Tartine Bread

A whole wheat loaf fresh out of the oven at Tartine. It tastes as good as it looks.

As a bread baking geek I've set a goal of visiting the best bakeries in every town I'm in. Here in San Francisco, on our book tour, I had the privilege of waiting in the long line outside Tartine Bakery to buy a loaf of bread.

It was well worth the wait. Founded by Chad Robertson, Tartine specializes in naturally leavened breads with dark, thick crusts. Robertson's technique involves moist doughs, no kneading and a long secondary fermentation in a refrigerator. Best of all, Robertson has adapted his methods for the home kitchen in a lavishly illustrated book Tartine Bread. Like the popular no-knead bread recipes circulating the interwebs, you bake your bread in a dutch oven, which simulates the steam injection of commercial ovens--the secret to a thick crust. But with naturally leavened breads such as the recipes in Tartine Bread, you get a much deeper flavor. Natural leavened breads, due to the higher acidity of natural leavens, also last a lot longer before going stale.

I agree with what Robertson says in the introduction to his book, that naturally leavened breads take only a little more effort than yeasted breads and yield much better results. When I return from our book tour I'll share some other tips I've learned about how to bake naturally leavened bread.

Can you folks in Seattle and Portland suggest some good bakeries to visit? Leave a comment . . .

Come see us this weekend in Seattle, Vashon Island or University Place

Sunday May 1: Talking and signing at Elliot Bay Book Company, Seattle. 1 PM

Sunday May 1: Talking and signing at the Vashon Island Land Trust Building, 10014 SW Bank Rd, Vashon, WA 98070. 7 PM.


Monday, May 2: Talking and signing at The University Place-Pierce County Library, 7 PM

Till vs. No Till Poll Results

US Department of Energy

Our highly unscientific till vs. no-till poll results are in:

17% of you said you till
43% of you don't till
23% of you double-dig
15% are undecided

Looks like most of you fall into the permacultural no-till camp.

For more information on no-till ag see the no-till section of our publisher Rodale's website.

Meanwhile, we're on our book tour of Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. Check out our schedule here and we hope to meet all you all!

Meet us this weekend in the Bay Area

This Friday, April 29, we'll be talking and signing at Book Passage in Corte Madera: 7:00 PM

Saturday, April 30th, we're gathering for a forage at Sutro Heights Park, San Francisco. It's supposed to be a pretty day. Bring drinks, and we'll gather a salad to share. Feel free to bring more food, your guide books, gathering implements, things to sit upon, and most especially, any local knowledge you have. Very casual. Meet up at the lookout point. 12 noon.

Why We Travel By Train

Amtrak ain't this grand, but it's a lot better than flying! Photo via the Library of Congress.

We're headed up to Northern California, Oregon and Washington to promote our new book Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World. And, with the exception of the San Francisco to Seattle leg, we're traveling by train. Why do this when it's more expensive, time consuming and probably makes our dear publisher Rodale think we're crazy?

One word: dignity. With train travel:

• No porno-scanners or groping, i.e., no unconstitutional searches.
• I can carry my multi-tool.
• Leg room.
• If I don't like where I'm sitting I can move.
• I can relax, sit at a table, read, work and write.

I could rant about the superiority of rail travel at length but Archdruid John Michal Greer sums it up better than I can in a blog post, "Too Much Energy?" No more flightmares for the Root Simple team!

See a list of our appearances here. 

Contest Winners!

An excuse for another kitten photograph

It's the release day for Making It, and we're celebrating by giving away two copies of the book.

First, we want to say again how much we enjoyed reading all of your tips. They are excellent, without exception, and should be compiled into a book or something. We're pondering on some way to highlight that post so that future readers can find the tips.

Second, we're glad we don't have to choose among them--because that would be impossible.

So we went to an online random generator and asked it to generate 2 numbers between 1 and 203.

It came up with 42 and 119.

(Yes, 42! This delights Kelly's inner geek. Erik doesn't know why it delights her.)

Then we counted the comments, grumbling over the fact they are not numbered. Twice.

And the winners are:

42:

Rachel said...
Birds will not peck at the same fruit/vegetable they pecked yesterday. They'll go for a new piece every time!


119:

Tina said...
I like making stock out of veges that are not going to get eaten and then freezing them. I make it concentrated so that the stock doesnt take up much room in freezer.


So Tina and Rachel, congrats! If you'll both email rootsimple@gmail.com with your shipping addresses, we'll send you a book. Please write soon, or you'll have to wait for your books until we get back from our tour.

