A Tensegrity Table

December 27, 2008

Design

...scavenged materials (scavenging seems appropriate in these crummy economic times!). To make your own tensegrity table, molecular biomechanics professor Dr. William H. Guilford has some very nice step-by-step instructions here. My version is slightly different, but frankly Guilford’s design is probably more stable. I used some electrical conduit tubing left over from remodeling the house, some rope and a stop sign that I found laying in a driveway...

Read…

A Transportation Cocktail: Bikes, Trains and Buses

Mr. Homegrown

January 18, 2009

Bikes

5 Comments

...hen you bring up bikes with a customer service person it will be the first time they’ve ever heard the question. Now back to the slow, but entertaining San Joaquin train. While it takes longer than driving or flying, the views of the Central Valley can’t be beat. You’re well off the highway for most of the trip, and get a god’s eye view from the upper deck. Glimpses of farms, backyards and small towns flash by as if in a series of dream-like snaps...

Read…

The Poultry Review June 1908

Mr. Homegrown

October 28, 2008

Animals, Chickens

8 Comments

...he three best answers, a testimony to how many people kept chickens at the time. For those tired of poultry, an ad in the back of the Poultry Review asks, “Are you Discouraged with Chickens? If so, try the Ginseng Business. It will pay you LARGER, SURER, PROFITS, requires very little land and the least amount of work of any crop grown. Sells for $6.50 to $9.00 a pound.” Sounds like the $20 a pound Goji berries I saw at Whole Foods last week. Like...

Read…

Save the World–Poop in a Bucket

Mr. Homegrown

January 30, 2008

Humanure

1 Comment

...human waste, a number of other stories on the subject came out at the same time: Wasteland: A Journey through the American cloaca in Harper’s Magazine. Journalist Frederick Kaufman traces sewage from New York’s North River Solid Waste Treatment Plant to . . . [spoiler here!] bags of soil at Home Depot. A Mother Earth News reader submitted a photo and description of a handsome sawdust privy made out of an old garden hose box. Very clever! Science D...

Read…

Tomato Review #2 Banana Legs – it don’t look like a banana and it don’t got legs

Mr. Homegrown

August 4, 2008

Gardening, Tomatoes, Vegetable Gardening

6 Comments

It’s raining tomatoes here at the Homegrown Evolution compound and time for the second in our series of tomato reviews. Today, Banana Legs, a determinate variety with yellow flesh and light green streaks. It has a mild, low acid flavor and a meaty texture. Not bad, not thrilling, not nearly is as good as a similar looking tomato we grew last year, Power’s Heirloom. We grew our Banana Legs in a self watering container (SWC) and it produced a respe...

Read…