Back to the Garden

March 12, 2015

Livre de chasse, ca 1407 [This is the first post in a new series.] Lately I have been thinking about that old Joni Mitchell song, Woodstock, where she says: We are stardust We are golden And we’ve got to get ourselves Back to the garden We’ve got to get ourselves back to the Garden. This idea haunts me. I find references to this song, to the Garden and gardening and Eden everywhere I turn, as if the universe is whacking me upside the head, saying...

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Day to day, our decisions count

Mrs. Homegrown

April 30, 2015

Back to the Garden

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...iness. You’re welcome. *** [This is another post in the Back to the Garden series, which can be accessed by clicking on the tag to your left] *** Last week I introduced the subject of soil. Healthy soil is fundamental to a the loving landscape, to healthy people, to a healthy world. Initially, I’d imagined that I’d just do one post on soil and move on, but I realized that I’m going to need to linger in the topic and get my hands dirty, so to speak...

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Composting: Nothing is Wasted

Mrs. Homegrown

May 7, 2015

Back to the Garden, Composting, Gardening

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Nigredo (1984) by Anselm Kiefer [This post is part of our continuing series on crafting loving landscapes, organized under the Back to the Garden tag.) Apropos to our discussion of food waste last week, our friend Alice sent us a clipping from the Wall Street Journal about industry response to the problem of food wastage. (Thanks, Alice!) It seems that appliance and household-product manufacturers have, through consultation and study, discovered...

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The Wonder of Worms

Mrs. Homegrown

May 21, 2015

Back to the Garden, Gardening, Vermiculture

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[Another entry in the Back to the Garden series, which you can access by clicking the tag of the same name to the left.] As I’ve been saying for the last couple of weeks, the key characteristic of the loving landscape is healthy, living soils which foster plant and animal health without artificial inputs. Compost, mulch and worms form the holy trinity of organic soil health. Compost and mulch we’ve covered. Today I want to talk about worms, both...

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I’ve Flown the Coop

Mr. Homegrown

June 26, 2015

Animals, Chickens

...h you, our dear readers. I’ll break down the voluminous information into a series of future blog posts. The takeaways from yesterday’s session: Buy chickens that have been vaccinated for Marek’s disease. This is the most common problem with backyard chickens and it’s entirely preventable. If you have a sick or dead chicken and live in California, send it to the California Animal Health & Food Safety Laboratory System (CAHHFS) for a free necropsy....

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