Climate Change and Personal Responsibility

June 28, 2013

...nstitute, “The United States, with less than 5 % of the global population, uses about a quarter of the world’s fossil fuel resources—burning up nearly 25 % of the coal, 26 % of the oil, and 27 % of the world’s natural gas.” All our President asks of us, toward the end, is that we add our voices to political discourse on the subject. Understand this is not just a job for politicians. So I’m going to need all of you to educate your classmates, your...

Read…

Cooking Bread in a Dutch Oven and Alternative Steaming Techniques

Mr. Homegrown

February 12, 2013

Bread, Food

14 Comments

...expand gracefully during baking. Jim Lahey’s popular no-knead bread recipe uses a dutch oven to emulate steam injection. The Dutch oven method seals in the moisture contained in the dough during the first half hour of baking. It works great and I cook all my bread this way. That being said it can be tricky to plop a loaf of wet, sticky dough into a 475º F Dutch oven without either burning yourself or messing up the dough. I’ll note that even when...

Read…

Let’s Get Biointensive

Mr. Homegrown

October 16, 2009

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

11 Comments

...avons’ book How to Grow More Vegetables. Jeavons dislikes rows and instead uses the triangular spacing of the French biointensive method. You can view a nice diagram of biointensive spacing on the LandShare Colorado website. And see some images of the way Jeavons’ spaces his garden on This Girl’s Gone Green. Triangular plantings squeeze more veggies into small spaces. The tight spacing, with leaves allowed to just touch each other when the plant i...

Read…

Lady Urine, Water Conservation and Halfway Humanure

Mrs. Homegrown

April 26, 2013

Gardening, Straw Bale Gardening

45 Comments

...garden. It can be applied directly to a compost pile, or diluted 10:1 and used on plants. Fact 2: Nature has equipped the male of the species in such a manner that it is easy for him to contribute nitrogen to the compost pile. For women, it’s a bit more tricky. So, how do ladies give back to the soil? Yesterday we had a comment from an anonymous female reader, telling us how she adds urine to her compost pile. She uses an inexpensive funnel from...

Read…

Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands

Mr. Homegrown

June 5, 2007

rainwater harvesting

“The bricoleur, says Levi-Strauss, is someone who uses “the means at hand,” that is, the instruments he finds at his disposition around him, those which are already there, which had not been especially conceived with an eye to the operation for which they are to be used and to which one tries by trial and error to adapt them, not hesitating to change them whenever it appears necessary, or to try several of them at once, even if their form and the...

Read…