And for the rest of you, thanks for entering, and don't worry! We'll be doing more giveaways in the months to come.

Urban Homesteading Trademark Issue on the California Report

Re: the trademark dust up: Erik and our Super Lawyer, Corynne McSherry, were quoted on the California Report today, along with Ruby from the Institute of Urban Homesteading.

Gathering in Portland: Looking for ideas

Hey all,

We're visiting in Portland on Tuesday, May 3rd and Wednesday, May 4th as part of our book tour. On the Tuesday we arrive, we're going to be on KGW's "Live at 7" program. We'll be done by 7:15 and have nothing to do afterward. Would anybody like to meet us downtown?

Our idea is that we could settle ourselves at a pub or cafe, and anybody who feels like it could come and hang out with us. We'll talk about manure the whole night. It'll be fun!!!

One thing we really need to make this happen is a suggestion for somewhere to meet--otherwise we're at the mercy of Yelp. We'll be at Pioneer Courthouse Square, so somewhere within walking distance (or do-able by public transport) would be preferred. It should be quiet enough that we can hear each other speak, and casual enough that we can take up tables whilst nursing a beer or coffee.

So Portlandites(?) Portlanders(?), tell us what you think. We'll let you make the call.

Giveaway: What's your favorite tip?

We want to give away a copy of our new book, Making It. To make this contest interesting for everyone, we're asking you to give us a homesteading-type tip to enter.

Leave us a comment on almost any subject you've had some experience with: gardening, fermenting, brewing, sewing, livestock, foraging, cleaning, cooking, building, general common sense--really, it can be just about anything. And the tip doesn't have to be big and profound. Something like "X is my favorite variety of winter squash" is just fine.

You can also tell us of a mistake you've made, something you've learned the hard way--a mistake is just an inverse tip!

This way, the comments on this page will be a fascinating read in and of themselves. Only one person will get a book, but we'll all get lots of good advice.

-We'll choose the winner using a random number generator.

-The contest will close this Monday night at 10 PM PST. We'll announce the winner on Tuesday.

-If we announce your name, we'll ask you to contact us via email to arrange shipping. This way contestants don't have to put their contact info. in their posts.

So keep an eye out for that post on Tuesday!

ETA on Sunday: We love your tips!!! And we're amazed at the response, so much so that we're going to give away two books instead of one. Keep 'em coming.

Homemade Teeccino

A carob tree heavy with pods

Mrs. Homegrown here:

A while back I kicked coffee, and reduced my caffeine intake down to maybe one cup of green tea a day, and it's been a really good thing. At that time, Root Simple readers wrote in to suggest all sorts of coffee alternatives for me, and I tried a bunch of them. One of them was Teeccino, with which I quickly developed a love-hate relationship.

Teeccino is a line of coffee substitutes based on carob, chicory, various nuts and flavors. It's not one of those instant beverages like Pero: you prepare it by brewing it or steeping it in water. I found it at Whole Foods and tried a bag. I liked it, not because it tastes like coffee--it doesn't--but it behaved in soothing, coffee-like ways. You can put milk in it. It looks like coffee and has a coffee-like body.

It comes in a ton of flavors, like hazelnut and French vanilla, which I avoided because I don't like dessert  coffees, and besides, those flavors remind me of my days working in unpleasant office jobs, where you live for the bad coffee, just to stay awake, and all they have in the office kitchenette is that godawful Irish Cream or Hazelnut flavored artificial creamer, and you actually kind of get used to the stuff, because you're so starved for stimulation...

But I digress.

Stinging Nettles and Cat Allergies

Facebookers have already seen these pics. Kitty, being a fast moving black hole, is very hard to photograph.

Mrs. Homegrown here:

Sorry this is sort of rambling, but context is everything.

Our friend Anne, of the pea-eating-Chihuahua fame, and the chicken-sitting-on-kitten fame, and various other fames, is a frequent animal rescuer. She came over to our house maybe 2 weeks ago with a pet carrier. She said, "Someone dropped this off at my house at 1:00 AM last night, but I have to go to work. Can you take care of it?" Inside the carrier was a tiny black scrap of fur, a three week old kitten.

Thus she launched her evil plan. We took care of the creature on work days, until she came to pick it up, until we got so used to it that we missed it when it wasn't around. You see, she knew that no one could bottle feed a creature like that (teeny wittle paws!) and not go soft in the head and want to keep it forever and always.

