A Garden of Your Own

Home Grown Food Network’s Ultra Low Cost House Demonstration at Desert Hot Springs, California, is using a corner of the East Yard to demonstrate that you can grow potatoes in recycled garbage bags. The demo area is in the corner as far away from prying cameras as we can manage, and near a source of [...]

Grocery Gaps

The number of people living in what health experts have called a ‘food desert’—an urban area with few supermarkets and, therefore, limited access to cheap, healthful food- is on the increase. I wrote about this last year when I experienced it myself during a vacation in Escondido, but normally living within a two mile [...]

Plastics

Remember this dialogue in The Graduate (1967)?
Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin (played by Dustin Hoffman): Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?
( more quotes from the movie)
Back when The Graduate was first released, [...]

Earth Day 2009

Escaping My Mother’s Life and Creating My Own:
A Love Song for Earth and Mother’s Days
April 22, 2009,
[...]

Potato Grown in Garbage Bag Makes Movie History!

I am updating my log of events surrounding the Home Grown Food Network experimental house project in Desert Hot Springs, California. I was recording the fact that, while we were out of town about three weeks ago, a professional camera crew mounted a tripod, and using ladders to climb on to peer over [...]

Growing Potatoes in a Garbage Bag

March 24, 2009, North Palm Springs, California
About three weeks ago a brochure came in the mail about a book from Rodale Press about Lasagna Gardening. We already knew the methods. They are virtally the same as permaculture, forest gardening, no-work gardening, etc., with some modifications always necessary for where the garden is and [...]

If You’re Irish, Come Into the Garden!

Although I don’t want to throw a damper on anyone’s enjoying a Green Beer on the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day, it is sobering to realize that many countries in the world today are still battling against circumstances identical to those which caused the famine in Ireland in 1845. Reliance by the poor on a [...]

King Carrot’s birthday bash

My sixtieth birthday arrived last week and I wanted to spend the day doing all the activities I would like to occupy my next forty years with…like growing food in our yard, and nourishing its soil.
But what should I plant in my yard? I chose carrots although I don’t know [...]

Birds and butterflies

When I went to where the car was parked under our grapevine covered arbor last week I noticed there was a small dove resting peacefully on the roof of the car. This graceful little bird did not move even when my face was level with its head less than a foot away! It, I [...]

Mental Capital

This morning I noticed the first tomato ( bottom right of pic beside the 11 of the date ) of our latest crop on a vine that survived the very hot summer we had here. On closer inspection of this hardy vine I noticed several more are growing there. “So much for [...]