Search Results for: label/soil/2010/06/the-urban-homestead/2011/04/making-it

961 results

What’s Your Personal Food Policy?

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Food, Thoughtstylings
13 Comments
...s, sometimes we manage to grow all of our greens, but other times bugs/bad soil/forgetfulness in the garden sends us on a trip to our local discount Armenian supermarket. Other times we’re so busy that we pick up prepared crap at Trader Joes. And frankly, my personal food policy, started to sound a bit holier than thou. As Rumi says, Spiritual arrogance is the ugliest of all things. It’s like a day that’s cold and snowy, and your clothes are wet t...

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Biochar: Miracle or Gimmick?

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Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
12 Comments
...ppeared to be some benefit of using biochar in the nutrient-depleted sandy soils at the Andover site for some crops. Yet, there was a decrease in growth in some plants and higher yield in others. In the Arboretum and St. Paul campus sites, we noted similar results, but more crops seemed to decline with biochar than without it. There’s nothing new about biochar. It was in use by native peoples in the Amazon region before Columbus. Hopefully this st...

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Using Greywater from your Washing Machine

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Water and Power, Water Conservation
9 Comments
...r going out to the garden, allowing more time for it to percolate into the soil. In addition the tank lets the water cool a bit, should we run a load in hot water. Bottom of barrel showing fittings Top of the barrel where the hose from the washing machine comes in For the tank we picked up a used and cleaned 55 gallon plastic drum with two “bung holes”, and plumbed it based on a design from Aquabarrel.com. The folks at Aquabarrel offer kits or a D...

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Homesteading Disasters: The Skunk Menace

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Mistakes
17 Comments
...I’m hoping, in fact, to collect our misadventures into a little booklet of homesteading disasters. To that end, I’ll periodically write about the latest problem around the Root Simple Compound starting today with how fun it is to garden with skunks. Angry red arrows mark skunk dig sites in our new keyhole bed. I know that I’ve got a skunk problem. Yet each year when I sow lettuce seeds I get lazy about putting up the required bird net barrier over...

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