How To Make a Sourdough Starter

November 10, 2012

...ave a comment. Making a sourdough starter is as simple as mixing flour and water. There’s no need for all the crazy things I’ve heard suggested: adding potatoes, grapes, yogurt and certainly not commercial yeast. And the yeast that makes sourdough happen is on the flour itself in far greater quantities than in the air. After following the simple steps I demonstrate in this video you’ll end up with a small amount of starter that you use to “inocula...

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Straw Bale Gardens

Mr. Homegrown

March 25, 2013

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

27 Comments

...is, test ) the straw from our local feed store. The Compost Gardener has good instructions for this. In our case, we’re doing the method where you plant beans in soil, and water them with tea made from the straw. Washington State University–instructions for how to start a Straw Bale garden....

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Bird Netting as a Cabbage Leaf Caterpillar Barrier

Mr. Homegrown

November 15, 2012

Gardening, Pests, Vegetable Gardening

19 Comments

...s can’t lay eggs through it. The best way to do this is by planting arches of wire or tubing over your garden bed, and stretching the cover material over those arches– like a covered wagon. Netting has advantages over row cover: you can see and water through it and it’s more readily available. I’m curious what you, our dear readers, think of the idea? Mrs. Homegrown chimes in: I’ll add that in the past readers have said they use tulle material as...

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How to Cook Perfect Scrambled Eggs

Mr. Homegrown

January 4, 2013

Food, Recipes

3 Comments

...enty: 20 Techniques 100 Recipes A Cook’s Manifesto . I can’t say that I read the rest of the book, but the double boiler egg method sure works well. You melt some butter in a double boiler first to help keep the eggs from sticking. You can also use a pan held over (but not in) a pot of boiling water if you don’t have a double boiler (and I don’t have a double boiler). It takes longer to cook eggs this way, of course, but you get nice soft and fluf...

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Garden Design: Quantity vs. Quality

Mr. Homegrown

January 11, 2013

Design, Garden Design, Gardening

5 Comments

...we certainly could have done more–I’d say 20 minimum. Part of what we learn by focusing on quantity is about making mistakes and learning from them. But I think there’s more to it than that. A gifted high school English teacher of mined likened our creativity to a tank of water. Sometimes you have to drain off the not so great ideas at the top in order to get to the good stuff that lies deep in our unconscious. Letting go of stifling perfectionism...

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