Happy New Year!

January 1, 2009

...Happy New Year and many thanks to all of you for supporting this blog and contributing comments, suggestions and opinions. Thanks to all of you who have bought our book and thanks to our brave and innovative publisher Process Media. We have one resolution for the new year: to tinker/experiment/garden/problem solve/explore and have fun doing all these things, laughing and learning from our failures as we go....

Read…

FEMA Plans for a Bar That Folds Into a Fallout Shelter

Mr. Homegrown

December 4, 2008

Design

1 Comment

...ome study course in radiological emergency management. Along with the text book and quizzes came a couple of plans for home built fallout shelters. Most of these shelters were what you would expect, underground cinder block cubes accessed through a trap door on your back patio. But one plan really stood out for its cocktail era inventiveness, a basement “snack bar” that converts into the perfect place to ride out Armageddon. “The principal feature...

Read…

Perennial Vegetables

Mr. Homegrown

February 27, 2009

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

13 Comments

...out edible perennials until the publication of Eric Toensmeier’s excellent book, Perennial Vegetables: From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, A Gardener’s Guide to Over 100 Delicious and Easy to Grow Edibles . We’ve got a few of the species Toensmeier mentions: artichoke, prickly pear cactus, stinging nettles, crosnes (more on those in another post) and goji berries. Edible Perennials contains growing information for each species offering something for ev...

Read…

Homegrown Evolution on WAMC

Mr. Homegrown

April 21, 2009

Events

1 Comment

...a busy one for us as Erik will also be on a panel for the National Conversation on Climate Action at 2 pm PST at MTA headquarters. More info here. We’ll close the day with a book signing at an innovative new neighborhood market called Locali. We’ll be there at 7 pm PST and hope to see some locals....

Read…

Borage (Borago officinalis)

Mr. Homegrown

March 30, 2009

Gardening, Herbal Medicine, Herbs, Vegetable Gardening

9 Comments

...pring after the last frost. Ours survived a winter outbreak of aphids, but is now thriving. We toss the flowers and leaves into salads as a flavoring. In fact we enjoyed a memorable borage spiked salad on a recent Greyhound bus trip to Las Vegas we took for a book appearance. Thankfully for our fellow passengers, we did not break out into a borage induced sweat. For more on the medicinal qualities of borage, including “dispelling melancholy” (usef...

Read…