Search Results for: label/water conservation

367 results

Garden Design: Quantity vs. Quality

Mr. Homegrown
Design, Garden Design, Gardening
5 Comments
...Part of what we learn by focusing on quantity is about making mistakes and learning from them. But I think there’s more to it than that. A gifted high school English teacher of mined likened our creativity to a tank of water. Sometimes you have to drain off the not so great ideas at the top in order to get to the good stuff that lies deep in our unconscious. Letting go of stifling perfectionism also forces us to try out ideas that might no...

Continue reading…

Clever Canadian Shitter

Mr. Homegrown
Design
1 Comment
Way back in 1998 the Canada Mortgage and Housing association sponsored a “Healthy Housing Design Competition“. The winning house included this novel waste composting system as shown in this thrilling video. OK, so SurviveLA has a weakness for industrial video, but you just can’t beat the combination of rotating shit and peppy music–we just wish he’d drink the water in that glass....

Continue reading…

New Zealand Spinach is the New . . . Spinach

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
10 Comments
Spotted in a neglected corner of our backyard: New Zealand spinach (Tetragonia tetragonioides). What’s interesting is that it self-seeded and grew with no supplemental water in the middle of summer in lead and zinc contaminated soil.  We’ve never been able to grow regular (and unrelated) spinach here. But there’s no stopping the New Zealand spinach. Due to the heavy metal problem we won’t be eating this particular specim...

Continue reading…

Kent’s Composting Tips and Secret Weapon

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
RLeave a comment
..., but mostly it’s the usual veggies, fruits, paper napkins, etc. Though experts say no fats should go in, I’ve yet to see (or smell) a problem. Each time I add new kitchen scraps, I add 1-2 shovels-full of dry leaves and some water if needed, turning and mixing the old and new stuff with a cultivator or shovel to aerate the pile. The proportion of dry to wet material is important. There should be enough dry leaves so the compost is kinda’ fluffy...

Continue reading…

How to Keep Squirrels and Birds From Eating Your Fruit

Mr. Homegrown
Fruit Trees, Gardening, Pests
7 Comments
...ors and friends to save them for me and in a short time amassed a large collection. They snap shut over most fruit like these mangos and this helps to control fruit damage. Since they have vent holes, they don’t collect water inside. They can be washed and stored and are durable enough to last several seasons. After they serve their duty, they can be put in the recycling bin. Noel is the person who sent the picture of all the winter fruit h...

Continue reading…

Advances in Gardening Series: The Perennial Herb Bed, Patience and Plant Spacing and Breaking Your Own Rules

Mrs. Homegrown
Garden Design, Gardening, Herbs
4 Comments
...re still small, and there is a heck of a lot of bare dirt between them. Ordinarily I’d recommend to anyone in a similar position to fill in all that empty space with a thick layer of mulch. It represses the weeds, saves water, and makes the area look nice. Again, though, I’m not following my own advice. See, I feel bad about our recent leveling of the yard. Our bug balance (predator bugs vs. problem bugs), had been really nice for the...

Continue reading…

Make an Aluminum Can Lamp

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness
RLeave a comment
Inspired by an article in Wilderness Way, SuriviveLA made our own post-apocalyptic lighting out of two aluminum cans. According to the author of that article, Del Gideon, the Vietnamese used to make these lamps back during the war. You can also use these lamps to heat up water. Making one is easy: 1. Remove the top off a can. We like to do this by scoring the inner ring of the top with a razor blade and then using a pair of pliers to bust it o...

Continue reading…

California Buckwheat

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Foraging
RLeave a comment
Here’s a plant SurviveLA would like to see in more Southern California gardens. California buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum foliolosum) has multiple uses–it provides cover and nectar for animals, grows with almost no water, and best of all it produces edible seeds. We’ve gathered the seeds we’ve found in fields and baked it into bread and added it to cereal to both boost nutritional value and to add a nutty flavor. The...

Continue reading…

Questions about cats

Mrs. Homegrown
Animals, Cats
41 Comments
...room matters, will the flushing toilet always be a source of wonderment, or will she grow out of it? 6) Would it be a very bad idea to push the kitty into the bathtub? She’s always balancing on the sides, looking at the water. It’s very tempting to give her a closer acquaintance with wetness. 7) What is it with cats and bags??? Don’t kittens know that kittens and sacks have a very dark history? Ours not only loves a bag, she lik...

Continue reading…

Polyculture

Mr. Homegrown
Permaculture
11 Comments
...g. SurviveLA’s Impetuous Salad Bed Now the SurviveLA bed is not so well organized, because we don’t know as much as these permaculture folks, but it has been very successful so far, meaning no pests, no weeds, low watering, and tons of salad. This bed was started in October, as soon as the weather had decidedly shifted toward the cool. In LA, it makes sense to grow tender salad greens and the like in the winter, when the the sun is lo...

Continue reading…