Our New Open Floor Plan

May 7, 2018

Design

...en disowned the practice. No doubt, within a fortnight I’ll be back on Facebook and Instagram posting my avocado toast lunches. How about open floor plans? In the click-baitiest blog post ever, I declared them a “death trap.” Then the good natured Will Wallus of the Weekend Homestead came on the podcast to gently defend open floor plans. Naturally, I’m spending this month making our house, gasp, more open. Let me explain. When I installed the floo...

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Get Off Your Ass and Plant a Survival Garden!

Mr. Homegrown

July 14, 2006

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

...the specifics of Los Angeles’ unique Mediterranean climate. Most gardening books and the information on the back of seed packets are written for schmucks in the northeast who have to deal with things like cold weather. This is why you need a copy of our So-Cal homegirl Pat Welsh’s Southern California Gardening Guide which deals with more than just vegetables. Looking like an extra from the gardening club scene in the Manchurian Candidate, Pat Wels...

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The Difference Between Mulch and Compost

Mr. Homegrown

March 31, 2015

Gardening

2 Comments

...upon that subject (As an aside, I think we need to bring back really long book titles and creative spelling). In this book Purchas uses the word “mulch” as a suggested material for a beekeeper’s smoker, “Then make a smoak of mulch and wet straw.” Later uses of the word mulch are also about the use of half rotten straw as a mulch for top-dressing plants. As for why you should mulch, especially here in California, see our blob post Yet More Reasons...

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A Review of Masanobu Fukuoka’s Sowing Seeds in the Desert

Mr. Homegrown

December 4, 2012

Gardening, Miscellaneous, Permaculture, Reviews

4 Comments

...kuoka illustrates this approach in a pen and ink drawing reproduced in the book. Of the drawing he says, I call it “the cave of the intellect.” It shows two men toiling in a pit or a cave swinging their pickaxes to loosen the hard earth. The picks represent the human intellect. The more these workers swing their tools, the deeper the pit gets and the more difficult it is for them to escape. Outside the cave I draw a person who is relaxing in the s...

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Failed Experiment: Bermuda Buttercup or Sour Grass (Oxalis pes-caprae) as Dye

Mrs. Homegrown

January 31, 2013

Domesticus, Herbs, Mistakes

26 Comments

...when I start a project, but I felt lazy. I don’t know if this is a flawed book or not–I’m not judging yet. It’s on probation. It’s a pretty book, and inspirational in that it makes you want to dye everything you can lay your hands on–hell it makes you want to raise your own sheep and spin your own yarn, so you can dip it in acorn, cabbage and fennel dye, sing some folk songs, dance a dance, compost the solids and acidify your garden soil.with the...

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