier.  A...

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Of Gnomes and Peak Oil

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
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What it looks like when I’m “reflecting” on concepts like peak oil. Being momentarily or, perhaps, permanently carless has given me the opportunity to reflect on the long term future of oil. As coincidence would have it I stumbled on CNN commentator David Frum’s delusional editorial, “Peak Oil Doomsayers Proved Wrong,” at the same time as I discovered Renaissance physician, alchemist and philosopher Paracelsus...

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White Sage and Bees and our other sage friends

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Herbal Medicine, Herbs, Native Plants
19 Comments
One of my favorite plants in the garden (I’ve posted about it before) is in bloom right now: the white sage, Salvia apiana.  Salvia apiana means “bee sage” and boy howdy did they get that one right. This sage puts up tall spikes covered with small white flowers that bees can’t resist. Unfortunately, our white sage is situated right by the garden path. So these days, every time I go into the garden I have to squeeze past...

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Jujube and Goji Fever

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Gardening
8 Comments
Jujube Photo from the Papaya Tree Nursery Tucked into a residential neighborhood in a corner of Los Angeles’ vast San Fernando valley, the Papaya Tee Nursery, sells a dazzling array of exotic fruit trees, countless species and varieties you’ve never heard of. Papaya Tree’s proprietor Alex Silber, with his encyclopedic knowledge and stream of consciousness delivery, comes across at first as, well, unusual, until you realize that it&...

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Low Tech Solar Heating with a Thermosyphon Collector

Mr. Homegrown
Solar, Water and Power
2 Comments
Yet another great post from the folks at Build It Solar: a simple and low tech solar heating system called a thermosyphon collector mounted in the wall of a garage. It uses the same principle as the solar dehydrator we have on our garage roof–basically it’s just some clear plastic and a heat collector made out of black window screen. If your climate is cold and sunny (think Colorado) this would work nicely. Read the post to see a r...

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Another way to deal with prickly pear stickers

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Gardening
9 Comments
One of those “farm uses” could be burning off prickly pear spines . . Image via BoingBoing I’m drowning in prickly pear fruit which means a lot of nasty thorns in the kitchen and an angry Mrs. Homegrown. Previously I burned them off over our stove, but inevitably a few stickers would find their way to the kitchen sponge. Now I’ve got a new technique for removing stickers thanks to Norman of Silver City New Mexic...

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