How Can We Fix Our Public Landscaping?

July 8, 2014

...ow. The Ecology Center has a spectacular garden that shows do simple water harvesting to create a beautiful landscape with drought tolerant plants that attracts beneficial wildlife. We need similar organizations in Los Angeles. We have an immense pool of talent here that could fix that terrible purple gravel and artificial turf atrocity and go on to do so much more. Who’s in? And to those of you reading this elsewhere in the word, feel free to lea...

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Getting started with worms

Mrs. Homegrown

August 29, 2014

Composting, Gardening, Vermiculture

8 Comments

...r a long time, so is easy to find new or used or at the library. Appelhof’s book has everything in it, from plans for building wooden bins, to feeding and harvesting, to explanations of the worm’s life cycle, to detailed trouble shooting....

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The Austrian Scythe is the New Weed Whacker

Mr. Homegrown

July 30, 2009

Tools

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...ncomfortable to use. There’s also several different blades for weeding and harvesting and, like a bicycle, it’s crucial that your scythe fit your height. Scythe use is intellectual for me since years worth of mulching, a dry climate and a very small yard means that I don’t have any stands of weeds to knock down or wheat to harvest. But, if I had a large yard and grass to deal with, I’d dump the weed whacker in a heartbeat. For more info see Scythe...

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Kelly and Chocineal

Mr. Homegrown

August 31, 2020

Animals, Insects

5 Comments

...cus) is a scale insect that produces carminic acid which is extracted for use as a red textile and food dye. I thought cochineal dying might make for the perfect quarantine craft project until I did some research. Like many things worth doing, harvesting and dying textiles with cochineal is a process that takes experience and skill. The Zapotec people of Oaxaca have been practicing this skill for a thousand years. In the video above you can see ho...

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Borlotto Bean Lingua di Fuoco

Mr. Homegrown

January 6, 2008

Vegetable Gardening

1 Comment

...grow enough to collect dried beans and make some soup. For cultivation and harvesting details for dry beans click on over to the Thomas Jefferson Agricultural Institute. It may seem like we’re pimping for Seeds from Italy, but these beans are yet another success we’ve had with the Franchi’s companies seeds that Seeds from Italy imports. We just discovered the competition, Italian Seed and Tool, which imports the rival Bavicchi company’s seeds. We’...

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