Search Results for: label/water conservation/page/4/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

677 results

World’s Largest Chard Grows in SIP

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Self Watering Containers
12 Comments
The story of SuperChard: Its origin is unknown. It might come from Bountiful Garden seed, or perhaps Franchi. It volunteered in a corner of one of our backyard beds, in a bed we were resting. We didn’t water it. It grew all summer long anyway, despite having no rain at all.  In fact, it grew huge and lush. We never harvested it, though, because it was growing in our lead contaminated soil. So we continued to ignore it and it continued to...

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Mad Hen

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Bikes, Chickens, Events
2 Comments
One of our hens will be featured in the new Coco’s Variety ad campaign. What’s Coco’s Variety you ask? “Coco’s Variety’s primary business is bicycles. Additionally, we sell Japanese figural pencil erasers, used bike parts, old toolboxes, books worth owning, bike pumps, balsa wood gliders, pocket knives, Lodge cast iron frying pans, glass water bottles, Park bicycle tools, wicker bike baskets and Dutch...

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Save the World–Poop in a Bucket

Mr. Homegrown
Humanure
1 Comment
Learn about composting your own poo by checking out our new post, How to Save the World by Pooping in a Bucket, at the consciousness shifting blog Reality Sandwich, for which we write a regular column. And should you want more potty talk you’re in luck due to a minor sewage synchronicity going on in the magazine/internet world. As we wrote our meditation on human waste, a number of other stories on the subject came out at the same time:...

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Our Rocket Stove

Mr. Homegrown
Preparedness, Rocket Stove
65 Comments
  Editor’s note: we have a new design for a portable rocket stove here. Low-tech is the new high-tech, and the best example of the low-tech revolution is the miraculous rocket stove–a stove that makes it possible to cook with small twigs–no logs needed! Best of all rocket stoves are easy to build. We liked the idea so much that we decided to build a permanent one just off our back deck for entertaining and as a backup to o...

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It’s always been fun to stick it to the Man

Mr. Homegrown
Fermentation, Food
RLeave a comment
The folks from Dough on the Go! were over the other night and reached into a box of slides we found years ago at a thrift store and never looked at. That box turned up these images showing a previous generation enjoying the “water of life” coming out of what appears to be two different home built stills. Homegrown Revolution applauds the DIY spirit (so to speak) and these images seem an appropriate way to begin the dreaded holiday...

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Least Favorite Plant: Tree of Heaven

Mr. Homegrown
Least Favorite Plant
16 Comments
Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop’s new ghetto palm farm. Photos from the Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop. Riding on the Amtrak San Joaquin train two weeks ago I discovered a new metric: the economic health of a city can be judged by the size of its trees of heaven (aka Ailanthus altissima, aka “ghetto palm”). The higher the ghetto palms, the more likely a city is to be in the crapper. Tree of heaven is a super weed much revile...

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Let’s Get Biointensive

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
9 Comments
I picked up a handy tip on plant spacing from John Jeavons’ book How to Grow More Vegetables. Jeavons dislikes rows and instead uses the triangular spacing of the French biointensive method. You can view a nice diagram of biointensive spacing on the LandShare Colorado website. And see some images of the way Jeavons’ spaces his garden on This Girl’s Gone Green. Triangular plantings squeeze more veggies into small spaces. The tig...

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Book Review: 1491

Mrs. Homegrown
Reviews
9 Comments
I’m way late to this party, because 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus came out in 2006 and was a best seller, so it’s probably not news to many of you that this is a fantastic book. For those of you who haven’t read it, though, this is the type of book that you look up from every few minutes and say, “Listen to this!” or “Did you know…?”  1491 is a depiction of the Americas...

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Root Simple Video Podcast Episode 1: How To Make a Sourdough Starter

Mr. Homegrown
Bread, Food, Videos
23 Comments
Here’s the first in a series of Root Simple how-to videos. Look for them on the blog and, soon, on your mobile thingies. I started with a little edit on how to make a sourdough starter. And I take requests–if there’s a topic for a video you’d like to see just leave a comment.  Making a sourdough starter is as simple as mixing flour and water. There’s no need for all the crazy things I’ve heard suggested:...

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Root Knot Nematodes, Meliodogyne spp.

Homegrown Neighbor
Pests
12 Comments
Root knot nematodes are my current sworn enemy in the garden. They are very frustrating because unless you know what to look for, you may never know you have a problem. Nematodes are microscopic soil dwelling roundworms. There are many different kinds of nematodes and not all are garden pests. However, the root knot nematode is a very annoying pest indeed. Above ground, plants are stunted. Below ground, the little guys are sucking on the plant...

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