Lessons from the 2018 Theodore Payne Garden Tour

April 16, 2018

...ticket contest winner (who gave us the most beautiful basket of home grown fruits and preserves ever–thank you Donna!) came to the same conclusion. We’ve hired a designer, which is why our backyard looks like a strip mine: A crew took out an ugly concrete patio last week and has been digging down to lower the level of the new patio they will install. The old patio was above the level of the sill plate and was causing the back part of the house to...

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Tiny House Dweller as Contemporary Hermit in the Garden

Mr. Homegrown

November 4, 2016

Thoughtstylings

1 Comment

...erend hermit grew The moss his bed, the cave his humble cell, His food the fruits, his drink the crystal well. It’s not too great a step from this picturesque melancholy to full desert father style escape from the consumer matrix. Right now we’re riding high on an economic boom. Inevitably there will be another bust. No sane person knows when that bust will happen again, but when it does I predict we’ll see more garden hermits and fewer tech bros....

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The recyclable/compostable Christmas tree

Mrs. Homegrown

December 9, 2014

Domesticus

25 Comments

...inexpensively made, and don’t have to be stored from year to year. Sturdy fruits and berries Popcorn/cranberry strings Paper chains Dried herbs and flowers Moss Feathers Cool looking seed pods Nuts Origami Paper snowflakes Homemade rock candy Gingerbread figures There’s tons more possibilities. What have I forgotten? Some of my ornaments This is a sugared white sage leaf. I added sugar because I decided the tree needed a little bling. Ditto with...

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Ill advised grafting projects

Mr. Homegrown

January 21, 2016

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

4 Comments

...the level of nicotine was within acceptable ranges, tobacco-grafted tomato fruits were considered to be safe for consumption. Self-grafted tomato cultivars also had flowering time onsets almost 11 days earlier. However, self-grafting caused 6.0% and 7.6% less total fruit yield per cv. It does remind me of the unsuccessful attempt back in the 1970s to graft hops onto cannabis root stock with the goal of creating a legal looking plant containing THC...

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A NSFW Mushroom

Mr. Homegrown

June 3, 2024

Gardening, Mushrooms

8 Comments

...t enjoy looking at them (and occasionally eating chicken of the woods, the only one I feel confident enough to identity). This weekend in Pomona I spotted the notoriously NSFW stinkhorn mushroom which I’m pretty sure is Phallus hadriani. It fruits quickly with the tip oozing a slimy substance attractive to insects. I witnessed a pill bug and some gnats circling the morel-like tip. Stinkhorns use these insects to distribute spores. In short, a very...

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