How to Garden With California Natives: Lessons from the 2016 Theodore Payne Garden Tour

April 5, 2016

...eggies now from a smaller space. We also need to remember that many native plants are edible and medicinal such as these strawberries from the LaPlant/D’Auria garden in Sierra Madre: And the white sage in the background of this garden behind the datura (careful with that stuff!): While we’re talking about white sage, the same weekend we attended a lecture by Nicholas Hummingbird who runs the fantastic new Hahamongna Nursery. Hummingbird, who is Na...

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Rain Barrels

Mr. Homegrown

January 9, 2007

rainwater harvesting

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...don’t want to discourage anyone from making an attempt at it, but for most urban homesteaders it won’t be economical or practical given the space requirements and weight of thousands of gallons of stored water. Thankfully, there are simpler strategies for harvesting rainwater. Rainwater used for irrigating plants does not need filtering or purification, and since outdoor watering accounts for the number one household water use, you’ll be using tha...

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Capparis spinosa – Capers

Mr. Homegrown

October 30, 2007

Gardening

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...part of the world. We’re not native plant fascists and will gladly source plants from other similar climates, but we don’t believe in nursing sickly plants that can’t take our heat, or need lots of water. This season we’ve pledge not to be tempted by the allure of the seed catalogs. We’re going to grow edible and useful plants that thrive in Mediterranean places. Thankfully that includes a lot of interesting options, some of which we already have...

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What Does California’s Prop 64 Say About Home Marijuana Cultivation?

Mr. Homegrown

October 14, 2016

Gardening, Thoughtstylings

26 Comments

...ry it ended up in. This was before bookstores created separate shelves for urban homesteading. Unsurprisingly, we found it in the gardening section. What did surprise me was the other books in the garden category. The overwhelming majority were about growing marijuana. There were lavish coffee table books of bud porn, detailed encyclopedias edited by huge teams of experts and countless tomes covering the technical details indoor lights, fertilizer...

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Why Urban Farm?

Mr. Homegrown

June 10, 2007

Animals, Chickens

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...r total up to four. Such are the cycles of life and death on the new urban homestead. Bryan Welch, who raises livestock and is also the publisher and editor of the always informative Mother Earth News, wrote an editorial in the February issue called “Why I Farm” in which he says, “There’s a Buddhist wisdom in the stockman’s cool compassion. The best of them seem to understand that our own lives on this Earth are as irrefutably temporary as the liv...

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