Our new front yard, part 2: theory

November 13, 2015

Back to the Garden, front yard series, Garden Design, Gardening

...s, fancy staircases which sweep along the contour of the hill, or dazzling water features. Nobody designs in 15 foot wide spaces stuffed between a staircase and a garage. There’s just not a lot of room in our yard for sweeping gestures. I’m afraid our space is inescapably boxy, dorky and pokey. I’ve tried to imagine what could be done with this space if we had unlimited funds and the help of a talented designer. I suspect they’d want to remove our...

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Branch Weaving & Climbing Structure Workshop

Mr. Homegrown

January 29, 2016

Events

...es and fruits. Come and learn about weaving tuteurs, composting, mulching, water harvesting, and large structure wood weaving, and how to make a climbing structure for kids all from found wood. All workshops are led by artist/activist Jeeyun Ha. This is a four part Workshop, where you can attend one workshop at a time or all four. This is Workshop # 2 of 4 Branch Weaving & Branch Play Structure Workshop taught by Jeeyun Ha. Come join us in buildin...

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Straw Bale Gardens

Mr. Homegrown

March 25, 2013

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

27 Comments

Tasha Via’s straw bale garden. Michael Tortorello (who profiled us when Making It came out) is one of my favorite writers covering the home ec/gardening subjects we discuss on this blog. He had an article last week in the New York Times, “Grasping at Straw” on straw bale gardening. We’ve very tempted to give the practice a try in our backyard. Why? We have lead and zinc contaminated soil so growing veggies in the ground is questionable. We live o...

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Supper for a buck?

Mrs. Homegrown

February 25, 2013

Bean Fest, Food

16 Comments

...bread contains the following ingredients: 400 grams of flour, 300 grams of water, 1 1/2 teaspoons of sea salt and, depending on the recipe, either 1/4 teaspoon of active yeast or a bit of sourdough starter. I figured out the cost for the flour (bulk purchased from Central Milling) comes to 52 cents a loaf. If I were a little more persistent, I could go on and figure out how many more pennies the salt costs, and yeast or, alternatively, the small a...

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Buddy Burner

Mr. Homegrown

January 12, 2007

Preparedness

10 Comments

...se a tin can to hold the wax, and place the can in a saucepan of simmering water. Here we balance the can on a metal cookie cutter to keep it off the bottom of the saucepan. When the wax melts it will liberate bits of old wick. Fish these out first and tuck one or two or three between the cardboard layers to help with lighting the burner. Then pour the hot wax slowly into the can. It will fill up fast, then the wax level will sink as the cardboard...

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