Mown and Blown: The Problem With Leaf Blowers

October 6, 2014

...ance” landscapes which consist of a lawn and brutally pruned hedges. These water hungry landscapes provide neither food, beauty or habitat. (They are also not enjoyed by people: half of the suburban participants in a UCLA study of home life in SoCal never went into their backyard. Another 25 percent went outside for a few minutes a week.) Yet this style of landscape is our dominant style of landscape because the homeowner doesn’t need to think abo...

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Injera

Mr. Homegrown

March 7, 2007

Bread, Fermentation, Food

2 Comments

...by fermenting overnight a mixture of sourdough starter, whole wheat flour, water, salt and teff flour. Teff is an extremely fine grain grown in Africa. It’s so tiny in fact that a handful of seeds is enough to plant a small farm. Teff is grown in the US by the Teff Company of Caldwell Idaho and is available (though somewhat expensive) at Whole Foods via Bob’s Red Mill. The teff growing folks claim that the iron from teff is more easily absorbed by...

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Shiitake Happens

Mr. Homegrown

April 20, 2009

Mushrooms

11 Comments

...ections, but a combination of high temperatures and too much or too little water resulted in the result you see above, what looks like a cake with a skin disease. And even if we got a crop the cost of the kit was too high to make the process economical. The kit came pre-inoculated with spore that, given the right conditions, should have produced a block full of tasty shiitakes. Instead we got what mushroom folks call “aborts”, mushrooms that grow...

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Guyaba Guayabas (Psidium guajava)

Mr. Homegrown

October 3, 2008

Food, Gardening

9 Comments

...e tropical flavor, and according to creekfreak, some varieties have edible seeds. The fruit off creekfreak’s tree rots really quickly, so don’t look for him to be opening a booth at your local farmer’s market. The tree seems fairly drought tolerant, but more productive with water. Guava expert Leslie Landrum notes that the guava is a “weedy tree, a tree that likes disturbance. It likes to grow along roads and in pastures. Animals eat the fruit and...

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Rainwater Harvesting and Beyond

Mr. Homegrown

September 11, 2008

rainwater harvesting, Water and Power, Water Conservation

4 Comments

...a Garden of Eden. Lancaster empasizes earthworks which capture and channel water where you want it to go, instead of uselessly sending it down the gutter. For those of you in Southern California, Lancaster will be delivering a free talk at the Santa Monica Public Library Monday September 15th at 6:30 p.m. More info via Westside Permaculture Gatherings. If you’re not in SoCal, you can get more information about Lancaster’s work and order a copy of...

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