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

820 results

The Rain Got Real

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Gardening, Thoughtstylings
...ater level was the highest I’ve ever seen it. The rain garden gets all the water from one half of our roof which I calculate to have been about 1,500 gallons of water in the last 24 hours. To briefly get back to the Žižek book I rambled about last week, I was reminded of Lacan’s notion of the “Real”, that which is unrepresentatible, unthinkable. Subjects such as our own deaths and climate change fall into the category of the Real. The incomprehens...

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A Low-Tech Experiment in Growing Oyster Mushrooms

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Gardening, Mushrooms
14 Comments
...n January 4th, I put the chips in a plastic bin and soaked them in boiling water to pasteurize them and give the oyster mushroom spawn a better chance of growing. I let the wood chips soak overnight. The next day I squeezed excess water out of the chips and put them in my holey (holy?) bucket, alternating layers of wood chips and spawn. I placed the bucket outside under the dense shade of our avocado tree. You can also, by the way, use straw inste...

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Our new front yard, part 5: Constructing a meadow community

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Back to the Garden, front yard series, Garden Design, Gardening
15 Comments
...y vanish or just look pleasantly dry? Some avoid dormancy if you give them water. Some die if you give them water at the wrong time. Oy! Save me from our crazy native grasses. Right now I have three species of native bunching grasses on the slope. The first is Sporobolus airoides (Alkali dropseed). This is the tallest of my grasses. It gets to be three feet tall, with more height from the seed heads, I believe. It’s showy, with nice airy seed head...

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Seaweed Foraging

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Food, Foraging
1 Comment
...’t have time for this so we did it at home. The disadvantage is that fresh water will dissolve seaweed so you have to work quickly and start the drying immediately. Drying can be done in the sun, on a dashboard, in a dehydrator or in an oven at the lowest setting. As it was dark and cold by the time we got home we used Kelly’s step mom’s oven. Our very small Kombu haul dried and ready to use. You should only harvest what you have space and time to...

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De-Cluttering for DIYers, Homesteaders, Artists, Preppers, etc.

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Cleaning, Tidying up
52 Comments
...on your grill, like oatmeal and coffee? If not, how are you going to boil water? If you camp, all your camping equipment can perform double duty in emergencies. I can’t recommend camping enough as the best form of emergency preparedness. Water is essential, and it’s also incredibly awkward and inconvenient to store. There’s no getting around it, though, you’ve got to find a place to keep it We keep ours in BPA free, rectangular 20 gallon containe...

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