Allegedly Squirrel Proof Bird Feeder Not Rat Proof

June 10, 2020

...cilmen! Just kidding. It was rats. This discovery caps off a busy week for urban wildlife in our backyard. A young coyote visited last week and, last night, our indoor cats got in a full on cat fight on either side of a glass door with a visiting outdoor cat. Our new bird (rat?) feeder has a lever that closes when a heavy animal steps on it. This is supposed to deter squirrels. As you can see from the photos, rats easily hacked their way around th...

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Saturday Tweets: Rats, DIY Plastic Recycling and Old Flatbread

Mr. Homegrown

July 21, 2018

Saturday Linkages

1 Comment

...unity gardens. https://t.co/ODWFffKZ8v pic.twitter.com/7Q54UUYa8y — UC IPM Urban Program (@ucipmurban) July 19, 2018 This sums up my problems with Steven Pinker: https://t.co/IGYey5ks2i — Root Simple (@rootsimple) July 18, 2018 Found: 14,400-Year-Old Flatbread Remains That Predate Agriculture. #carbup #carbsovercars #gathererdiet via @atlasobscura https://t.co/PVA8Z4zW7K — Matt Ruscigno (@MattRuscigno) July 17, 2018 Philip K. Dick and the fake hum...

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Coffee Grounds in the Garden

Mr. Homegrown

April 25, 2016

Composting, Gardening, Pests, Vegetable Gardening, Vermiculture

10 Comments

...ctions and feed earthworms. Authored by Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott, Extension Urban Horticulturist and Associate Professor, this peer-reviewed pamphlet also provides a set of suggestions for using coffee grounds in the garden: Coffee grounds should be composted before used as a soil amendment but can be used fresh as a mulch. Fresh grounds are phytotoxic, so keep them away from direct contact with roots. Coffee grounds will not necessarily make your...

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New Sill Plate and Joists

Mr. Homegrown

May 28, 2018

Design

13 Comments

...ld have spent doing the things that normally take up the time of glamorous urban homesteading bloggers in the big city such as pondering avocado toast recipes or dehydrating loquats. After much all caps thinking, I came to the conclusion that we need a kind of time traveling Dr. Who character whose sold mission would be to stop misguided remodeling projects in the past. He’d spend a lot of time in the 1960s and 70s halting bad patio pours, stoppin...

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City Farm Chicago

Mr. Homegrown

May 19, 2009

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

3 Comments

...nevitable development comes, pull up everything and move on. Assuming that urban land is contaminated, the City Farm folks simply piled up about three feet of compost, soil and mulch right on top of the broken concrete and asphalt of its current location. All that soil will move when the yuppie condos replace the salad greens and radishes. City Farm is an idea that makes sense in big U.S. cities which, despite astronomical real estate prices, have...

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