Lord of the Flies Inspired Bike Rack

May 18, 2009

Bikes

...que piece of public art/functional bike rack I just had to stop and take a picture to share. I was on my way home from the Central Library, where I had checked out some books on Belgian beer for a project I’m working on. I walked up Broadway to catch the bus home, stopping at Grand Central Market on the way. But outside the market I saw this truly strange sculpture with many bikes locked to it. Obviously it was designed to celebrate the market, wh...

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Make a Garden Work Table from a Pallet

Mr. Homegrown

January 19, 2009

Design

15 Comments

...e for use with seedlings and storing pots and watering cans. Hopefully the picture is all you need to put one together yourself. Some tips for working with pallets: 1. We prefer projects that don’t involve disassembling the pallet. The nails in pallets aren’t meant to be removed. Trying to take one apart with a crowbar will, in most cases, result in a lot of split, useless wood. A Sawzall reciprocating saw would work better if you must take one ap...

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End of Season Tomato Review

Mr. Homegrown

November 26, 2008

Gardening, Tomatoes, Vegetable Gardening

7 Comments

...making tomato cages here) in raised beds with a drip irrigation system as pictured above. As an experiment for folks in apartments or with limited space, we grew a bunch of tomatoes in self watering containers on a strip of concrete next to the back wall of our garage (note crappy picture below). You’ll see that we were too lazy to put the container tomatoes in cages–don’t do this as you’ll have a sprawling ugly mess! Nevertheless, the containers...

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Make a Rain Barrel

Mr. Homegrown

October 8, 2008

Design, rainwater harvesting, Water and Power, Water Conservation

11 Comments

...way from your foundation especially when, like us, you live on a hill. The picture at top shows our barrel installed with the overflow pipe connected to a pipe that runs down to the street. Los Angeles’ building code required us to run our rainwater out to the street, where it helps wash pollution into the LA River and the ocean (see creekfreak for more on LA’s pesky water issues). At least we’ll be channeling some of that water, via the barrel, t...

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2022 in Review: Cats, Mushrooms and Politics

Mr. Homegrown

December 31, 2022

Thoughtstylings

5 Comments

...ATS and other critters One of the happier moments was helping trap the cat pictured above that had escaped her owners and had been missing for almost a month. After baiting the trap for a week she finally showed up in one of the traps I was monitoring. Her owner, who was expected a baby soon had become distraught. When I found her cat in the trap I cried. I also set up an automatic feeder in the garden of St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral so that I c...

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