A Report from the 2014 Heirloom Expo in Santa Rosa

September 15, 2014

...had a great time, as usual. I’ve attended every year since its inception in 2010. The Expo features mind boggling displays of what can only be called vegetable porn. Hint: if you hang around after the conclusion on Thursday evening you can score the display items. For two years in a row we’ve gone home with a rental car stuffed with heirloom watermelon and squash. But the real draw for me are the seminars and panel discussions. Above, some of the...

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Closed vs. Open Floor Plans

Mr. Homegrown

August 19, 2013

Design

38 Comments

...en had a room just for preparing flowers and a kitchen devoted entirely to cleaning game shot from a balcony off the second story (the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills!). The “out of sight, out of mind” servant is one of the chief arguments used for the open floor plan: that is, that an open floor plan liberates the cook (often the woman of the house) from the servant role. But I’m not so sure. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to hide the mess and...

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Weeds into Fertilizer

Homegrown Neighbor

January 18, 2010

Gardening

22 Comments

...hat stinky things, when applied in the garden, are often very good things. Cleaning the chicken coop always produces a good product for the garden. Nettles, like comfrey, are good at taking up minerals and other nutrients from the soil. Nettles are rich in iron, silica, calcium, nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus. These are all things that plants need for healthy growth. This makes nettles useful for making your own fertilizer. They can accumulate...

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In the Gutter

Mr. Homegrown

January 3, 2007

rainwater harvesting

1 Comment

...over the damned up gutters. Two simple bits of technology can make gutter cleaning easier. We have inexpensive strainer baskets made out of 1/4 inch hardware cloth in each of the downspouts to keep them from clogging up. Some may wish to consider leaf guards which run along the top of the gutter to keep out leaves and other debris. The problem with leaf guards is that in order to clean out your gutters you must tediously remove the guards along t...

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