Community Power! Elect Hugo Soto-Martinez!

February 17, 2022

...ary working people. He supports building social housing, jobs programs and making our streets safer for everyone. You can read more about his platform on his website. Electing Hugo is just the beginning. There’s a lot of work to do to turn this city around. Thankfully, more people are starting to pay attention to local elections. You can help out by going to my fundraising page for Hugo and chipping in a few dollars. Wherever you are you can be a...

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A Low-Tech Experiment in Growing Oyster Mushrooms

Mr. Homegrown

February 3, 2022

Gardening, Mushrooms

14 Comments

My furniture making hobby produces a mountain of sawdust and wood chips. Some of it I give to neighbors who have cabins with composting toilets. A lot of it I have to throw out. A few months ago a light bulb went off. I mostly produce oak sawdust which just happens to be one of the ideal substrates for growing mushrooms. While I love looking at mushrooms and attending lectures about mushrooms via the Los Angeles Mycological Society, I don’t know...

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BrickTube

Mr. Homegrown

November 18, 2021

Design, Gardening, How-to

2 Comments

...et for cutting bricks. Bricklayer, August Sander, 1929. I like the idea of making small garden follies with bricks and can imagine other uses for brick structures in gardens. Could I build a wall or something structural? No way–not without a lot more practice. Brick work is intellectually challenging and hard physical labor. I have much respect for the people who do this for a living. I mean, just think about the man in that Sander photo above and...

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Master Tinkerer Ray Narkevicius

Mr. Homegrown

October 20, 2021

Composting, Food, Fruit Trees, Permaculture

3 Comments

...hbor Ramutis “Ray” Narkevicius is building something, tending his poultry, making compost, growing hops on the rooftop of a brewery, scavenging materials, grafting a fruit tree or wiring the inside of a Fed Ex cargo jet. Over the years Ray has turned his yard into a elaborate nutrient loop. Spent grains that he gets from the brewery feed the poultry. Poultry manure nourish fruit trees and the duck water waste hosts crayfish. All the water gets pum...

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Backyard and Backwards Beekeeping

Mr. Homegrown

April 16, 2021

Animals, Bees

6 Comments

...Q&A you’ll notice that my desktop computer is installed in our closet thus making my Zoom background a pile of folded sheets. In the talk I give a brief intro to bee biology and then go over the way I keep bees here as taught to me by “backwards” beekeeping guru Kirk Anderson. Beekeeping resources I mention during the talk: Organizations/Websites HoneyLove.org: local non-profit that provides hands-on education and resources for backyard beekeepers...

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