A White House Vegetable Garden

August 4, 2008

Gardening, Thoughtstylings, Vegetable Gardening

...rnia’s Chez Panisse. Waters asked then president Bill Clinton to grow some vegetables at the White House. Clinton responded, “send me the seeds Alice” only to renege on the idea, claiming that it would interfere with the historic and formal White House garden plans. But what about that White House putting green? San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom broke ground this summer on a kitchen garden at city hall. Former mayor “slick” Willie Brown responded l...

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LA’s Parkway Garden Dilemma: Not Fixed Yet

Mr. Homegrown

August 20, 2013

Gardening, Urban Farming

9 Comments

...ces. This crackdown came two years after Ron Finley was busted for being a vegetable gardening outlaw. Over the weekend I started seeing articles, Tweets and Facebook posts (some of which I’m guilty of spreading) stating that the city council had approved parkway vegetable gardens. This is not technically correct. The city council has just suspended enforcement of parkway planting regulations while they await a report from the Bureau of Street Ser...

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Gardening Resources in Los Angeles County

Mr. Homegrown

September 26, 2013

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

10 Comments

...rowing season http://envirochangemakers.org/publications/. Monthly organic vegetable gardening classes at the two community gardens in Westchester http://www.EnviroChangeMakers.org Monthly vegetable gardening classes at The Learning Garden at Venice High School. Seed Library of Los Angeles SLOLA.org (meetings and seed saving classes). Keeping Chickens Los Angeles Urban Chicken Enthusiasts Beekeeping Honeylove.org. How to videos starring Kirk Ander...

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening

Mr. Homegrown

February 20, 2014

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

55 Comments

The new hexagonal raised beds. More on the design in another post. Due to contaminated Los Angeles soil, we’ve got to grow our veggies in raised beds. There’s just too much lead and zinc in the ground, according to our local soil lab. Putting together three new beds recently got me to thinking about the ups and downs of gardening in raised beds. I thought I’d list off the pros and cons: Pros: Keeps roots away from contaminated soil. Good for disa...

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Hexagonal Raised Vegetable Beds: SketchUp Saves the Day

Mr. Homegrown

January 27, 2014

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

11 Comments

I must again sing the praises of SketchUp, the free 3d modeling program that has been incredibly useful around the Root Simple compound. This weekend it was time to design some new raised beds and I didn’t want the usual rectangular configuration. SketchUp allowed me to quickly draw up a plan and estimate materials. Using SketchUp’s protractor tool I figured out the angle I needed to cut the wood. I suppose I could have looked up the angles of a...

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