Search Results for: label/self%20watering%20containers/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

586 results

End of Season Tomato Review

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Gardening, Tomatoes, Vegetable Gardening
7 Comments
...ough extra fruit to do some canning. Two hybrid cherry tomatoes we grew in self watering containers, Sun Gold and Sweet 100 also did well. The Romas have the additional benefit of being fusarium wilt and verticillium resistant. It may be organic gardening heresy to say this, but hybrid tomatoes such as Roma are the best varieties for beginning gardeners to grow due to their trouble free and disease resistant qualities. The down side is that you ca...

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Terror of Tiny Town

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Animals, Chickens, Gardening, Self Watering Containers, Vegetable Gardening
4 Comments
...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 for starting seeds, as they provide a constant source of water. Nance Klehm, another intrepid Chicago resident, informed us that someone just gave her two bantam chickens for her backyard, th...

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Root Simple Visits Simparch’s Utah Compound

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Thoughtstylings
...rchitectural thoughtstylist collective known as Simparch has established a self-sufficiency experiment they call Clean Livin’. Located on the remote South Base section of the historic Wendover Airfield on land leased by the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Simparch’s project proves that self-reliance is possible in what must be one of the harshest climates in North America. Clean Livin’ features a set of solar panels, batteries, a solar shower,...

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Our Amazon Problem

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Thoughtstylings
52 Comments
...e folks at the Idler in the UK. Like us, they teach classes. But they also self-publish beautiful books. What if we were to do the same and sell them through our website rather than through Amazon? Marshall McCluhan noted that when a new technology takes over, what it replaces becomes an art form. I have a sense that, with so much time devoted to staring at screens, people will increasingly want the peace and focus that comes with holding a beauti...

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How to Keep Skunks Out of the Yard

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Gardening, Pests
17 Comments
...Skunk Habitat In the wild skunks dig dens or live in hollowed out logs. In urban areas they like to take up residence in crawl spaces and under decks. (Design tip: avoid creating skunk habitat in the first place by making sure these types of spaces are not accessible.) I suspect that there may be a skunk or two living under our back shed. This shed is as old as the house (almost 100 years) and can’t be skunk proofed on all sides due to its setting...

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