Creating a Moon Garden

July 17, 2014

...t pollinators and other wildlife. Bornstein had a number of great tips for making a garden interesting at night: Consider color. White flowers, of course, will pop out under moonlight. But yellow flowers stand out even more. We’re lucky in Southern California to have a lot of native plants with silvery grey leaves (an evolutionary adaption of dry climate plants). Masses of silvery grey leaves stand out well at night. Include a contrasting backgrou...

Read…

Flowers from Vegetables

Mrs. Homegrown

July 22, 2014

Gardening, Permaculture, Vegetable Gardening

12 Comments

...the birds will move in. Of course this means that I’m “wasting space” and making my garden “unproductive” but the rewards outweigh any inconvenience. New gardeners are often surprised to see what amazing flowers different vegetables make. People with no connection to food plants whatsoever may not even know that vegetables make flowers, so it’s fun to show them a carrot flower, a squash blossom, a bean flower. My new favorite garden flower comes...

Read…

Chicken Nipple Waterering Systems

Mr. Homegrown

October 25, 2012

Chickens

15 Comments

...ge). American Preppers Network blogger Stephanie Dayle has instuctions for making a bucket and pipe system here. You can purchase the nipples on Amazon. And the bucket and pipe system pictured above is being sold on Amazon here (I have not tested it). Ideally all the parts should be food grade as I’m not a fan of PVC. Of course the zinc in the galvanized waterer is probably not so great either, so it’s probably another case of not letting perfecti...

Read…

Compost and Pharmaceuticals

Mr. Homegrown

May 2, 2013

Composting, Gardening, Humanure, Straw Bale Gardening

17 Comments

...made from sewage sludge may easily lead to the elevated concentrations in food plants, if the compost is used as a fertilizer. A slightly contradictory Estonian study concluded: In the current study, uptake of ciprofloxacin, norfloxacin, ofloxacin, sulfadimethoxine and sulfamethoxazole was demonstrated in lettuce. The uptake of fluoroquinolones and sulfonamides by plants like lettuce does not seem to be a major human health risk, as the detected...

Read…

A viewing suggestion from the media arm of Root Simple

Mrs. Homegrown

February 11, 2014

Domesticus, Food, Gardening, Preparedness, Resources, Thoughtstylings

34 Comments

...outside world, to the electric light burning beside me. Bless the BBC for making Tudor Monastery Farm (a title which I believe would not fly on American television). This is a quiet series showing three historians/archeologists at play in the Weald & Downland Open Air History Museum, trying out some of the skills they’d need to be tenant farmers to the local monastery. It has some of the structure of a reality show, but it seems that no one reall...

Read…