Natural Dyeing with Woad

Earlier in the month while the boys stayed at home with Eric, I attended a French General workshop on dyeing with woad (Isatis tinctoria). Woad (from the Brassicaceae family, a cousin to broccoli & cauliflower) has been cultivated in Europe since ancient times. Woad was prized by Napoleon and used to dye his army's uniforms. At one time, the production of woad was the cornerstone of the economy of the south of France.

Backwards Beekeepers on CNN

Nice work Roberta, Amy, Russell and Kirk!

Backward is the new forward!

Till vs. No-Till

A 3-D view of tilling in Russia c1915

My post on lasagna gardening, which linked to a brief article by horticulture professor Linda Chalker-Scott seems to have opened a can of worms, so to speak.  Two issues came up in the comments on my post: the wisdom of using cardboard in a lasagna mulch and the pros and cons of double digging/tilling. Let's address them in separate blog posts, beginning here with double digging/tilling.

There are some very persuasive arguments in favor of a no-till, leave the soil alone approach. Chalker-Scott in the comments section of her post on lasagna gardening says,

. . . double digging (the equivalent of tilling in agriculture) disrupts natural soil building. No-till agriculture is increasingly preferred as being more protective of the soil ecosystem. I think the same philosophy could be applied to home gardens as well. You're right, you can boost production with a more aggressive approach to soil amendment - a similar argument is often made in conventional agriculture (compared to organic agriculture) to till, use excessive fertilizers, pesticides, etc. I guess it depends on how you regard the soil - as a medium for growing vegetables or as an ecosystem (and I'm not being judgmental). It's a philosophical choice.

No-till agriculture advocates argue that tilling oxidizes organic matter leading to a loss in soil fertility and the creation of carbon dioxide which, in turn, leads to global warming. A case can also be made that tilling creates a soil "crust" that interferes with water penetration. And tilling disrupts mycelial networks and other soil organisms that, research has shown, form important symbiotic relationships with plant roots. 

But what about heavily compacted soils? How do you turn a lawn or driveway into a garden? It's in these cases that I, in the past, have used double digging.

Double digging proponents would argue that the practice should be distinguished from tilling in that, unlike tilling, you don't invert the soil structure as much when you double dig. Double digging keeps the same soil profile while loosening heavy compaction. Double-digging advocates distance themselves from the use of roto-tilling machines which invert deeper layers of soil with surface layers that contain more organic matter.

But there are alternatives to double digging and tilling that will break up compacted soils. Scott Kleinrock at the Huntington Ranch turned a former construction parking lot into a productive edible landscape without double digging or tilling. Kleinrock used what I'd call a kind of toolkit of de-compaction strategies:

• The application of a thick mulch (Chalker-Scott suggests a minimum of 12 inches). It's surprising how many earthworms start doing the tilling for you with a thick mulch layer.
• Planting soil busting cover crops with thick tap roots like Daikon radish
• The use of a broadfork or deep spader

Peaceful Valley's "Deep Spader"

A broadfork in action

Broadforks and deep spaders get air and water into compacted soils without the damage tilling can do. Unfortunately broadforks and deep spaders are very expensive (around $200) and heavy. The deep spader Kleinrock used came from Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply. I've tried it and it works nicely, though it's still hard labor. If you knew how to weld you could probably make a home brew deep spader or broadfork. I've also successfully used a regular, inexpensive garden spading fork in moderately compacted soils.

This is clearly a topic on which reasonable people can disagree, but the no-till folks seem to have the upper hand in terms of the science. As with all gardening problems, though, context is king. Environmental factors and economic issues (those expensive broadforks) intersect in our urban gardens in complex ways. You have to make up your own mind. I'd say if you're going to double-dig do it only as a last resort and after considering all the alternatives. While, under some circumstances, I might double-dig I would never till with a roto-tiller or invert soil structure with a shovel. But after seeing the dramatic improvement in soil at the Huntington Ranch in less than a year, I'm more inclined to try de-compaction alternatives. You could also just build raised beds and import better soil (though that strategy gets expensive).

I've created a poll on the right side of this blog on which you can cast a vote on tilling vs. not-tilling vs. double digging. And consider leaving a comment--I'm interested in what readers think about this complex issue.

Paleofuture Farming

From the awesome Paleofuture blog, which chronicles what folks thought the future would look like, a few notions of future farming.

Apparently, this anticipated future (which more or less came to pass) involved "lounge chair gardening."

