A Self-Watering Container in a Pot

July 25, 2007

...owers. You fill SWCs up via a pipe and they can go at least a week between waterings. It is, in our opinion, the only way to grow water-needy vegetables reliably in a container. We have used them to successfully grow eggplants, tomatoes, collard greens and blueberries (note to the DEA: no cash crops at the Homegrown Revolution compound!). With our backyard looking fairly ugly this summer we’ve backpedaled on our earlier strident post about how we...

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McDonald’s Corporation Headquarters Used to Have a Suede Waterbed Think Tank

Mr. Homegrown

May 4, 2021

Design

...r cent a year in the downtown office, has been 30 per cent in the new surroundings, where the colors tan and burnt‐orange predominate. I guess we can conclude that toxic work places can be cured with some tan and burnt‐orange suede walls and a 700 gallon water bed? Corporations these days have ditched the water bed pods for “mindfulness” classes but I doubt the workers are any happier. I’ll leave it to some of the commenters on Collins’ Twitter po...

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The Obligate Resprouter

Mr. Homegrown

November 12, 2020

Animals, Goats

...oesn’t put pressure on the very resources that climate change makes scarce—water and top soil. Now, at least temporarily, we find ourselves having to feed the goats hay grown by pumping water in the nearby desert, the very thing we have tried to avoid. Developing a new understanding of this agriculture’s relationship to climate change, drought and wildfire is necessarily the new project, and we are pleased to have you along for the exploration. Yo...

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The Miraculous Lavender

Mrs. Homegrown

July 25, 2014

Gardening, Herbs

14 Comments

...we’ve had no precipitation for months now. I don’t water it. I don’t send water down the stairs. The soil off the stairs is dry, because that slope is planted with natives, which are getting no irrigation. There’s no plumbing beneath the staircase, either. Yet the lavender keeps getting bigger. I’m going to have to pull it soon, before it ruins our stairs. But I don’t want to, because it’s so determined to live. And this goes to show that when a...

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Thankful for the New Rain Garden

Mr. Homegrown

November 28, 2019

Garden Design, Gardening, Native Plants

7 Comments

...sting calculator, in an average year we could send almost 6,000 gallons of water to our backyard. We ran a pipe from the rain gutter way back into the yard along a fence. The pipe terminates at a simulated gravel filled stream bed that spills into the rain garden. Kelly has just started planting the wet lower part of the rain garden with native plants including water loving Douglas irises (Iris douglasiana). She planted the dry outer edges with de...

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