Natural Products Expo West: The Good and the Ugly

March 10, 2014

Food

...the expo are highly processed and high in sugar. Just because something is labeled “gluten free” or “GMO free” does not make it healthy. Getting beyond the nutrition issues most of these “natural” processed foods also taste, frankly, terrible. Out of the hundreds of products I tasted and reviewed at the expo there were a only a few interesting items–literally one out of a thousand. Most were made by small independent entrepreneurs willing to take...

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Cold brewed tisanes, teas and coffee: Your summertime best friends

Mrs. Homegrown

July 25, 2016

Food, Foraging, Herbs

8 Comments

...ried nettle cold brew. Cold brewed nettles taste a little less like a cook vegetable than hot brewed nettles. Sometimes I mix nettles and mint half and half, to make the nettles a little more sprightly. Extreme wonkery over iced tea and iced coffee I am a lazy person. I enjoy sitting in my proverbial armchair and reading about other people’s obsessive quests to make things like the perfect cold brewed iced tea, but when it comes time to make it my...

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Saturday Tweets: Christmas Eve Edition

Mr. Homegrown

December 24, 2016

Saturday Linkages

3 Comments

...QuVo — Medieval Manuscripts (@BLMedieval) December 20, 2016 Is your #Christmas cactus an impostor? Probably! Find out what it really is! #garden #houseplant #holiday https://t.co/qogcJNggqm pic.twitter.com/4qsmEgfBsZ — John Porter (@WVgardenguru) December 19, 2016 It's time to plant your winter vegetable garden (and gloat on Facebook) https://t.co/fOOnYZXiNl — Root Simple (@rootsimple) December 19, 2016 Life In Nara Through Japan’s 72 Microsea...

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Stop Digging! The Benefits of No-Till and Cover Crops

Mr. Homegrown

June 7, 2019

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

4 Comments

...mercial agriculture I think it’s safe to extrapolate their results to home vegetable gardens. The latest issue of California Agriculture sums up the study, Symbiotrophic fungi expand the surface area of roots, allowing roots greater access to water and nutrients (in exchange for carbon). Fungi, however, are more sensitive than other microorganisms to physical disturbance. Adopting no-till as a conservation management practice eliminates or greatly...

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California’s Drought and What To Do About It

Mr. Homegrown

February 6, 2014

Thoughtstylings, Water and Power

33 Comments

...less water and encourage beneficial wildlife. I consider them part of the vegetable garden, in a way. I just made a major change to our laundry to landscape greywater system–more on this in another post. I’ve consulted historical irrigation data to more intelligently program our drip irrigation system. Keep in mind that 77% of California’s water use goes to agriculture (the media tends to forget this). Residential water use is a small part of the...

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