Irish Soda Bread

...comments section a recipe for Irish soda bread: This is the other half of Homegrown Revolution here, and I have to say I am not thrilled with the recipe my comrade in arms decided to post as representative of the best of quick breads. For years I’ve been making a much better whole wheat-ish quick bread (which he seems to have forgotten) and this is how it goes: Irish Brown Soda Bread 1 3/4 c. all purpose flour 1 3/4 c. whole wheat flower 3 T. toa...

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Root Simple Redesign

...console in the picture above taking some last minute refinements from Mrs. Homegrown), is just about to pull the switch on the new design. We’re switching from Blogger to WordPress. Our new website design will feature: improved search functions an easier to navigate interface improved comment moderation better graphic design podcasts videos All of the 1800+ posts and comments from this blog will migrate over to our new host. The web address will r...

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A garden that looks like a meth amphetamine lab

This year around the Homegrown Revolution compound we’ve finally thrown off the tyranny of the beautiful. There’s simply too much of what we call “garden porn” out there. Coffee table garden books, Martha Stewart and 24 hours of bullshit home improvement shows set up expectations that drive us all to useless spending at nurseries and home improvement stores all in pursuit of unattainable ideals, at least unattainable for anyone not employing slav...

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Tomato Grafting Fail

...is project out of a geeky sense of fun but it resulted in a summer with no homegrown tomatoes and that’s a life not worth living. A better project, for our climate, would be to figure out how to grow tomatoes with little or no supplemental water. The feral tomatoes on the side of my mom’s house prove this is possible. For years, we also used to have volunteer cherry tomatoes along a wall now dominated by a massive Vitus californica vine. Next year...

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Our new front yard: history

...planting our first vegetable bed in the back yard, and we soon caught the homegrown food fever, and as the years passed we added more beds and colonized areas for growing edibles in almost every possible nook and cranny. Eventually, the front slope was the only place we weren’t growing food or herbs or medicinals–unless you counted the lavender. We wanted more fruit trees, but didn’t imagine we had room for more than the couple we already had unt...

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