Grow the Soil

June 20, 2008

...he right is the victim of depleted soil. There’s some irony here. With our book release and press folks coming around to see things we’ve been doing too much planting and not paying enough attention to soil quality. Here’s two options we should have taken to help out that sickly eggplant in the raised bed (other than the expensive route of new potting soil): 1. Sheet Mulch A concept from the permacultural toolbox, sheet mulching involves making a...

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Physalis pruinosa a.k.a. “Ground Cherry”

Mr. Homegrown

April 30, 2007

Gardening

10 Comments

...orted on with enthusiasm by the late Dr. David Fairchild in his well-loved book, The World Was My Garden. He there tells of its fruiting “enormously” in the garden of his home, “In The Woods”, in Maryland, and of the cook’s putting up over a hundred jars of what he called “Inca Conserve” which “met with universal favor.” Our package of Physalis pruinosa was priced at a staggering $3.99–a lot considering the package only contained 12 seeds. You can...

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The Tiny House

Mr. Homegrown

January 15, 2007

Design

...or growing your own food. And these small building literally sip utilities making them ideal for hooking up to solar power and very cheap to heat and cool. They are also expandable as your needs or family grows. And perhaps most importantly, they prevent expansion of all the things we don’t need, the giant plasma screens, the inflatable Christmas decor and all the other clutter causing detritus of our consumer culture. For more information on the...

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Mead!

Mr. Homegrown

January 24, 2008

Fermentation, Food

7 Comments

...ut we thought we’d note how we made it, based on a recipe in Ken Schramm’s book The Compleat Meadmaker. We downsized the recipe from five gallons to one gallon, figuring that we’ll experiment with a few different small batches rather than taking a chance on one big batch. Here’s how we did it after first sanitizing everything with Idophor sanitizer: 1. Boil 1/5th of a gallon of water (we used bottled water since our tap water is a bit on the heavy...

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A Brief History of Cat Art

Mr. Homegrown

July 15, 2019

Animals, Cats

3 Comments

...their grace, and fascinating waywardness. His illustrations to a charming book of poems “Concerning Cats,” contributed to and selected by Graham R. Tomson, at once placed him in the ranks of the masters of this particular branch of animal painting. Those who are acquainted with the work of Burbank, the English painter of cats, Gottfried Mind, called the Raphael of cats, Hokusai, the Japanese genius, the Dutch artist Cornelius Wisscher, Delacroix,...

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