Saturday Linkages: Congrats Nithya Raman!

November 7, 2020

...Is Naming Your Garden Pretentious? Mesquite, crucial to Indigenous diets for centuries, works miracles with water and needs no fertilizer. Why don’t we grow more of it? Partial fire season relief, at last: cold storm arrives in California Friday I Don’t Like Flashy Wood – Go Figure Two Gen Xers Walk Into A Retirement Home… Bruno Latour: ‘This is a global catastrophe that has come from within’...

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A Cheap Soil Testing Service

Mr. Homegrown

September 22, 2009

Gardening, Soil

7 Comments

...for the standard test plus organic matter. The standard tests includes heavy metals. That’s a bargain, and you don’t have to be a resident of Massachusetts. They also offer compost, fertilizer and plant tissue tests at reasonable prices. Read a review of UMASS soil testing by master gardener Amy Thompson at Cool Tools....

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Shedcropolis: A Garden Shed Made From (Mostly) Salvaged Materials

Mr. Homegrown

October 13, 2016

Design

6 Comments

Kelly requested a small shed to keep our garden tools, pots and fertilizer. I was not satisfied with either the small and ugly plastic storage structures nor the large, fake barn-like sheds available at the big box stores so I vowed to build my own. In a September blog post I wrote about my eccentric design process. Today, I’m declaring the world’s most pretentious garden shed, a.k.a. “Shedcropolis,” finished. For materials, I sourced salvaged 2x...

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Worm Composting

Mr. Homegrown

July 25, 2006

Composting, Gardening, Vermiculture

2 Comments

...apartment dwellers looking to recycle their kitchen scraps. The whole set up is isolated in a plastic bin which can live in the kitchen or in a cool, shady spot on the balcony. The worm castings (poop, if you will) are odorless and make an outstanding fertilizer that you can use on your own potted plants or give to friends with gardens. Believe us, they will be very happy with your gift of worm poop. Do not let SurviveLA’s failure discourage you...

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Designing the World’s Most Pretentious Garden Shed

Mr. Homegrown

September 13, 2016

Design, Gardening

11 Comments

...p of my “honey-do” list is a much needed garden shed to store tools, pots, fertilizer and chicken feed. After years of dragging my heels for years, the project went from napkin sketch to construction in under a week. I set as my goal to build the world’s most pretentious garden shed and, as much as possible, to use salvaged materials. Yes, I’m crazy. I have to admit that when British hedge fund manager Crispen Odey tried to build a $250,000 neo-cl...

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