Search Results for: label/water%20conservation/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

817 results

Defeating Squirrels With Tech

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Fruit Trees, Gardening, Pests
6 Comments
...te between squirrels and birds and then deliver a carefully aimed blast of water at just the squirrels. It’s worth viewing in its entirety just to hear how Grandis resolves the image recognition question, “What is squirrelness?” If you’re impatient you can fast forward to the 16 minute mark for the video. Spoiler alert: it works, at first, and then the squirrels quickly learn to ignore the blasts of water. It leaves me wondering if a scary clown s...

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I Made a Coffee Sandwich

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Food, Recipes
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...raffic sewer in Silver Lake. Their sign promised “Coffee-Sandwich Drinking Water.” A friend and I used to speculate about what a “coffee sandwich” would consist of every time we went past the place. It took may years but I decided this month to bring some closure to this idle speculation. I based my prompt on the dessert sandwiches I ate on our recent trip to Japan. Typically, those sandwiches consist of a fruit and whipped cream filling served on...

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Growing Pink Oyster Mushrooms

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Gardening, Mushrooms
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...d, you use it to inoculate bags of straw that have been pasteurized in hot water. I think we ended up with something like 16 small bags of straw divided between our group. Keep the bags inoculated in step 3 in a humid environment with some indirect light and wait for them to fruit. This all sounds a lot harder than it actually was. Oyster mushrooms have a reputation for easily out-competing molds that can tank other mushrooms. The culture we used...

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Master Tinkerer Ray Narkevicius

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Composting, Food, Fruit Trees, Permaculture
3 Comments
...brewery feed the poultry. Poultry manure nourish fruit trees and the duck water waste hosts crayfish. All the water gets pumped around to a series of raised beds that grow herbs, dragon fruit and strawberries. His small yard overflows with the most delicious citrus you’ve ever had. And he’s a generous and kind neighbor who is always willing to lend a helping hand. Thankfully, the folks at Fair Companies, including friend of the blog Johnny, of Gr...

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Olive Curing Update

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Fruit Trees, Gardening
5 Comments
...you make a brine solution with pickling salt (one pound salt per gallon of water) and vinegar (5% acetic acid–1 1/2 cups per gallon). To this I added some garlic and hot pepper flakes. I went light on the seasoning which, I think, was a good idea. Following the suggestion on the Hunter Angler Gardener Cook blog I changed out the brine when the water darkened—about once a month. What the olives looked like at the beginning of the curing process. Th...

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