Plant Me…..

I won a tastefully decorated address/phone organizer as a prize at an after dinner raffle yesterday. Digitized as I am- which means I store all my addresses and phone numbers on my phone- I sniffed ( silently to myself) in my superior way -”I will hardly need this antiquated thing but I will pretend [...]

Lazy? You can still have a garden!

Having grown up in an era where only what caused you pain was worthwhile-you know-suffering is a sign of virtue, I was delighted to be introduced by Brenda in 1991 to the writing of Ruth Stout. Brenda, even then an avid fan of Mother Earth News, showed me her copy of Stout’s books- How [...]

Desert Greenhouses

Home Grown Food Network is about networking with other gardeners, especially desert gardeners, so that we can encourage each other to express ourselves as we experience gardening in the desert climate and share any information we gain. This week we had a good example of how gardeners can help each other by sharing information. [...]

Kiss the Earth

When his Holiness, the late Pope John Paul II visited Ireland in 1979 his kissing of the earth on arrival in Dublin raised eyebrows, mine included! “What’s this”, we asked ourselves, “does it mean he wants to be a patriot” , and, the more political of us asked, “will he kiss England too?”.
Of course [...]

Radical?

Time-tested wisdom can sometimes strike the contemporary mind as “radical”

Not All Boomers Are Rich

An American turns 50 once every seven seconds ! (according to the MIT AgeLab). But only 1 in 10 Baby Boomers can be classified as Boomer Elites, defined as having an annual household pretax income of USD 150,000, or USD 100,000 if retired. That means 9 out of every 10 have an income smaller [...]

Update on Growing Desert Perennial Tomatoes and Peppers: Summer Is Coming Again

Brenda Barnes, Home Grown Food Network President
April 10, 2008
I read somewhere that tomatoes stop growing when the soil reaches a temperature of 90 degrees. It is nowhere near that yet here near Palm Springs, California. The outside temperature hardly gets to 90 most days, and then for only a few hours at the most. The [...]

Potatoes in the desert, luck or science?

My Granny taught me how to grow potatoes in the rocky soil of Spiddal, County Galway. Of course I always wanted to grow our own potatoes, but my memories of how difficult they were to grow seemed to have created a barrier between me and a successful harvest. In fact it seemed [...]

Fence Extension Panel Made from Recycled Wine Bottles and Bed Frames Almost Completed

Brenda Barnes, Home Grown Food Network President
April 4, 2008
The week after I finally started on the recycled wine bottle and bed frame fence panels, I almost finished the first one, at least enough to put it up. It took four hours altogether to get that panel ready. Peter and I put it up [...]

First, You Must Empty Your Mind!

If communicating with plants is a “come as you are” exercise, how come people always say you must “empty your mind” before you can talk to them? If you are like me, “emptying your mind” is impossible. I have an inner chatter which, as soon as I try to stop it, gets worse. [...]