Beans 101 (Return of Bean Friday!)

March 1, 2013

...easier it is to burn them. I’d recommend cooking them with with plenty of water, evenadding water if you need to, just to be safe. You can always cook some of the liquid off at the end. Which brings us to the lid. Keep the lid on if you want to hold in moisture and heat. With a lid and the lowest possible heat setting on your stove, you can keep beans simmering safely for hours. But like I said, if you want to boil off some liquid to condense the...

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Fifty Shades of Gray Water

Mr. Homegrown

February 7, 2018

Water and Power

7 Comments

...the subject of reusing waste water for lack of clarity on how to spell greywater, gray water, grey water and/or graywater. I’d also like to see what the OED says about the first uses of the word. Merriam Webster suggests “gray water” not “grey water” or “greywater.” Wikipedia goes with “greywater” as well as listing off all the variations. Wikipedia also suggests a word so unappealing that it’s almost appealing, “sullage.” Sullage, according to Me...

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The Unintended Consequences of Water Conservation

Mr. Homegrown

September 9, 2015

Gardening

11 Comments

...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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How to save tomato seed

Mrs. Homegrown

September 19, 2013

Gardening, How-to, Miscellaneous, Tomatoes, Vegetable Gardening

14 Comments

...tle early than to let the seeds accidentally germinate. Pour off the moldy water, reserve the seeds. Add clean water back to the seeds and give the water a swirl. Let it settle. Any bad seeds will rise to the top. If they do, pour them off. Strain the seeds with a fine strainer (a teas strainer is fine for small batches) and spread them out to dry. They need to dry on something which will wick water away, because it is important that they dry quic...

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

Mrs. Homegrown

January 31, 2013

Domesticus, Herbs, Mistakes

26 Comments

...of chopping them up, as I was supposed to. Then, I covered the greens with water. The instructions didn’t give exact water quantities to match the fabric weight–it only said “cover”–which seems a bit problematic. “Cover with water” is not a helpful instruction, especially when the plant matter you’re working with floats. But I added water as best as I could judge. There were two steeping options–with heat on the stove or by a long sun steep. I opt...

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