What Vegetables Are You Growing This Winter?

September 19, 2014

...beautiful and much stronger tasting than the stuff at the supermarket. And store bought lettuce wilts instantly. What are you growing this winter? If you’re in a cold climate, do you grow year round? Note: if you’re in the US, Franchi has several distributors. I got my seeds from the Heirloom Seed Store, run by a very nice family that has a farm in Half Moon Bay in Northern California. The seeds I bought are not listed on their website, so you may...

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How to Make Stock

Mrs. Homegrown

June 19, 2014

Food, How-to

17 Comments

...eady in as little as 20 to 30 minutes. Stock made out of shells takes about 45 minutes or so. When it’s done, strain and store, as above. Dashi Dashi is the traditional Japanese stock made with seaweed and dried fish, though you can do a veggie version with seaweed and mushrooms instead. Dashi is used extensively in Japanese cooking, and is so light and tasty, you might be tempted to use it in all your cooking. It’s fast and easy to make, but the...

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Ten Uses for Palm Fronds

Mr. Homegrown

April 7, 2014

Gardening

22 Comments

...nds can be made into creepy masks. Get good at this craft and open an Etsy store. 2. Make a roof. Weave them together and you’ve got the perfect roof for your tiki hut. Warning: you’ll need a lot. 3. Make a low quality mulch. Using palm fronds as mulch is somewhat controversial. The stuff takes forever to break down. Our arborist told me that some conventional citrus growers use palm frond mulch specifically because it takes forever to break down....

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Dramm’s Breaker Nozzle: My Favorite Watering Implement

Mr. Homegrown

October 17, 2013

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

12 Comments

...s we’ve gone through since we bought this house fifteen years ago. Big box store watering widgets seem to last just a few weeks before heading to the landfill. I think I’ve found a solution. During the Garden Blogger’s Fling I attended back in June there was a demo by a Dramm Company representative. What impressed me most at the demo was Dramm’s simplest products, the Heavy-Duty Aluminum Water Breaker Nozzle combined with their Aluminum Shut-Off V...

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Of Gnomes and Peak Oil

Mr. Homegrown

April 2, 2013

Thoughtstylings

...of canned tomatoes. At any given moment, there may be a dozen cases in the store, but that inventory is constantly being replenished with the money the customers pay for the cans they remove, and the more tomatoes that customers buy, the bigger an inventory the store will carry. Paracelsus uses a more poetic metaphor. Instead of ordering shipments of tomatoes, it’s our task to command gnomes, The earth is filled by gnomes even to its center, creat...

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