Fish Don’t Fart

June 21, 2009

...filed in the pioneering urban homesteading book, The Integral Urban House: Self Reliant Living in the City and Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew’s book Toolbox for Sustainable City Living: A do-it-Ourselves Guide which comes out of their work at Austin’s Rhizome Collective. What all of these efforts have in common is a permacultural design principle of turning a waste product into a resource and closing a loop. Fish make fertilizer and plants clea...

Read…

Edible and Tasty Arugula Flowers

Mr. Homegrown

April 16, 2013

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

13 Comments

...’m going to tear out most of it and plant tomatoes and a few other summer veggies. I may keep some of the arugula that has gone to flower a little longer. Why? arugula flower taste great in salads bees love them arugula self seeds readily The flowers, which taste like the leaves, are a reminder of my favorite time of year: arugula season. Each year I curse myself for not planting more arugula. Do you have a favorite edible flower?...

Read…

Hops in Southern California

Mr. Homegrown

April 28, 2009

Beer, Gardening, Herbs, Hops

11 Comments

...e home built scaffolding on top of the tiny vine while undertaking the heinous task of scraping and painting the front of the house. Planting it in terrible soil doomed it to failure anyways. We’re experimenting with growing both Cascade and Nugget hops in a big self irrigating planter with the hope that we can transfer them to the ground next year or the year after. In the meantime we’ll improve our soil with another application of “craptonite“....

Read…

My Favorite Lettuce Mix

Mr. Homegrown

January 18, 2013

Gardening, Seeds, Vegetable Gardening

7 Comments

...and aggressive, fennel seedlings you can see amongst the lettuce (memo to self: cut down fennel before it goes to seed this year!). And, at the risk of repeating myself, I pretty much grow Franchi seeds exclusively. It’s a family run Italian company that dates back to 1783. This year I grew their “Misticanza All Lettuce” mesclun mix. It’s astonishingly beautiful and flavorful. Best damn salads I’ve ever had. Last year I grew their Misticanza da i...

Read…

Analysis Paralysis

Mr. Homegrown

January 28, 2014

Design, Thoughtstylings

17 Comments

...out a bit too small so I went back to SketchUp and re-sized the plans. My self imposed deadline worked. Within a few hours I had the beds that I wanted and was very pleased with the results. The analysis paralysis spell was broken. What had been a concept on a computer screen become reality in short order. It felt good. Sometimes life is a struggle, but increasingly I feel the need to build more and struggle less. No more neighborhood council mee...

Read…