Mulch, mulch, mulch!

May 14, 2015

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

...taminated yard: Mulching is one way to minimize the impact of lead in your soil. If your soil tests positive for lead, all you can do, short of replacing all of it, is to cover it up. You could choose to pave your yard, or put down a lawn, but mulch is cheaper and easier, and more soil-life friendly than those options. It works by keeping the soil covered, so that lead-laden dust doesn’t swirl into the air, and it keeps little kids who are toddlin...

Read…

Urban Homestead Trademarks Cancelled!

Mr. Homegrown

March 31, 2017

Urban Homestead Trademark Dispute

16 Comments

After six years of legal wrangling, “urban homestead” and “urban homesteading” belong to us all. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has cancelled the trademarks thanks to the hard work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the law firm of Winston & Strawn. Here’s the press release from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Urban Homesteaders Win Cancellation of Bogus Trademarks Global Community Had Faced Baseless Legal Claims and Content Remo...

Read…

Looking for the Union Label

Mr. Homegrown

September 12, 2007

Domesticus

3 Comments

...d a highly catchy ad jingle from the roller disco era, “Look for the Union Label” (youngsters can watch it on youtube here). We looked for the union label and we were surprised to find it via a company called Union House which carries a functional, if unexciting line of apparel. Unless hipsters take to golf shirts in an ironic fashion judo move, these offerings will never be cool like the domestically made clothes made by the union busting folks o...

Read…

The Wonder of Worms

Mrs. Homegrown

May 21, 2015

Back to the Garden, Gardening, Vermiculture

5 Comments

...so somewhat mucilaginous (one of my favorite words), so castings also bind soil, making it more cohesive and moisture retentive, reinforcing all that structural work they do with their digging. The soil which earthworms create is moist and sponge-like and full of nutrients, in other words, the perfect living environment for the roots of healthy plants as well as all the invisible wee beasties which make up the healthy soil ecosystem. They do all t...

Read…

The Soil Beneath Our Feet

Mrs. Homegrown

April 23, 2015

Back to the Garden

4 Comments

...t you are there. (It’s also–I just found out–the International Year of the Soils. Soil is the new black!) The concerns they are talking about at the conference are huge, global in scale: food justice, mass migration, climate change–indeed, the future well-being of the planet and all of us upon it, because our lives are dependent on soil. Yet these concerns can be scaled to our own back yards. The microcosm reflects the macrocosm. We may feel power...

Read…