A Cheap Soil Testing Service

September 22, 2009

...ests from your county extension service, but not here in Los Angeles. Some time ago I answered a reader’s question about where to get soil testing done, only to have to correct my response several times. Last week, Homegrown Evolution pal and the editor of Cool Tools, Elon Schoenholz, gave me a definitive answer on where to send soil for testing: the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Plant and Soil Sciences Soil and Plant Tissue T...

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New Chicken!

Homegrown Neighbor

September 22, 2009

Animals, Chickens

4 Comments

...ittle cage she went. I’ll let her out again tomorrow when I can spend more time supervising. Hopefully they will establish the pecking order and everything will calm down. She is an araucana type chicken and seems very sweet and mellow. She lets me pick her up and seems to enjoy being hand fed. Upon being attacked by the others, she instantly submitted, crouching in a corner. She laid an egg yesterday and it was a pretty pale green color. I’m very...

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City Repair LA

Mr. Homegrown

September 13, 2009

Thoughtstylings

8 Comments

...ts that house the Ecovillage. Whole families came and the kids had a great time participating in what became a giant coloring book. At the conclusion of a day of painting under the bright LA sun, a piñata was hoisted, bashed apart and candy rained down across the colorful new street mural. Jimmy Lizama operating the piñata. The mural incorporates lizard and ocean motifs, and enhances the crosswalks in the intersection, which is adjacent to a publi...

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Outdoor Sink Makes Water Recycling Simple

Homegrown Neighbor

August 13, 2009

Design

16 Comments

...r sink and easily recycle my water. Plus, there is less dirt and compost in my kitchen sink. This is the kind of so-simple-its-brilliant stuff I just love. While I would like my entire house to have a greywater system, that isn’t really feasible at this time. The house is old and the pipes are very difficult, perhaps impossible, to access. So we are starting with the sink and soon we are doing a simple greywater system from the washing machine as...

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Doing the doo-doo with you

Mr. Homegrown

November 10, 2007

Composting

4 Comments

...udy to suggest that “the right rhyme for the right crime will get you less time.” For us we’re hoping that Dundon’s compost will give life to the dead soil excavated and spilled out on the front slope of our house during extensive foundation work that we had to complete earlier this year to keep our 87 year old house from sliding down the hill. Dundon says that his “Doo Doo” becomes a sort of life-giving satellite of the Garden of Eden he has crea...

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