Search Results for: label/water conservation

367 results

Radical Beekeeper Michael Thiele Ventures Into New Territory

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Bees
9 Comments
...chance to try this technique just after the lecture. I walked over to a display by the local county beekeeping association (that Thiele would probably be horrified by) that included a hive in Langstroth boxes being fed sugar water and kept within a mosquito netted tent. Somehow there must have been a gap in the tent and a very pissed off bee landed in my hair. I did exactly as Thiele said–I relaxed and imagined the bien. The bee crawled ou...

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Steal this Book!

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
7 Comments
...and internet resources on self-sufficiency and sustainability. Learn how to: • Grow food on a patio or balcony • Preserve or ferment food and make yogurt and cheese • Compost with worms • Keep city chickens • Divert your grey water to your garden • Clean your house without toxins • Guerilla garden in public spaces • Create the modern homestead of your dreams Written by city dwellers for city dwellers, this illustrated, two-color guide proposes a...

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Compost Rebuttal

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Gardening
35 Comments
...ure carefully (it should be between 55ºC and 65ºC for at least three days according to Ingham). The pile also needs oxygen, provided by introducing loose materials like straw and through periodic turning. A compost pile needs water too. It’s not difficult to achieve the conditions Ingham specifies. You just need enough mass combined with the use of a compost thermometer to figure out when to turn the pile.  O.K., so now I’m headed ou...

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Roughin’ It

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness
RLeave a comment
...ristopher Nyerges and Eustace Conway. At SurviveLA we like our comfort and believe that the best way to train for a survival situation is to studiously avoid survival situations by making sure to always have extra food, extra water, extra clothes, a map and a compass. In short, we like the WTC way. And the nice thing about having the backpacking gear around is that should an earthquake or other disaster strike our urban compound we are prepared t...

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Vegetable Gardening for the Lazy

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
12 Comments
One of the problems with growing vegetables is all the labor involved–starting seeds, composting, watering and watching out for bugs. It’s worth it, of course, for the tasty rewards, but many busy folks are simply too exhausted after work or corralling the bambinos to pick up a shovel and garden. For those who’d rather sit on the porch with a martini than laboring in the field, and we often include ourselves in that category, p...

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Comopost, Compost, Compost

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
6 Comments
As if I didn’t need a reminder of how important compost is to a vegetable garden, note the tomato above. It’s on its way out, but it grew with no supplemental water in hard-packed clay soil contaminated with lead and zinc in a hot side yard. Why did it do well while the rest of my vegetable garden did not do as so good this summer? Homemade compost. I didn’t have enough compost for the rest of the veggie garden so I bought som...

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Hexayurt

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness
2 Comments
...re between $200 and $500 to build, and requires only six cuts for each unit. The Hexayurt stacks flat for easy deployment in emergencies. Gupta has a suggested “Infrastructure Package” which includes heat, lights, water purification, and a composting toilet bringing the cost up somewhat, but still much less than FEMA’s $30,000 trailers. While not the most thrilling video (at least as compared to this), thanks to the wonders of y...

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Why we love fennel

Mrs. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
10 Comments
Fennel is an invasive plant, and there are plenty of fennel haters out there, many of them our friends, but every year we let a stand or two of wild fennel take root in our yard anyway. We just had to pause now, while the fennel is high, to say that we love it, because it is hardy and beautiful and grows with no water and no encouragement. Feral fennel bulbs aren’t as good as cultivated bulbs for eating, but we eat the flowers, the fronds...

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Vertical Garden Success!

Mrs. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening, Vertical Farming
14 Comments
Regular readers of the blog know that we’re dubious about vertical gardening, but this is a vertical garden we can really get behind. Here, a cherry tomato is growing out of a crack in a retaining wall in our neighbor’s yard. (It’s just off our front stairs, and is almost certainly an offspring of one of our tomatoes) It is thriving with no water whatsoever. You can’t see them in this picture, but there’s tons of f...

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Loquat Season

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Foraging, Gardening
3 Comments
...rbarian give the loquat an amusing cameo appearance in their video Pagan Rights, Part IV. We’ve noticed that the street loquats we’ve sampled vary widely in quality, due perhaps to genetics or simply the amount of water they get. Apparently most loquat trees are sold as seedlings, but if you’re planning on planting one of these things it’s best to get one that has been grafted specifically to produce quality fruit. Much li...

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