Help Plant a Garden — and Help a Local Eagle Scout

...n (exuberant) team of young scouts and to help get another section of food gardens built. Start time is 9am, and we’ll continue all day until it’s done. Bring your own garden gloves. If you’d like to help with assembling benches, bring your own toolbox. Although much of the project site is in the shade, we recommend sun hats / sun protection. The Garden is at 6700 West 83rd in Westchester – Los Angeles 90045. Please RSVP if you can come. If you ca...

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Win Two Tickets to the 15th Annual Theodore Payne Native Plant Garden Tour

...hbor Lora’s house!). If you’re thinking of including native plants in your garden or pondering a garden re-design, the Theodore Payne Garden Tour is a great way to get ideas. To enter our contest leave a comment on this post naming your favorite native plant. Please make sure to enter your email in the comment form (your email will not be published nor used for anything else other than contacting you to send the tickets). We’ll choose a lucky winn...

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Our Disastrous Summer Garden

...omegranate). The drought and an extreme heat wave pushed everything in the garden to the edge–and a few over the edge: in the last month we abruptly lost some garden stalwarts, including a rosemary bush and a culinary sage. Despite all these disasters, I came back from the Heirloom Expo with some ideas: Spend a little less time on Facebook and a little more time in the garden. Come up with better raccoon fortifications. Take out stone fruit that i...

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What laundry detergent should I use for greywater applications?

..., so some people will opt to soak the bag in a cup of hot water first–like making tea–and then dump the water and the bag into the wash. Other people stew the nuts in water and make soap nut tea, which can then be used like liquid soap, for both hand washing and laundry. There’s lots of info online about soap nuts if you poke around a bit. I just remembered that I posted here back in 2010, asking for feedback on the nuts, and got lots of it. So yo...

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Steal this Book!

...family! Blog, twitter, friend, digg and yell! From the press release: The Urban Homestead is the essential handbook for a burgeoning new movement: urbanites are becoming farmers. By growing their own food and harnessing natural energy, city dwellers are reconnecting with their land while planting seeds for the future for our cities. Whether you’d like to harvest your own vegetables, keep heirloom chickens, or become more energy independent, this...

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