The Three Sisters

Due to the rigors of finishing our book The Urban Homesteader due out from Process Media next spring we were late getting around to planting our parkway vegetable garden. To review, the parkway is that space between the sidewalk and the street that belongs to the city but is the responsibility of the homeowner to maintain. The city, of course, wants us all to plant a lawn so that fat people can easily plop out of their Escalades unimpeded. We dec...

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038 The Ground Rules with Nance Klehm

...ting compost along with mushrooms and plants to bioremediate damaged urban soils. Nance describes The Ground Rules as “re-imagining waste and biological infrastructures.” You can find out more about the project on the Social Ecologies website and on Nance’s personal website. There’s also a video about The Ground Rules. If you’re in Chicago you can visit Nance and Emmanual Pratt’s exhibition, For the Common Good: Meet the Remediators. Nance’s expla...

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Gathering of Community Gardeners

...le gardening, composting, native plants, beekeeping and even a workshop on urban chickens co-taught by yours truly, Homegrown Neighbor. The entire day Saturday is free, but a $10 donation is requested to cover operating expenses. I recommend you go and pay them $100, because that is what this event is worth. You’ll meet the coolest people in L.A., learn about gardening, eat great food and contribute to a great cause. The tour of community gardens...

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Satan’s Easter Basket is Filled with Plastic Easter Grass

...round this morning, especially because Echo Park surrounds a lovely little urban lake full of birds. Read on to find out why. 4 Excellent Reasons to Avoid Plastic Easter Grass and use all of your influence to make sure other people avoid it, too: Domestic cats and dogs eat Easter grass and it can cause intestinal obstruction. Cats are particularly attracted to its stringy texture, but dogs might also gobble it up when they raid a kid’s Easter stas...

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Digital Farming- What’s The Deal?

Homegrown Neighbor here: So here in the world of urban homesteading things can get pretty busy. We can become so preoccupied with work, chickens, vegetable gardening, cooking, cleaning, blogging duties and email that we can miss some of the things going on in the world. I do like to occasionally check in with the world at large by reading the newspaper. I just read an article that I have to comment on. A recent New York Times article titled, ‘To...

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