Search Results for: label/weeds

69 results

New Health Food Trends at the Natural Products Food Expo West

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Thoughtstylings
17 Comments
...rise of gluten free products. Gluten intolerance is a problem for many people. One out of 131 people have Celiac diseases and a great many more probably have some sort of wheat allergy. However, someone tell me why we have to label products like tomato sauce and raw chicken as being “gluten free?” Most new gluten free products, everything from pasta to crackers to power bars, use quinoa. The Natural Products Expo’s own trade pub...

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How to make a Calendula oil infusion

Mrs. Homegrown
Body Care, Calendula series, Domesticus, Herbal Medicine, Herbs, How-to
25 Comments
...ine the strainer with cheese cloth or muslin. Strain the oil into a fresh, clean jar. Pour off the oil first, then press the dried matter to squeeze out the remaining oil as best you can. You’ll never get it all back. Label it  Make sure you label it with the type of oil and the date it was made. Believe me, even if you only make one jar, you’ll forget what it is and when you made it, and a year later you’ll be standing at yo...

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Are Pallets Safe to Reuse?

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Design, Thoughtstylings
9 Comments
...at Great Lakes Chemical Corporation, a supplier of methyl bromide, Methyl bromide products are restricted use pesticides. A certified applicator license is required to purchase and use these products and strict adherence to label directions/requirements is mandatory. Under normal fumigation conditions methyl bromide is a gas and when the pallets are properly aerated according to label instructions, virtually no methyl bromide residue remains...

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Teflon Coated Light Bulbs Deadly to Chickens

Mr. Homegrown
Animals, Chickens
19 Comments
...to airborne toxins. I can’t help but wonder about the effect of these fumes on humans too. Several years ago, Dupont was unsuccessfully sued over the toxicity of Teflon in cookware. Sylvania, apparently, has a warning label on their Teflon coated bulbs, “WARNING: This product contains PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene–”Teflon” is a brand name). When heated, it creates fumes potentially fatal to confined birds.” G...

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Urban Homesteading Mistakes: Landscape Fabric

Mr. Homegrown
Mistakes
32 Comments
Since you all seem to enjoy accounts of our many failures around the Root Simple compound, I thought I’d share what must be one of the worst mistakes I’ve made. It’s a error up in our great chandelier of failures along with buying a 91 year old house on a hill with a bad foundation. Two words for you: landscape fabric–that plastic stuff sold in rolls at big box stores that allegedly blocks out weeds. Just after we bough...

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Broadleaf Plantain

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Foraging
5 Comments
Today we introduced some weeds into our garden, planting some broadleaf plantain (Plantago major) seeds that we collected on our bike camping and wild food excursion with Christopher Nyerges. As Nyerges noted, this is one of those plants that Martha Stewart hates, and that makes the purveyors of toxic herbicides and lawn care products rich. You can’t eat your lawn folks. You can, however, eat broadleaf plantain. The young leaves are edible...

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Hay Boxes or Fireless Cookers

Mrs. Homegrown
Appropriate Technology, Food, Preparedness, Water and Power
26 Comments
...something to do with all those bills! Cotton or polyester batting taken from old pillows or quilts.  Wool in the form of cast off sweaters and blankets, perhaps shredded? This might sound nuts, but if you cut down a bunch of weeds, let them dry and chop them up, they would work as well as hay. Straw has that nice hollow stem construction which probably holds heat better than hay, but some weeds have the same sort of stems. Note: I’d disc...

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Without Merit: poison in your compost

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Gardening, Thoughtstylings, Vegetable Gardening
7 Comments
An image from Washington State University’s aminopyralid bioassay instructions. Another thing to worry about! In the past two years farmers and gardeners in the UK and US have experienced the unintended effects of a powerful herbicide called aminopyralid, sold by Dow Chemical under the brand names Merit and Forefront. This herbicide is used to control weeds such as thistle, knapweed and yellow starthistle. The problem is that aminopyral...

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Mallow (Malva parviflora) an Edible Friend

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Foraging
18 Comments
In late February, towards the end of our winter rains, it’s high weed season here in Los Angeles–folks in other parts of the country will have to wait a few more months. We await this season with anticipation, since it’s the best time of year to forage for wild edible weeds. We’ll highlight a few of these edible weeds in the next few months beginning today with Mallow (Malva parviflora also known as cheeseweed because the...

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Ridiculous New Parkway Planting Rules for Los Angeles

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
6 Comments
Neatly mowed bermuda grass and weeds–no permit required! The city of Los Angeles just announced new guidelines for parkway plantings. The new rules allow residents can plant ten different species of drought tolerant turf alternatives in addition to approved street trees and drought tolerant turf species. It sounds great . . . until you read the fine print. Those drought tolerant turf alternatives, which include chamomile, yarrow...

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