Worth Doing From Scratch: Corn Tortillas

June 3, 2014

...f that’s easy and economical. Now you should be suspicious of any tortilla making advice dispensed by a gabacho. Let’s just say it’s easy and the results are way better than those dry tortillas you buy at the store. Some things I’ve learned: I have a cast iron tortilla press that works great but my Mexicano friends in the know suggested a wooden press. Making masa from scratch is a huge amount of work and I’ve done just fine with supermarket masa...

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Our new front yard: history

Mrs. Homegrown

November 11, 2015

Back to the Garden, front yard series, Garden Design, Gardening

19 Comments

.... The slope looked alive, but it did not look loved. It’s hard to admit to making a mistake, particularly when its a costly mistake, or a mistake that you’ve made publicly, or a mistake that you’ve been making for a long time. This is why people keep climbing Everest even when they see a storm is rolling in. This is why we ended up with an ugly yards full of struggling trees. The cactus, however, grew exponentially. Its position was front and cent...

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The Manzanita Miracle, or, why you should love native plants if you live in a dry climate

Mrs. Homegrown

December 17, 2015

Gardening, Native Plants

6 Comments

...hurry this process along, because they don’t cool the city, and they don’t build soil which can capture and hold water. We need to settle down in a comfortable in-between spot. This is not Ireland and this is not Sonora. This is Southern California and we have a whole palette of amazing, largely misunderstood plants which are ready willing and able to green this place up even in the heart of a drought. All we have to do is treat these plants right...

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A Little Free Blockbuster

Mr. Homegrown

September 1, 2024

Thoughtstylings

2 Comments

...s on the Garden Fork Podcast, the host, “East Coast Eric” challenged me to build a Free Blockbuster Little Library and I finally made good on the promise. I managed to install this garishly painted DVD, VHS, CD and video game themed little free library in our parkway yesterday as the sun went down. With the exception of the hinges and Lucite, I used repurposed materials and patterned the design after a lararium I saw online. I downloaded a digital...

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Getting started with worms

Mrs. Homegrown

August 29, 2014

Composting, Gardening, Vermiculture

8 Comments

...bins (like Rubbermaid bins) and a drill. Here are two resources for how-to build a plastic bin. One is at vermicomposting.net. Another is in pdf form, available through this link to Oregon State Extension Services. Our favorite resources: It would take pages and pages for us to tell you how to make and maintain a worm bin, or explain the general amazingness of worms, and this information is already freely available on the Internet. So for further...

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