Search Results for: label/water conservation/page/4/2011/04/making-it

596 results

Santa Monica Legalizes Beekeeping

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Bees
8 Comments
Last night the Santa Monica city council voted to amend their municipal code to allow beekeeping on single family properties. Now, legalizing beekeeping is a bit like legalizing sunshine. Bees, after all, do their thing whether or not the government permits it or not. For every beekeeper in an urban area there must be hundreds of feral bee colonies living in walls, roofs and compost bins. Nevertheless, Santa Monica took a big step forward, join...

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Bisphenol-A

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
5 Comments
Above, the bisphenol-A or BPA molecule, a type of plastic found in all kinds of products including baby bottles, plastic food containers, Nalgene bottles, some wines (from the plastic stoppers and the lining of fermentation tanks) and the lining in metal cans. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it’s safe, a viewpoint contradicted by at least 100 studies. The problem: BPA is a endocrine disruptor linked to a host of problems, acco...

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The Return of the Paper Collar?

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
3 Comments
less shirts. The folkloric apparel in hot climates tends towards white and collarless or, at least, short collars. Until dashikis make a comeback I predict we’ll see the same paper collar trend that hit the Victorians: It is hardly twenty-five years since the advent of the paper collar. Prior to that time the average man wore neck-gear made from linen fabric, or was content to go without collars, except on Sundays and legal holidays. Th...

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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
No, this is not a pile of weeds. Someday it’s going to look good. Mrs. Homegrown here: One of the big lessons of gardening is patience. One way gardening patience is expressed is in planting perennials: buying leeetle teeny plants and planting them vast distances apart and then waiting with your hands politely folded until they grow to full size. A very common landscaping mistake is to go out and buy a bunch of gallon-sized land...

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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...

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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...

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Kent’s Composting Tips and Secret Weapon

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
RLeave a comment
Today in our continuing dialog on composting, a guest post from Los Angeles Bicycle Coalition board member, Kent Strumpell who we met up with at this week’s inspiring LACBC awards gala: I’m sure there are more correct procedures, but this is what I’ve found works. I use a compost bin that has direct soil contact. I think this allows the introduction of soil organisms and serves to drain the pile if it gets too wet. I’ve done this same proc...

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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
SurviveLA reader jbjhill, responding to our rant about designing for a world dominated by 4 x 8 building materials, sent a link to this unique yurt-shaped emergency shelter which can be built out of 4 x 8 sheets of nearly anything (the globe shaped thing on the right is an inflatable satellite dish). Designed by software engineer Vinay Gupta, who is working on this project full time, the “Hexayurt” costs somewhere between $200 and $5...

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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....

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