Peat Moss is Gardening Crack

August 13, 2015

...12.full.pdf+html cpl.usu.edu/files/publications/factsheet/pub__9468201.pdf http://puyallup.wsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/403/2015/03/horticultural-peat.pdf http://flrec.ifas.ufl.edu/Hort/Environmental/Media_Nutrition/COIR%20potential.htm When I put this article in Facebook, Renate sent a picture of what peat harvesting looks like in Nartum, Germany near where she grew up: Leave it to us humans to make a desert in Germany! We’ve experimented wit...

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Mulch, mulch, mulch!

Mrs. Homegrown

May 14, 2015

Back to the Garden, Garden Design, Gardening, Permaculture, Soil

11 Comments

...ddition, she ran drip lines beneath the mulch to bring some water into the picture. (That is necessary here, as we get so little rain–it wouldn’t be necessary everywhere.) She let that stew for a couple of months, and then checked back in. As if by magic, the soil beneath the mulch had come to life. The water and the insulation called to the worms. They came from…somewhere. (The ways of worms are mysterious!) And they went to work opening up the l...

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The Mystery of the Zero-Irrigation Squash

Mrs. Homegrown

August 22, 2014

Food, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

20 Comments

...to be clear, that means they’ve had no water for months. The chairs in the picture above are holding over 100 lbs (45+ kilos) of food grown with zero water inputs! To top that, this was one of the healthiest squash plants we’ve ever “grown” or rather allowed to grow. How did that work? And more importantly, how can we make it happen again? I have three thoughts: 1) Perfect timing. Volunteers know exactly when to come up. They’re rarely wrong. We h...

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What does the loving landscape look like?

Mrs. Homegrown

April 16, 2015

Back to the Garden, Gardening

18 Comments

...nd. And that’s our friend David Newsom trying to sneak off the edge of the picture. It’s appropriate that he’s in this post, because he has a great garden himself, and he’s also trying to get the word out about loving the land and the importance of protecting insects such as the honeybee and the monarch. For the heck of it, here’s another shot of the same yard, just a little more to the right, so you can see the birdbath. I love the mulch. Mulch m...

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The Primitive Technology Guy

Mr. Homegrown

December 27, 2016

Appropriate Technology, Water and Power

7 Comments

...of Queensland, Australia uses a “show me don’t tell me” philosophy of film making that I greatly admire. No long, babbling intros! Kelly was especially impressed with his pump drill fire starting technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEl-Y1NvBVI He has a blog that describes the content of his videos in more detail. People like John Townsend and the Primitive Technology guy are the good side of the internet, producing quality work that’s a lot...

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