The Wonder of Worms

May 21, 2015

Back to the Garden, Gardening, Vermiculture

...oil. Every time you water your plant, the castings will release nutrients. Making tea is just extra work for you. Humans like to complicate things. Worms leave their castings in or on the soil. We should, too. (Leave the worms’ castings, that is, not our own castings. We needn’t alarm the neighbors.) Third, there’s aerated compost tea (ACT), as popularized by Elaine Ingham. This is made by brewing a tea from castings with the help of an air pump,...

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Grief is the pathway to action

Mrs. Homegrown

April 9, 2015

Back to the Garden, Thoughtstylings

28 Comments

...for repeatedly arriving at school covered in sap because I’d been hugging trees all the way to school.) But the grief is there, the endangered elephant in the room, which we walk around and talk past, and do our best to ignore by making our lives ever busier. And anyway, what are we supposed to do about it? Suburbia by David Shankbone. Tract housing in Colorado Springs Action I think there is something to do about it–about both the grief and the...

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June: National Bathroom Reading Month

Mr. Homegrown

June 26, 2008

Thoughtstylings

2 Comments

...o eating them. This is where we learned how to build the portable run that is in our back yard that we’ll blog about soon. Plans for that run can be seen here. Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply Catalog. A great source for seeds, bare root trees and many other items. We ordered our fig and pomegranate trees, our grape vines and our cover crop seeds from Peaceful Valley and have been happy with all of these items. Of course, here’s a book that sh...

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Salted Spruce Tips and Pine Infused Garlic Salt

Mrs. Homegrown

July 1, 2016

Food, Foraging, How-to, Recipes

5 Comments

...arning.] There is surprising flavor variation among conifers, even between trees of the same type growing right next to one another. Moreover, the flavor of a particular tree will fluctuate over the course of the year. If you’re looking for edible pine, you just have to taste test until you find something nice. Most of the pines I found on this outing were really dry despite the season–thank you, drought– and tasted bland or unpleasant. I found on...

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Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land

Mrs. Homegrown

June 19, 2013

Miscellaneous

10 Comments

...orocco. There, he’s built a dryland paradise, lush with heat adapted fruit trees, like pomegranates, mulberries and jujubes. He also grows olives, agave, citrus and poetic herbs like lavender and coriander. Bousfiha has built an oasis in a difficult climate and envisions of chain of oases spread around the world: oases for both nature and humanity. These oases are not carefully preserved bits of paradise, but rather are reclaimed from degraded spa...

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