The Homegrown Mailbox: How and Where Do I Get My Soil Tested?

...kindly sent me the following list of labs with comments. Biological Urban Gardening Service PO Box 76 Citrus Heights, CA 95611 (916) 726-5377 URL: www.organiclandscape.com Email: [email protected] Organic recommendations, very user-friendly Owner Steve Zien and I co-author “Organic Matters” organic gardening column in Sacramento Bee for 20 years. Wallace Laboratories 365 Coral Circle El Segundo, CA 90245 (310) 615-0116 www.bettersoils.com...

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Back to the Garden

...en. This idea haunts me. I find references to this song, to the Garden and gardening and Eden everywhere I turn, as if the universe is whacking me upside the head, saying, “Pay attention!” Genesis tells the tale of humankind’s expulsion from Eden. It is a myth. The definition of a myth is a tale which is not factual, but which is true. In our age of empiricism this can seem like a contradiction of terms, but it isn’t. A myth is a truth which is al...

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The Food and Flowers Freedom Act

...known as the Truck Gardening Ordinance was written to allow the growing of vegetables in a residential (R1) zone for sale off-site. What this means, however, is that it is prohibited for city dwellers in R1 zones to grow fruits, nuts, flowers or seedlings and sell them off-site – at local farmers’ markets for example. Furthermore, no one at City Hall can agree on what Truck Gardening is. We think it’s time for the City of Los Angeles to come into...

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Homegrown Evolution Podcast Episode #1

...ers behind lacreekfreak.wordpress.com. As we say on the podcast, we prefer gardening to staring at computer screens and putting a podcast together involves a hell of a lot of the latter. Don’t look for frequent updates, but we’ll probably put out another one in the fall. Please excuse the mike popping and other technical flaws, as we’re still working out the technical side. We hope you’ll enjoy the podcast while, say, gardening or prepping food fo...

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Social Media as a Homesteading Tool

...s), it has proven useful for me on many occasions. I’ve used it to solicit gardening advice, find a place to celebrate a birthday, borrow a guitar and keep up with friends and family. And I’ve learned a lot from what Facebook friends have posted about their homesteading adventures. Yes, the privacy issues are alarming but, having written two books now, our life is public anyways. I think that it’s healthy to look at new technology critically and t...

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