What Epuipment Do You Need to Bake Bread?

June 16, 2014

...The ingredients you need to make bread are elemental in their simplicity: water, flour and salt and you can make a perfectly good loaf of bread with no equipment at all. But there are a few inexpensive pieces of equipment I like to use: 1. A digital Scale Measuring flour and water by volume is so inaccurate that both of the professional bakers I took classes with last year refuse to give cup equivalents in their recipes. Using a digital scale sol...

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An Ancient Quince Recipe

Mr. Homegrown

September 26, 2014

Food, Food Preservation, Fruit Trees, Gardening

16 Comments

...website, but to summarize you simply cook quince in equal parts honey and water until it turns red. The addition of a small amount of cracked pepper cuts the sweetness ever so slightly. You can then process the jars in a hot water bath. The end result is quince slices preserved in honey. It turned out great and, without having to worry about the jell point, reduced the anxiety level associated with preserving my entire harvest at once. Do you hav...

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Compost Piles on Fire!

Mr. Homegrown

October 2, 2014

Composting, Gardening

8 Comments

...en with a low moisture, large pile with little air exchange, combined with water getting into the pile in a place where there is enough air to support biological activity and chemical oxidation, but not enough to cool the pile. An old, dry compost pile, or a pile of overs screened out of the finished product, is a case in point. Water seeping into the dry compost can restart microbial activity and initiate reheating. A “macropore” or crack from th...

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Yet More Reasons to Mulch

Mr. Homegrown

October 14, 2014

Gardening

4 Comments

Image: Wikimedia. From a water conservation perspective alone, our trees need a good layer of mulch. But there are many more reasons to mulch, according to research by James Downer, Farm Advisor with the Cooperative Extension in Ventura County, California: Mulch provides nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus. A serendipitous accident in one of Downer’s studies revealed that mulch changes soil structure so that mulched soils are able to absorb more w...

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The Hugelkultur Question

Mr. Homegrown

November 17, 2014

Gardening, Permaculture

48 Comments

...contend that the logs break down and become open fungal pathways to store water and nutrients. Kelly suggested we take an unused raised bed in our front yard and try an at-grade hugelkultur experiment (mounding in our dry climate seems like a bad idea, especially given our current drought). I balked at the amount of digging that would be involved. Kelly suggested that we should try it since we had little to lose and we’re supposed to be experimen...

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