Does Compost Tea Work?

November 16, 2015

...D3Kx7I4d4hU If you’d like to pick an argument in the mostly staid world of gardening, I can’t think of a better subject than compost tea. I’ve, somewhat cowardly, tried to stay out of the fray and leave the debate to Linda Chalker-Scott and Jeff Lowenfels. If you forced me to pick a side I’d lean towards Chalker-Scott’s skepticism. Thankfully, I can now point towards the eXtension.org webinar on making and using compost teas that I’ve embedded abo...

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On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

Mr. Homegrown

January 7, 2019

Reviews, Thoughtstylings

23 Comments

...which you were paid to do the things you like to read about on this blog: gardening, beer brewing, jam making, beekeeping etc. Or how about a world in which teachers, nurses and caregivers made more money than tech CEOs? Sadly, we don’t live in that utopia. Instead we have an economy that often rewards people who either do nothing all day or whose work degrades our lives. Anthropologist David Graeber takes up these questions in his book Bullshit...

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Heirloom Expo in Photos

Mr. Homegrown

September 14, 2015

Food, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

6 Comments

I highly recommend making the trip next year to Santa Rosa to see the National Heirloom Exposition put on by the folks at Baker Creek Seeds. The centerpiece of the expo is the massive display of hundreds of different varieties of squash, melons, tomatoes and other edibles. It’s inspiring and frustrating all at once since, unless you have your own garden, you’ll never see such diversity at the supermarket. I came back with the will to improve our...

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Our Phoebe is gone

Mrs. Homegrown

June 9, 2015

Cats

49 Comments

...till burned in her eyes, and it killed a part of us to have to put it out. Making the decision to euthanize a pet is one of the most difficult of decisions to make. We’ve never had to do it before, because our previous pets having been lost in other ways. My heart goes out to all of you who are now remembering putting down your own pets, or who are contemplating that future possibility. Ending suffering is the right thing to do, but oh, it is a ha...

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Tools for Conquering Internet Addiction

Mr. Homegrown

May 22, 2015

Thoughtstylings

15 Comments

...as Carr observed in his prescient 2008 article in the Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” I’ve noticed that my attention span seems to be shrinking and that I’m less able to sit down and read books without the temptation to jump on the Internet and look stuff up. I’ve also noticed that I’m having a harder time initiating and completing the sort of gardening, cooking, food preservation and general DIY projects that provide fodder for this blog...

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