Rain- The Best Gift of All

...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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The Unintended Consequences of Water Conservation

...dry, the risk of fires would increase. In changing over landscapes to low-water using plants or to non-planted, non-irrigated areas, labor and material costs for plants, installing or retrofitting irrigation systems, and other materials could be significant. Converting lawns to artificial turf is also expensive. Hodel and Pittenger’s main point is that if we cut off landscape irrigation entirely, we’d only save around 4.5% of all water use in the...

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The Food and Flowers Freedom Act

...Hall will change the law quickly and let L.A. become a leading center for urban farmers. Urban farming provides access to more local, organic, affordable, fresh and nutritious food. In this time of economic crisis and rising food prices, urban farming can help create green jobs and stimulate the growth of artisanal home-based businesses. Urban farmers help build community bonds and bring a truly local flavor to farmers’ markets. Angelinos care de...

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What are trees worth?

...ing a pump and well which you don’t have to maintain. Trees make for clean water. By absorbing all that storm water, they pull the filth from our streets into the soil, and the soil cleans it, pro bono. (This is one of the many benefits of healthy soil, another important player in environmental health.) If that storm water runs unchecked, it just dumps all of the oil and fertilizer and insecticides and poo straight into the nearest waterway. Trees...

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Urban Homestead Wins Book Award

Our book, The Urban Homestead just won a gold medal in the Independent Publisher Awards. To celebrate we’ll throw in a back issue of Ripples magazine for the first twenty folks who buy a copy of our book off of this website. Ripples is, “A Revolutionary Journal of Seasonal Delight” published by the nice folks at www.dailyacts.org. Now that’s enough tooting our own horn. We’ll get back to posting when the dust settles after Earth Day and talk abou...

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