Make Mag

June 5, 2009

Events

...In MAKE Volume 18 you’ll learn how to make an automatic garden, heat your water with the sun, monitor and share your home energy usage, and more.” Here’s just a few of the many exciting projects: Chicago comrade Nancy Klehm tells you how to compost human waste. Homegrown Evolution has an article on how to install a drip irrigation system in your vegetable garden. Eric Muhs tells you how to collect rainwater to use for flushing your toilet (very c...

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Humanure Dry Toilet Made From a Milk Crate

Mr. Homegrown

July 18, 2009

Composting, Design, How-to, Humanure

157 Comments

Modern toilets take two valuable resources, water and nitrogen rich human waste, and combine the two to create a problem: sewage. In a dry or “humanure” toilet, you cover your deposits with a layer of non-toxic sawdust. Once the toilet is full you dump the contents into your outdoor humanure pile and compost the waste at high temperatures for at least a year. You can then use that compost as fertilizer for plants. The ubiquitous five gallon bucke...

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005 Amy and Vince of Tenth Acre Farm

Mr. Homegrown

June 25, 2014

Gardening, Permaculture, Podcasts

10 Comments

...nce describe the trial and error process they went through to perfect this water harvesting system. We also discuss the beautiful result you see above–a front yard that combines edibles as well as flowers that both please the neighbors and provide habitat for beneficial insects. The magic extends out into the parkway which is planted with a cherry tree guild. Amy and Vince go on to discuss how belonging to a CSA inspired them to cook from scratch...

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The tale of the tub scrubber

Mrs. Homegrown

February 13, 2014

Cleaning, Domesticus

16 Comments

...and found it worked amazingly well in conjunction with the vinegar, soapy water and baking soda I use to clean the bathroom. It didn’t hold dirt or get grungy. Only now, after all this time, has it started to deteriorate and leave little purple bits of itself behind after a scrub. This is not a deep post — I just wanted to point out that sometimes we can make good use of things which would otherwise end up in the garbage. Purple Puff is finally g...

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Bad Forager: Mistaking Hemlock for Fennel

Mrs. Homegrown

October 31, 2013

Food, Foraging, Mistakes

12 Comments

...of seeds.” The rest of the class made noises of dismay. Someone offered me water. It was really embarrassing. Dosage is everything with poisons, and I was not worried about two or three maybe-swallowed-maybe-chewed-and-spit seeds. Especially not dried up, sun baked seeds. Pascal wasn’t worried either, and waved away all the concern, distracting us with the tale of how he ate some fresh hemlock leaves in a an early foraging error and spent hours vo...

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