Say . . . Smart Gals Speakeasy

August 6, 2008

Events

Homegrown Evolution will be making a special appearance on Sunday August 17th courtesy of the Smart Gals. We’ll be doing a hands-on apartment homesteading demo and delivering a crazed Powerpoint (hint: more info on the Texas Centaur). Here’s the 411: Sunday, August 17th, 2008 7:00 – 9:00 p.m. Mt. Hollywood Underground 4607 Prospect Avenue, Los Feliz Admission $15.00 More information and the passwords: www.smartgals.org (don’t forget to look at th...

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Terror of Tiny Town

Mr. Homegrown

July 9, 2008

Animals, Chickens, Gardening, Self Watering Containers, Vegetable Gardening

4 Comments

The Homegrown Evolution in-box overfloweth this week with news of the cute and the tiny. Yesterday’s post about our miniature Red Currant tomatoes prompted Bruce F of Chicago to inform us that he’s working on the world’s smallest kale plant. He’s growing them in self-watering containers made with old pop bottles (more info on how to make a pop bottle self-watering container here and here). These pop bottle containers look like they’d work well fo...

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Appropriate Technology

Mr. Homegrown

June 29, 2008

Appropriate Technology, Preparedness, Rocket Stove, Solar

6 Comments

...ign, efficient use of energy and are usually aimed at poor countries. What Homegrown Evolution would like to prove is that these technologies have a place in developed western countries as well. Here’s three of our favorite appropriate tech ideas and websites: 1. Rocket Stoves: our brick rocket stove and a link to a video on how to make a simple metal version. 2. The glorious Solar Cooking Archive which has links to dozens of simple solar cooker p...

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How to Stake Tomatoes

Mr. Homegrown

April 5, 2007

Gardening, How-to, Tomatoes, Vegetable Gardening

5 Comments

Our tomato staking method around the Homegrown Evolution compound is simple and lazy. We plant our tomatoes and then surround them with rolled up concrete reinforcing wire. Normally used to reinforce concrete slabs, reinforcing wire comes in 3 1/2′ by 7′ sections. We use a circular saw with a metal blade on it to cut off the bottom rung, so as to leave spiky wires with which to stick the reinforcing wire tubes into the ground, but this is not abs...

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A Used Tire Compost Bin

Mr. Homegrown

November 20, 2008

Composting

18 Comments

...seal. Thankfully tires make a fine raw material for building projects and Homegrown Evolution has been experimenting with their many uses over the past year. This week we built a compost bin. Step one is to cut out the sidewalls. You might be able to do this with a sharp knife, but it’s much easier with an electric saber saw. We used a knife to cut a slit to get the saber saw started. Once both sidewalls are cut out you just stack your modified t...

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