Cat Litter Compost, Installment #3

August 12, 2013

...you spread it. And then spread it around non-edible plants, or under fruit trees. The fruit trees won’t uptake anything nasty. It’s totally do-able and I’d do it again. But I’d rather do it again in a larger yard, where I could have a big, accessible compost bin. So now I’m doing something new. The New Paradigm I heard about a new kind of litter tray made specifically to work with pine pellets. I hate to be advertising–I get nothing out of this–bu...

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A Review of Masanobu Fukuoka’s Sowing Seeds in the Desert

Mr. Homegrown

December 4, 2012

Gardening, Miscellaneous, Permaculture, Reviews

4 Comments

...second Genesis.” As he puts it, I would mix the seeds of all plants–forest trees, fruit trees, perennials, vegetables, grasses and legumes–as well as ferns, osses, and lichens, and sow them all at once across the desert. Nativists will cringe at this suggestion but to me it makes a lot of sense. Fukuoka says that these desertified areas lack the seeds needed to recover on their own. Sowing Seeds in the Desert is a book steeped in a passionate Budd...

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Loquat Season

Mr. Homegrown

April 8, 2007

Food, Foraging, Gardening

3 Comments

...oduce prodigious amounts of fruit that mostly goes to waste. Many of these trees live in public spaces, the parkway and people’s front yards making them prime candidates for urban foraging i.e. free food. The tree itself has a vaguely tropical appearance with waxy leaves that look like the sort of plastic foliage that used to grace dentist office lobbies back in the 1960s. In short it’s a real tree that looks fake with fruit that nobody seems to c...

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Damned Figs!

Mr. Homegrown

March 14, 2008

Gardening

4 Comments

...tree to choose varieties carefully and, when space is at a premium, plant trees that yield food or medicine. We’ve also never regretted cutting down the forest of useless trees we found when we first moved here–Frederic Law Olmstead cut down a few thousand to build Central Park after all. More on our new front yard orchard soon (which, of course, includes a fig tree). UPDATE: Homegrown Evolution reader Krystel sent us a link to a very amusing sit...

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Jujube and Goji Fever

Mr. Homegrown

January 26, 2009

Food, Gardening

11 Comments

...ner. The Chang also has a distinctive, narrow and upright growing pattern, making it an ideal tree for small spaces. Jujube trees are an amazingly adaptable, deciduous tree, tolerating cold but preferring hot summers to produce good fruit which can be eaten fresh or dried. Once dried, the fruit stores for many months. Goji berries (Lycium barbarum) While Creek Freak came back with his jujube, Mr. Homegrown Evolution snagged three small goji berry...

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