Search Results for: label/water conservation

360 results

Rain- The Best Gift of All

Homegrown Neighbor
rainwater harvesting
14 Comments
...past few years have been extremely dry here in the West. The year before last we literally had 3 inches of rain in L.A. So rain really feels like a gift from the gods. We had a decent rain recently and I have been using the water I harvested. As you can see in the photo, my downspouts go into a rain barrel. A slight design flaw I have discovered in hindsight is that the spout doesn’t attach directly to the barrel. There is screening over...

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Beans 101 (Return of Bean Friday!)

Mrs. Homegrown
Bean Fest, Food, How-to
16 Comments
...lantro etc.) and sprinkling that on top. Add cheese and hot sauce and you are good to go. Warm the beans up and toss them with hot pasta. Any kind. Sauced or not. If you throw some chopped broccoli or other veg into the pasta water and let it cook along with the pasta, then you’ll have something green in your bowl, too. Toss together beans, chopped vegetables and cooked pasta to make a cold pasta salad. Add dressing and you’re good to...

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Return of Bean Friday: Bean Broth or “Tuscan Crazy Water”

Mrs. Homegrown
Bean Fest, Food, Recipes, Reviews
5 Comments
Yep, Bean Friday rears its head again–or is it Frugal Friday? Whatever it is, I’ve got this thrifty idea for you. I read about in The Italian Country Table , by Lynn Rossetto Casper. We’ve had this book for years and years, and it has some really good recipes in it that have become standards in our house, along just with a couple of duds. I’d not paid attention to her entry on “Crazy Water” before, but by her...

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Back on the Yogurt Train: How to Make Yogurt

Mrs. Homegrown
Fermentation, Food, Recipes
16 Comments
This is how I want my yogurt. Dadiah, traditional West Sumatran water buffalo yogurt, fermented in bamboo segments. Courtesy of Wikimedia. Photo by Meutia Chaeran. Mrs. Homegrown here: One reason I make a lot of my own stuff is because I’m trying to avoid plastic packaging. And as I’m sure you know, that’s pretty much impossible these days–but I do what I can. Lately I’ve realized that one consistent source of...

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Remember to Label Those Jars!

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation
10 Comments
“Label, label, label!” This was one of the most important lessons I learned in my Master Food Preserver training. You’ll note, from the jars above, that I’m not very good about this. When were those jars canned and what’s in them? I have no idea. They were probably the result of some late night canning frenzy two years ago. At the time I probably thought to myself, “I’ll label them in the morning.”...

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Failed Experiment: Bermuda Buttercup or Sour Grass (Oxalis pes-caprae) as Dye

Mrs. Homegrown
Domesticus, Herbs, Mistakes
16 Comments
...jump. Kitties like sour grass. The first step is to weigh the dry fabric and the plant matter. You are supposed to use equal measurements of each (e.g. 6 oz of t-shirt/6 oz. plants).  The second step is to steep the plants in water. This is where I made my first half-assed mistake. I threw the plants into the pot whole, instead of chopping them up, as I was supposed to. Then, I covered the greens with water. The instructions didn’t give exa...

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Build a Washing Machine Greywater Surge Tank

Mr. Homegrown
Water Conservation
1 Comment
After the shower, the next best source for greywater is the washing machine. Constructing what is called a surge tank with a fifty gallon plastic drum is the simplest way to reuse your washing machine waste water. Perfectly good water that would ordinarily just go down the sewer will instead water your plants after first spending a short time in the fifty gallon drum. Temporarily draining your washing machine into a fifty gallon drum has two adv...

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More Washing Machine Greywater Fun

Mr. Homegrown
Water Conservation
5 Comments
One of the problems with the washing machine surge tank greywater strategy is that what you are watering has to be downhill of the machine. This is a common problem with greywater systems, and trying to use pumps to get the water uphill is simply not economical, nor is it environmentally hip since those pumps have a lot of plastic and other icky industrial materials in them. Fortunately washing machines have a pump built-in and it’s possib...

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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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How to Prep Fabric for Dyeing: Scouring

Mrs. Homegrown
Domesticus, How-to
12 Comments
Check out the water after boiling my supposedly clean sheet! As usual, I’m taking my shibori challenge right to the deadline. One important preparatory step to dyeing is a cleansing process called “scouring.” I’d never heard of this before now, which may be why all my casual attempts at dyeing thus far have not turned out so great. I spent my weekend scouring so I can move on to dyeing. And then on to sewing! Yik...

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