Mown and Blown: The Problem With Leaf Blowers

October 6, 2014

...and brutally pruned hedges. These water hungry landscapes provide neither food, beauty or habitat. (They are also not enjoyed by people: half of the suburban participants in a UCLA study of home life in SoCal never went into their backyard. Another 25 percent went outside for a few minutes a week.) Yet this style of landscape is our dominant style of landscape because the homeowner doesn’t need to think about it, and the maintenance crews can mov...

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More boneheaded plant representations from Hollywood

Mrs. Homegrown

January 4, 2016

Gardening, Nature Awareness, Thoughtstylings

11 Comments

...te world, no one needs to know the name of any plant to get by day to day (food plants excepted), but if a person ever intends to go outside (optional, I know) they’d better know how to identify local plants which cause contact dermatitis. Like poison sumac. Poison sumac (Toxicodendron vernix) is a shrub or tree which grows in wet spots in the Eastern parts of the U.S. and Canada. It looks nothing whatsoever like a fern. Or a pansy. It is apparent...

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Beekeeping Legal in Los Angeles!

Mr. Homegrown

October 15, 2015

Animals, Bees

4 Comments

...verything is connected: heightened awareness of the plight of bees goes hand in hand with issues such as the overuse of pesticides and where our food comes from. It’s a great week for the City of Los Angeles....

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I made soup out of a Halloween pumpkin and it didn’t completely suck

Mr. Homegrown

November 5, 2015

Food

16 Comments

...uld make delicious soup out of cat litter with coconut milk and hot pepper flakes. Of course that same soup would taste a lot better made with a kabocha squash. And Halloween pumpkins make great worm food. But I was reasonably pleased with the soup, especially after it had mellowed in the fridge for a day. How was your Halloween? What do you do with the leftover pumpkins?...

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Does Compost Tea Work?

Mr. Homegrown

November 16, 2015

Composting, Gardening

5 Comments

...fertilizer. If you add sugar to your tea you need to be very careful about food safety issues. You must dilute compost tea before using. The compost going into tea must be mature and of high quality. You might be better off just applying normal compost to the soil. My personal conclusions are that if I were a farmer (which I am definitely not), compost tea might be worth looking into as a fertilizer or, in certain specific circumstances, for disea...

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