Search Results for: label/uses for used tires/page/4/2011/04/making-it

618 results

Two Vegetable Gardening Commandments

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
9 Comments
...ntime, I’ll share two of the commandments: 1. Thou shalt not have more vegetable beds than thou canst maintain in a worthy condition. We’ve already reduced the amount of vegetable space in our garden and replaced it with native perennials. I’m considering cutting more vegetable space. Having a lot of poorly maintained vegetable beds sends out a big invitation to the sorts of insect visitors we don’t want in our gardens. B...

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Urban Homesteading Thing Catching On

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
25 Comments
I have a Google alert set up for the phrase “urban homestead”. Lately I’ve noticed more real estate and apartment listings using this phrase. Our neighbors Anne and Bill even used it to rent out their duplex. A rental listing that includes the photos in this post came from a real estate concern renting out an apartment in Edmonton, Canada. For $1,600 Canadian dollars a month you get:  hot water on demand system.  sunroom has...

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Bean Fest, Episode 5: Black-Eyed Pea Salad (Lubyi Msallat)

Mrs. Homegrown
Bean Fest, Food, Recipes
4 Comments
...allment comes from a cookbook we’ve been trying out over the last week called Vegetarian Dishes from Across the Middle East, by Arto der Haroutunian. These recipes really fit well with our kitchen just now, considering its emphasis on classic summer vegetables (like eggplants, cucumbers and tomatoes) and bulk bin foods like beans and grains. This black-eyed pea appetizer (meze) is of Syrian-Lebanese origin and is easy to prepare. All you...

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The Strange World of Artificial Plants

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Thoughtstylings
10 Comments
ighbor Anne Hars once showed me Home Depot’s astonishing selection of fake grass–some that even has fake dead grass mixed in for realism. Perhaps in some ironic post-modern house this artificial turf could fit in. It did remind me of the time a neighbor, who is a Hollywood art director, grabbed me late one evening to help her fake a vegetable garden for a movie. From her I that learned that their are businesses in Hollywood that do no...

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Cichorium intybus a.k.a. Italian Dandelion

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
3 Comments
Our illegal parkway garden has got off to a slow start this season due to low seed germination rates. We’ve compensated with a trip to the Hollywood farmer’s market to pick up some six-packs of seedlings. One plant we made sure to get is Cichorium intybus, known in Italian as “cicoria” or chicory, but somehow, in the case of leaf chicory, mistranslated as “Italian dandelion,” probably because the leaves resem...

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Cat Update

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Cats
19 Comments
Last week was fairly traumatic around here. We learned two scary things–the first was that we might be living on a Superfund clean-up site, and the second was that something was seriously wrong with our kitten, Phoebe. As Erik just posted, the lead issue remains up in the air, and will be for quite some time. But we did find answers regarding Phoebe, and while it is bad news, it is not as bad as our worst imaginings, and it’s good...

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

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness, Reviews
RLeave a comment
This guest review from one of the SurviveLA compound sistas, is the first in a look at long term food storage options. Freeze dried food like this is marketed both towards backpackers and holed-up-in-the-bunker paranoid types. Exceptionally long shelf life makes freeze dried food a good, though expensive, option for your emergency pantry. Field Tested July 22, 2006 on Mt. Silliman The name of this dehydrated entree is somewhat misleading. It is...

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Get a Soil Test!

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Lead
7 Comments
Regular readers have probably already got this message, but right now we can’t repeat it enough. If there’s a lesson with our backyard lead scare , it’s to practice due diligence when beginning a garden –or better yet, when you buy property–and that means getting a soil test from a soil lab. They’re not that expensive, especially when you consider the high cost of remediation, and the well being of your self...

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Row Cover as an Insect Barrier

Mr. Homegrown
Vegetable Gardening
13 Comments
It ain’t pretty but it works. As one would expect, cabbage leaf worms love cabbage and nearly every other member of the brassica species.  Which  is why I’ve become a real fan of row cover material as an insect barrier. The perp in question. It rarely freezes here so I use the thinnest row cover possible, specifically a product called Agribon-15. If you live in a cooler climate and want to use row cover for frost pr...

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Tomato Can Stove

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness
RLeave a comment
Here’s another stove based on the Penny Wood Stove by Mark Jurey for heating up that pot of coffee when the gas and electricity go out. It’s a bit simpler than the Pepsi can stove and doesn’t require fuel other than some sticks or small scraps of wood. The stove works on the same principle as a charcoal chimney starter and it is simple to build.1. Use a 28 ounce can – I used a Trader Joes tomato can. First, drill a bu...

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