Make that 11 Vegetable Gardening Mistakes

September 5, 2013

Gardening, Mistakes, Vegetable Gardening

...it throughout the season. And those of us in dry climates could also be better about selecting and saving seeds for drought tolerance. Gary Paul Nabhan and the folks at Native Seed Search are working diligently on this problem. Now excuse me while I go check on my drip system . . ....

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Gourmet Foraging and Advanced Acorn Processing

Mrs. Homegrown

October 24, 2013

Food, Foraging, How-to, Preparedness

31 Comments

...g been interested in acorns, knowing that they were the staple food of the native people who lived here, and I’ve gathered and processed them before. However, once I have the acorn meal, I’ve never known exactly what to do with it. It’s highly nutritious, but I thought (wrongly!) that it was somewhat bland, and all I could do was incorporate acorn meal into baked goods. This weekend, however, I’ve had my eyes opened to the possibilities, thanks to...

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Book Review: The Urban Bestiary

Mrs. Homegrown

October 10, 2013

Animals, Reviews

8 Comments

...t these animals–these pests which overturn our garbage cans, scare off the native birds, eat our cats or scare the bejeezus out of us on the porch late at night–but we don’t, not really. We see what we want to see and understand very little. This book goes a long way toward filling in that knowledge gap. And with knowledge comes understanding–and maybe even peace. With some understanding, we can appreciate for the bits of wildness our animal neigh...

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Monday Linkages: The Blob, Urine Soaked Acorns

Mr. Homegrown

October 7, 2013

Saturday Linkages

4 Comments

...3/09/the-labyrinth-project-beginning.html … Homesteading weirdness 1859: A native delicacy – acorns pickled in human urine http://shar.es/Kkb0q How Japanese honeybees switch to ‘hot defensive bee ball’ mode when threatened http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/japanese-honeybee-hot-defensive-bee-ball-asian-hornet … The “Queen of Green”? You be the Judge by Susan Harris http://gardenrant.com/2013/09/the-queen-of-green...

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Straw Bale Gardens

Mr. Homegrown

March 25, 2013

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

27 Comments

Tasha Via’s straw bale garden. Michael Tortorello (who profiled us when Making It came out) is one of my favorite writers covering the home ec/gardening subjects we discuss on this blog. He had an article last week in the New York Times, “Grasping at Straw” on straw bale gardening. We’ve very tempted to give the practice a try in our backyard. Why? We have lead and zinc contaminated soil so growing veggies in the ground is questionable. We live o...

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