A Grand Tour

...vation, DIY drip irrigation, vegetable gardening, rainwater harvesting, dome building and more. The Grand Tour from Mikey Sklar on Vimeo. Wendy and Mickey blog about their activities at blog.holyscraphotsprings.com. Here at Homegrown Evolution we’d like to start featuring more profiles of what you, our readers, have been up to. Please drop us a line, a link, a video or some photos–we’re interested in any effort, from the simple to the grand....

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Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima)

...nd grows just about everywhere–hot, cold, humid, dry–with the exception of Homegrown Evolution’s temporary residence in the Swedish Arctic. Odds are you’ve got one of these supertrees busting up through some nearby broken asphalt. One of my hosts, Swedish artist Ingo Vetter, is a member of a unique artists collective, the Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop, that has experimented with using the wood of this abundant tree. While not easy to work with (...

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Tomato Review #2 Banana Legs – it don’t look like a banana and it don’t got legs

It’s raining tomatoes here at the Homegrown Evolution compound and time for the second in our series of tomato reviews. Today, Banana Legs, a determinate variety with yellow flesh and light green streaks. It has a mild, low acid flavor and a meaty texture. Not bad, not thrilling, not nearly is as good as a similar looking tomato we grew last year, Power’s Heirloom. We grew our Banana Legs in a self watering container (SWC) and it produced a respe...

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Terror of Tiny Town

The Homegrown Evolution in-box overfloweth this week with news of the cute and the tiny. Yesterday’s post about our miniature Red Currant tomatoes prompted Bruce F of Chicago to inform us that he’s working on the world’s smallest kale plant. He’s growing them in self-watering containers made with old pop bottles (more info on how to make a pop bottle self-watering container here and here). These pop bottle containers look like they’d work well fo...

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Appropriate Technology

...ign, efficient use of energy and are usually aimed at poor countries. What Homegrown Evolution would like to prove is that these technologies have a place in developed western countries as well. Here’s three of our favorite appropriate tech ideas and websites: 1. Rocket Stoves: our brick rocket stove and a link to a video on how to make a simple metal version. 2. The glorious Solar Cooking Archive which has links to dozens of simple solar cooker p...

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