Parkway Plantings

October 3, 2006

...asses for agriculture in this country have taken all the flavor out of our vegetables. Rapa da Foglia senza Testa, i.e. rabe without a head. Yet another bitter vegetable, this is a kind of turnip green that looks kind of like broccoli rabe, except that you eat the leaves. A bit susceptible to bugs, but we had a successful crop last year. Carrots – Carota Pariser Market. This is a small round carrot that French folks apparently like. Around the wir...

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Polyculture

Mr. Homegrown

December 7, 2006

Permaculture

14 Comments

...ted, interdependent plants, mimicking in your garden (in our case a raised vegetable bed) the complex relationships that are found between plants in nature. In the case of food crops, a polyculture tries to set up conditions where you can eat almost continually out of a garden bed filled with different varieties of plants maturing at different times. The faster growing plants protect the tender ones from the sun. The thickness of the planting virt...

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Quick Breads

Mr. Homegrown

February 20, 2007

Bread, Food

6 Comments

...bit too sweet for our tastes] 1 cup walnuts, coarsely broken 3 tablespoons vegetable oil 1 1/2 cups buttermilk Combine all the dry ingredients. Mix the buttermilk and the vegetable oil in a separate boil. Mix the liquid and dry ingredients together just enough to make sure they are combined. With all quick breads you should minimize the amount of mixing. Bake at 350º until a knife inserted into the bread comes out dry. Cooking times will vary depe...

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Homesteading Disasters: The Skunk Menace

Mr. Homegrown

October 12, 2012

Mistakes

17 Comments

...any gaps. And each year I wake up the morning after planting to a kind of vegetable garden apocalypse–dozens of V shaped holes, overturned seedlings and scattered seeds. And each year I swear off vegetable gardening entirely. Actual photo of absent-minded conquistadors. So what’s the science behind this? Why do skunks dig? Skunks dig for doubloons dropped by absent-minded conquistadors many generations ago here in California. Our gardens in Los A...

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Warning: This Blog is Based in a Mediterranean Climate

Mr. Homegrown

January 16, 2013

Gardening

24 Comments

...limate disclaimer. There’s a certain amount of awkwardness when discussing vegetable gardening in the Northern Hemisphere’s winter months. I imagine that most of the readers of this blog are either taking some time off from gardening or gardening under a hoop house. But for us here in Southern California it’s the prime agricultural season, when rain falls and the hills are green. It’s my favorite time of year. But I imagine most of you are puzzled...

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