My Fellow Californians, Please Water Your Trees

January 29, 2018

...The California Drought and Water Use,” challenging this sort of knee jerk water conservation. They said, Water the trees. Trees form the infrastructure of our landscapes and urban forest, and are their permanent or, at least, most long-lived and valuable components around which the other plants intermesh, if not depend. Mature trees are among the most valuable and difficult-to-replace plants in urban areas. Their loss would be devastating. Trees...

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Gourmet Foraging and Advanced Acorn Processing

Mrs. Homegrown

October 24, 2013

Food, Foraging, How-to, Preparedness

31 Comments

...ich one you choose depends on how you plan to use the acorns. You use cold water leaching to make acorn meal suitable for baking. The cold water preserves the starchiness of the acorn meal, which makes it work well in breads and pancakes and muffins and such. Hot water leaching removes the starch, but seems to bring out the nutty flavor more, which makes it better for using the acorns in savory foods, like acorn burgers, or, Pascal says, in sauces...

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Lady Urine, Water Conservation and Halfway Humanure

Mrs. Homegrown

April 26, 2013

Gardening, Straw Bale Gardening

45 Comments

...he toilet so much. And if all our pee went outside, it would not only save water, but it also would add water and nitrogen to the soil. Win-win. Now, I imagine our more feisty readers will ask, why stop at pee? We’re big supporters of the humanure concept and have kept a dry toilet in the past. It’s not difficult to compost human waste , but you do have to be careful, and you need a dedicated humanure pile–more than one, really. More like three. W...

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Rain Barrels

Mr. Homegrown

January 9, 2007

rainwater harvesting

1 Comment

...stored water. Thankfully, there are simpler strategies for harvesting rainwater. Rainwater used for irrigating plants does not need filtering or purification, and since outdoor watering accounts for the number one household water use, you’ll be using that water where it is most needed. Now, once again at the risk of sounding like a broken record, our strict rule around the SurviveLA homestead is that all irrigated plants must be useful, i.e. you...

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Rain- The Best Gift of All

Homegrown Neighbor

December 27, 2009

rainwater harvesting

14 Comments

...epression planted with native plants adapted to our weather patterns. More water for me, less water wasted! Directing rainwater from your roof into the landscape is often simpler and lower in cost that harvesting in a barrel or cistern. The small 55 gallon barrels I have are great, but they fill up very quickly even in a light rain. You would be amazed at how much water you can collect. There are many cistern options out there. They just tend to b...

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