Growing Strawberries in a Self Irrigating Gutter (SIG).

...overflow pipe that drains to the street. The float valve is connected to a rainwater barrel. You can read more about how this barrel is constructed in one of our older posts. Since SIGs need to be watered even when it’s raining, this is a perfect use for a rain barrel. I will have to fill the barrel with municipal water during our dry season. Problems There’s a lot of plastic here, specifically PVC, which is an environmental and health disaster. I...

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Make Mag

...gation system in your vegetable garden. Eric Muhs tells you how to collect rainwater to use for flushing your toilet (very clever!). Celine Rich-Darley tells you how to vermicompost in your apartment. Michael Perdriel explains how to make an off-grid laundry machine. Limor Fried and Phillip Torrone hook up a electricity monitor to a computer to twitter their energy usage. You’ll have to buy a copy or subscribe online to see all this wonderfullness...

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Self-Irrigating Gutter Update

...barrel. Unfortunately the lower gutter leaked around 50 gallons of stored rainwater down into the garage below (our house is on a hill and the garage is at street level). To prevent this problem in the future I put a manual irrigation timer on the barrel so that if there is a leak, I won’t lose all the water at once. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEeCgGAbvwk If I were to do this project again, I’d also use a refinement that Larry Hall just poste...

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2013 in Review Part II

...r summer to be our winter in Los Angeles. It’s hot and dry and, other than harvesting tomatoes, summer here is not the best time for gardening. Time to contemplate closed vs. open floor plans and catch a crappy Hollywood movie. “Crappy Hollywood” is a redundancy, of course, as all Hollywood movies are crappy. September Mrs. Homegrown complained about my flour storage mess. I just bought a Komo mill and so this mess should diminish in the next few...

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Sourdough Rye Bread Class at the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano

...o bake in your oven. You can’t buy this kind of bread so you better learn how to bake it yourself! By baking bread at home, you’re in charge of what goes into every loaf and can choose to incorporate local and organic ingredients. Other benefits of baking at home include using less energy (used in harvesting, processing, and shipping store-bought bread), using less plastic packaging, and spending less money. Become a baker and join us for the rye...

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