An Ancient Quince Recipe

September 26, 2014

Food, Food Preservation, Fruit Trees, Gardening

...ch year I promise I’ll pick up a copy of Barbara Ghazarian’s comprehensive book Simply Quince , but somehow I never get around to it. Last year I tried to make quince jelly, but overshot the jell point and ended up with jars of delicious tasting, but disagreeably hard quince gum. And Kelly just threw out my burned membrillo from last year. This year Kevin West, author of Saving the Season came to the rescue with an ancient (the first known referen...

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Introducing the People Washer

Mr. Homegrown

November 6, 2014

Water and Power

8 Comments

...from the June 1977 issue of The Futurist, an excerpt from Stephen Rosen’s book Future Facts: The way things are going to work in the future of technology, science, medicine and life (available for a penny on Amazon!). Egg-shaped “People Washer” is an ultrasonic bath developed by the Sanyo Electric Company of Japan. The machine showers and bathes the body, cleans the skin, massages the muscles, and dries the person off. To take a bath, the bather...

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In Praise of the Hedgerow

Mr. Homegrown

November 10, 2014

Gardening

8 Comments

...d, provide habitat and don’t need a lot of maintenance. Combine these two resources with a third, Piet Oudolf’s magnificent ideas about plant design in his book Planting: A New Persepctive and I think we might just be able to save the world....

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Getting my Ham Radio License

Mr. Homegrown

September 25, 2013

Miscellaneous

16 Comments

...Angeles’ massive central library on lower level two, where all the how-to books are shelved. This month I’m finally acting on something I’ve contemplated for years: getting my amateur radio (i.e. Ham) technician’s license. I’ll be taking the test in the middle of the smart phone era. Curiously, when I’m deep in the cultural dumpster I often run into fellow scavenger John Michael Greer, a.k.a. the Archdruid. When I met him at the Age of Limits con...

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Top Ten Vegetable Gardening Mistakes

Mr. Homegrown

September 3, 2013

Gardening, Mistakes, Vegetable Gardening

39 Comments

...n to plant in our quirky Mediterranean climate (see this calendar and this book if you’re in SoCal). Seed package directions are useless here (what’s a frost date?). But, in fact, all climates have their quirks. Even two sides of the same town might have different planting dates. You have to find experienced gardeners and sources especially in places with either year round growing seasons or very short growing seasons. Ultimately, all gardening ad...

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