Search Results for: label/vegetables

166 results

Jujube and Goji Fever

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Gardening
8 Comments
...ng them elsewhere in the yard, since our black walnut area is a bit too shady, and we’ll report back on how they do. Supposedly the leaves are edible as well, for those of you keeping score on the alternate uses of fruits and vegetables. Note that the Papaya tree nursery is by appointment only and can be reached at (818) 363-3680. No mail order except for miracle fruit berries (see those strange berries and some video of the Papaya tree nursery h...

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Italian Dandelion Redux

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
7 Comments
...n temperature phenomenon known as La Niña which has caused alternating periods of cool weather followed by 80º days and little rainfall. Our deciduous trees did not loose their leaves until after New Years, most of the winter vegetables we planted seem unhappy and to top it all off someone took all of the shallots and daikon radishes that were growing in our illegal sidewalk garden before they were ready to harvest. All this leads me to muse abo...

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Bagrada, The Bad News Bug

Homegrown Neighbor
Gardening, Pests
5 Comments
...the spread of this heat loving pest. I tend a garden in one of L.A.’s hottest microclimates. Even when the mercury is over 100, bagrada bugs seem to do just fine. And unfortunately they love a lot of our favorite garden vegetables such as broccoli, kale and cauliflower. The local nursery says they are destroying the allysum as well. In my garden they have been particularly devastating to an heirloom broccoli raab and some wild arugula. They...

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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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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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Heavy-duty disinfecting the non-toxic way with hydrogen peroxide and vinegar

Mrs. Homegrown
Cleaning, Domesticus
32 Comments
...he form of mist. This methodology was developed in the mid-90′s by Susan Sumner a food scientist at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. She actually developed this technique to remove salmonella from the surface of meat and vegetables. Yes, it can be applied directly to the food! I gather you rinse it off after application. It is said not to leave lingering flavors, but I haven’t tried it. This combo works like gangbusters at killing salm...

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A Favorite Tool: Canning Funnel

Mrs. Homegrown
Tools
9 Comments
...ve top into the jars. If you’re canning without one, heaven help you! Go get one!  Even if you don’t can, you still need one. If, like me, you’re buying more dried goods and bulk foods, or drying herbs and vegetables, you probably use a lot of jars. Canning jars are an easy, efficient way to store food–far better than a cabinet full of random bags and boxes.You can see what you have and exactly how much you have. They li...

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Water Conservation

Mr. Homegrown
Water Conservation
RLeave a comment
...tart with water conservation is outdoors, in designing a landscape that doesn’t need supplemental irrigation. Our rule around the SurviveLA compound is, once again, if you gotta water it you gotta be able to eat it. The vegetables that we grow are irrigated with a water-saving drip irrigation system that we’ll describe in detail in a later post. We have no lawn, and other than the vegetable garden, all the other plants are either nati...

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Five Lessons We Learned About Lead in Soil

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Lead
18 Comments
...other. Both Wallace and Timberleaf give you more detailed reports and are both willing to chat on the phone. They cost more but are worth it. Raised beds.  Not much else to say other than those two words if you want to grow vegetables and have a lead problem. Right now I have a big compost pile going that I made with hay, straw and horse manure. I’ll use this compost along with imported soil to fill the raised beds that I’m going to...

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