Make that 11 Vegetable Gardening Mistakes

September 5, 2013

Gardening, Mistakes, Vegetable Gardening

...veral readers and Mrs. Homegrown pointed out that I left out “inconsistent watering.” I plead guilty. I would also suggest an “absentminded” watering category, such as setting up a irrigation system on a timer and not adjusting it throughout the season. And those of us in dry climates could also be better about selecting and saving seeds for drought tolerance. Gary Paul Nabhan and the folks at Native Seed Search are working diligently on this prob...

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

Mr. Homegrown

April 5, 2016

Garden Design, Gardening

7 Comments

...ure. The lawn rebate programs and constant messaging to reduce residential watering has resulted in thousands of dead trees and handouts to fly-by-night landscaping companies that installed gravel moonscapes and disappeared as soon as the rebate program ended. What we need is not calls to end landscape irrigation in our yards and parks. What we need is responsible and thoughtful irrigation. We can transition away from water hungry lawns and planti...

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Straw Bale Garden Part III: Adding Fertilizer

Mr. Homegrown

April 30, 2013

Gardening, Straw Bale Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

31 Comments

After watering our straw bales for three days our next step is to apply a high nitrogen fertilizer. We’re following West Virginia University Extension Service’s Straw Bale Gardening advice. They suggest a 1/2 cup of urea per bale or “bone meal, fish meal, or compost for a more organic approach.” (I think they mean blood meal as bone meal does not have much nitrogen in it.) Choosing the organic approach, we’re watering in two cups of blood meal a...

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Lady Urine, Water Conservation and Halfway Humanure

Mrs. Homegrown

April 26, 2013

Gardening, Straw Bale Gardening

45 Comments

...urce. So, to sum up this meandering post, while Erik is “watering” the straw bales, I think I’m going to be collecting my nitrogen inputs in the dry toilet. (That it, unless I trot myself down to the AutoZone and get myself a funnel.) Both of us, in our different ways, will be contributing to the fertility of our garden....

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Are Miniature Books the New Smartphone?

Mr. Homegrown

October 17, 2016

Thoughtstylings

10 Comments

...y. Loeb books are handsome, small and sturdy hardbacks with English on one page and Latin or Greek on the opposite page. Marcellinus is an entertaining Roman historian whose extant books chronicle the tumultuous years around the time of Constantine. So far it’s even more lurid than the updates on our current presidential election I get when I glace at the iPhone. Yes, you can read books on a smartphone, but I still think that the medium of a paper...

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