Search Results for: label/vertical farming

82 results

Moringa!

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Permaculture
1 Comment
Photo by Harvey McDaniel One of the big inspirations for starting our front yard urban farming efforts at the SurviveLA compound is a Philippino neighbor of ours who has turned his entire front yard and even the parkway into an edible garden featuring fruits and vegetables from his native land, most of which we have never seen before. This morning, while walking the dog, I found him cutting hundreds of long seed pods off of a small attractive...

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Carlo Petrini and Slow Food: A Joyful Revolution

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Thoughtstylings
3 Comments
Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini gave the keynote address at the National Heirloom Exposition last Tuesday. For those of you who don’t know, the Slow Food movement began out of protests against a McDonald’s that was slated to open near the Spanish Steps in Rome in the 1980s. Slow Food has since grown into an international organization that promotes food biodiversity and traditional farming practices. Petrini spoke eloquently and with...

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Upcoming Classes: Edible Gardening and Vermicomposting

Mr. Homegrown
Events
4 Comments
...nnection to their waste and  unveiling its worth. In this workshop we will go “beyond the bin” and build a large,  outdoor vermicomposting system designed to handle both kitchen and yard  waste. The basics of worm farming will be covered, but emphasis will be  placed on integrating the worm bin into the wider ecosystem of yard and  house, such as: * How to combine vermicomposting and thermacomposting in stepped systems* How to integra...

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Toby Hemenway On How Horticulture Can Save Us

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Permaculture, Thoughtstylings
6 Comments
...h and culture. Hemenway also, justifiably, critiqued some corners of the urban homesteading movement for promoting an egocentric self-sufficiency–”MY food on MY land” as he put it–a kind of industrial farming on a household level. While “self-sufficiency” appears in the subtitle of our first book (our publisher’s idea), it’s not a term we use. Kelly and I always emphasize, like Hemenway, the import...

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How to start a chicken retirement community

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens
34 Comments
...e high school (or other meat, except rarely, fish). My objections have never centered around the morality of killing animals for food, but rather a long-standing objection to how the animals were treated within the industrial farming system. I wanted the chickens so I could have constant access to guilt-free eggs. Erik was a meat eater up until we got the hens. Then he fell in love with their funny ways, fell out of denial, and realized where his...

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The Food and Flowers Freedom Act Needs Your Support

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
4 Comments
UFA supporters at a commission meeting back in March Local food is coming to Los Angeles. Friday May 21st, the Los Angeles City Council will vote on amending city code to allow growing and selling fruit and flowers within city limits. If you live in the area, the Urban Farming Advocates can use your support at tomorrow’s meeting. From the UFA website: We will assemble between 11 and 11:30am in the Council Chamber at City Hall. Friday mor...

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What To Do With Old Vegetable Seeds

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Permaculture, Vegetable Gardening
14 Comments
In short, throw them around. We’ve got a lot of expired seed packages sitting in a shoe box. And I’ve been reading a newly published translation of a book by the late, “natural farmer” Masanobu Fukuoka (review coming soon). Fukuoka inspired me to distribute those old seeds around our micro-orchard to see what comes up. Fukuoka has some tips in his book The Natural Way of Farming for creating a semi-wild vegetable garden:...

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Denver and Los Angeles Experience Crowds Staring at Chicken Coops

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens, Events
5 Comments
Denver Urban Homesteaders looking at a chicken coop Judging from the phone calls and emails coming into the Homegrown Evolution compound, America has discovered that it just might be a good idea to grow some vegetables and keep some chickens. There’s lots of motivating factors, no doubt. A bad economy and dissatisfaction with factory farming to start. But we also suspect that folks have discovered that it’s just plain fun to do all...

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Bitter Greens

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
RLeave a comment
Today we continued our winter planting in our illegal parkway garden adding arugula, a green that America has suddenly discovered after last month’s factory farming spinach nightmare. We also added a tough and bitter leaf chicory from our friends at Grow Italian. Hopefully, by succession planting we should have a winter and spring full of green, if somewhat bitter vegetables. How do we prepare these bitter greens around the compound? Very...

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How to Raise Poultry

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens
6 Comments
One of the great tragedies of modern factory farming is the loss of biodiversity in our livestock. Robust, diverse genetics have been sacrificed in the name of cheap and abundant, but low quality food. To use a poultry metaphor, we’re putting all our eggs in one genetic basket, with the consequence being that our whole agricultural system feels like a ticking time bomb. We’ve seen how these short sighted practices have decimated comm...

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