Without Merit: poison in your compost

December 7, 2009

Composting, Gardening, Thoughtstylings, Vegetable Gardening

...wn on land sprayed with aminopyralid I could lose my veggies, particularly tomatoes, lettuce and legumes which are highly susceptible to this chemical. So what can we do? First the practical: test your compost. Washington State University has instructions for performing a simple test here (pdf). Basically, you plant three pea seeds in a 50/50 blend of compost and potting mix and compare their growth against a control group of three pea seeds grown...

Read…

Introducing Lora Hall

Mr. Homegrown

May 15, 2009

Events

4 Comments

...e seedlings and fruit trees at the Highland Park farmer’s market (map) where she runs a booth with Trisha Mazure every Tuesday from 3 to 8 pm. When we visited her at the market last week Lora had a bunch of interesting plants including purslane, tomatoes, tomatillos as well as a selection of fruit trees appropriate for our warm climate. In the LA area and want some fruit trees for your backyard? Some gardening advice? Contact Lora at fullcirclegar...

Read…

Direct Seeding vs. Transplants

Mr. Homegrown

May 21, 2014

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

34 Comments

...ou can direct sow almost anything unless you want to get an early start on tomatoes and peppers. And we don’t have to start seedlings indoors. Another thing to note–I fell under the spell of John Jeavons and even took his class up in Willits a few years back. Jeavons transplants everything. One of the best vegetable gardens I ever grew was done following his instructions to the letter. But I’m not big on double digging, nor do I look forward to th...

Read…

A garden that looks like a meth amphetamine lab

Mr. Homegrown

March 18, 2007

Self Watering Containers

1 Comment

...a yuppie entertaining deck but instead we’re growing food on it. We built some self-watering containers (for instructions on how to do this see our earlier post) and we’re growing collard greens, tomatoes and southern highbush blueberries, so far with great success. It looks like a meth amphetamine lab. But since it provides tasty fresh food, who give a damn?...

Read…

How to Size a Breakfast Nook Table

Mr. Homegrown

April 18, 2018

Design

2 Comments

...ut?” Readers of this blog have more important concerns such as how to keep tomatoes alive or how to justify some ridiculously complex project such as liming your own corn for homemade masa or distilling your own essential oils whilst your household comrades complain about the tardiness of dinner. Our long list of unsolvable problems at the Root Simple compound includes such things as bad posture, contaminated soils, middle age paunch and, of cours...

Read…