Dudley brittonii “Giant Chalk Dudleya”

March 8, 2014

...ifornia, an excellent bonus is that this plant does well with only monthly water. It also thrives in a pot. Mature, it’s around 18 inches across. Annie’s does mail order and we’ve had a lot of luck with their plants. I visited the nursery on a blogger junket last year and was very impressed with the variety and quality of the seedlings–no root bound plants! Now I’ve got to remind myself that a garden needs to be viewed from an overall design persp...

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Dramm’s Breaker Nozzle: My Favorite Watering Implement

Mr. Homegrown

October 17, 2013

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

12 Comments

...me most at the demo was Dramm’s simplest products, the Heavy-Duty Aluminum Water Breaker Nozzle combined with their Aluminum Shut-Off Valve . The breaker nozzle provides a gentle shower, much like a Haws Watering Can and would be appropriate to use on seedlings and vegetables. The shut-off valve is extremely durable. Neither item has plastic parts. They are sold separately. While a lot more expensive than those plastic watering wands at the big bo...

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Choosing the Perfect Tortilla Press

Mr. Homegrown

April 9, 2014

Food

17 Comments

...you do is get masa harina (a limed corn flour), mix it roughly 50/50 with water and let the dough rest for a half hour to an hour. Next, you roll the masa into little 2 inch balls and press them between a plastic bag inserted into the tortilla press. The last step is to heat them on the stove for one minute on each side. Making your own masa from scratch is much harder (I tried it once for tamales and found that it’s a job best outsourced). But y...

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Easter Lessons

Mrs. Homegrown

April 21, 2014

Chickens, Domesticus, Mistakes

25 Comments

...t matter. The technique was simple–a one to one ratio of organic matter to water, boiled 15 minutes or more, cooled, and then spiked with vinegar. The eggs soak in this mix for as long as you like, perhaps overnight, refrigerated. I tried out onion skin (russet dye), red cabbage (bluish dye) and hibiscus flowers(purplish). All looked well. I went to bed imagining the rich, solid colors I’d find the next day, the arty pictures from the original pos...

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Josey Baker’s Awesome Adventure Bread (gluten free!)

Mrs. Homegrown

May 19, 2014

Bread, Food

13 Comments

...erent. It works. It’s made of nuts, seeds and oats, moistened with oil and water and held together with chia and psyillium husks… [Psyllium what? We’d never used psyllium seed husks before, but they are apparently used in gluten free baking to help bind ingredients–like chia, they are mucilaginous. We found them in the dietary supplement section of Whole Foods, for what it’s worth. Be sure to get the husks, not powdered psyllium seed, which is a l...

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