Search Results for: label/water%20conservation/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

818 results

Eight Things to Consider When Saving Vegetable Seeds

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Gardening, Seeds, Vegetable Gardening
18 Comments
...storing. Seeds harvested wet, such as watermelons, need to be washed with water before drying and storing. Tomato seeds need to be fermented in water for a few days before drying. 8. Storage Moisture is the enemy of seed storage. Those packs of desiccant that come with electronic gadgets can be recycled and used in your seed storage boxes. There’s no shame in buying seeds In our small garden it would be nearly impossible to save the seeds of read...

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Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land

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Miscellaneous
10 Comments
...share with others–one severely degraded over time by neglect, depletion of water, a perhaps climate change]. We’ll proclaim that yes, this place has been desertified, but now we’re going to make it into a living oasis, one where we will respect and nurture a diversity of life. He goes on to speak about the importance of bio-diversity, and how this chain of oasis-like farms could promote this, and serve the larger community. Then he says, We will g...

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Self-Irrigating Gutter Update

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Gardening, Self Watering Containers
4 Comments
...rel. Unfortunately the lower gutter leaked around 50 gallons of stored rainwater down into the garage below (our house is on a hill and the garage is at street level). To prevent this problem in the future I put a manual irrigation timer on the barrel so that if there is a leak, I won’t lose all the water at once. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEeCgGAbvwk If I were to do this project again, I’d also use a refinement that Larry Hall just posted in...

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How To Manage a Compost Pile Using Temperature

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Composting, Gardening, How-to
7 Comments
...get high temperatures can be an indication of too much carbon or a lack of water. To correct, add more nitrogen and water and turn. A loss of temperature could indicate that the pile is going anaerobic. The solution is to add more carbon material and turn. Once the pile has had 15 complete days over 131° F you just let it sit. Compost is done when it is dark, smells like earth and you can’t recognize the original ingredients. It will likely be sev...

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