And, of course, factory farming:

To the generation that came up with these ideas I'll just say that I hope the dinosaur juice that keeps those factory farms humming holds out. Personally, I'm not counting on gardening from the comfort of that hovering lounge chair while I oversee my hydroponic skyscraper operation (architects still seem to be in love with vertical farming schemes). My inner crank tells me that we might just might have get our hands dirty again. But, I have to admit, that top photo does approximate what it looks like to create Root Simple blog posts.

Root Simple and LA Bread Bakers at Artisinal LA

This Saturday Kelly and I will be joining a panel discussion on urban homesteading along with our good friends Craig Ruggless of Winnetka Farms and goat keepers and cheese makers Gloria Putnam and Stephen Rucidel. The panel will take place at Artisinal LA on Saturday April 16th at 2 pm in Santa Monica.

I will also be taking part in a bread baking demo along with the LA Bread Bakers the same day at 1 pm.

More information at artisinalla.com.

Lasagna Gardening Simplified

First popularized back in the 1970s, "lasagna gardening" involves piling up thick layers of cardboard and uncomposted kitchen scraps on top of (sometimes) double-dug soil. The practice is touted as a way of removing lawns and improving soil with little work.

Linda Chalker-Scott, Extension Urban Horticulturist at Washington State University, proposes a vastly simpler version of lasagna gardening.  Chalker-Scott suggests skipping the double digging, cardboard and kitchen scraps. The double digging disrupts soil texture, the cardboard interferes with water penetration (I know this from experience) and the kitchen scraps create a plant nutrient overload. Instead Chalker-Scott suggests simply a very thick layer of mulch--12 inches.

Mulch is often free, as many cities give it away, and it does wonders for the soil. Mulch, in fact, breaks down into soil, retains moisture and creates habitat for earthworms.

Read more in Chalker-Scott's post, "Is lasagna gardening really worth the effort."

California poppy tea

 
Mrs. Homegrown here:

Where we live, this is the poppy time of year. California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) are blooming all over our neighborhood, and most especially in our yard. I have to admit I have a mercenary attitude toward plants, my main thought on meeting one being, "What can you do for me?" California poppies, lovely as they are, have become more interesting to me since I've started consuming them. Now, don't get concerned (or intrigued): the Root Simple compound has not turned into an opium den. California poppies are not part of the famous Papaver somniferum species, and they can't get you high, nor are they addictive. However, they can help you relax.

Dry Farming

Jethro Tull--the agriculturalist not the rock flutist

According to a 2010 report by Ceres "Water Risk in the Municipal Bond Market," Los Angeles ranks number one in water supply risk. But we're not alone. Many other US cities including Atlanta, Phoenix and Dallas also face a future of water insecurity.

Due to these water risks we'd all do well to consider ways to grow edibles without supplemental irrigation. This may sound absurd at first, but I'll note that in our garden we've discovered, quite by accident, that many plants such as prickly pear cactus, cherry tomatoes, cardoon and pomegranates will do just fine in a climate where it doesn't rain for six months out of the year.  Scott Kleinrock at the Huntington Ranch proved that you can grow chard in Southern California with almost no irrigation through a hot summer (the chard thrived in the Ranch's food forest under almost complete shade).

As an avid gardener in a dry climate I certainly use a lot of water for my vegetables. Most modern vegetables are adapted to copious watering. But this was not always the case. A classic book Dry Farming by John Andreas Widtsoe, first published in 1911 and available as a free download in Google Books, describes how many farmers got along without the modern conveniences of supplemental irrigation.

A dry farmed wheat and alfalfa field in Wyoming from Dry Farming

Other than the advice to till frequently (tilling, among other things, destroys beneficial fungal networks), Dry Farming has some good tips:

• Maintain soil fertility 
• Plant deeply
• Plant varieties adapted to dry farming
• Know when to plant
• Pay attention to soil structure

The main takeaway for us home gardeners will be the development of drought tolerant veggies. Native Seed Search is a good start, but seed saving will be the ultimate solution. We're simply going to have to breed drought tolerance back into our water hungry vegetables. Combined with passive water collection techniques such as sunken rather than raised beds, those of us in arid climates can grow a surprising amount of food with a lot less water.

Clarification: dry farming is not growing during the rainy season (which is called "rainfed agriculture"). Dry farming uses strategies to store water in the soil during the rainy season and then grow during the dry part of the year. Though controversial, dry farming traditionally involves tilling.  It also requires much greater spacing of plants. For more information see the website of the California Agricultural Water Stewardship Initiative.

No Need to Knead

The Los Angeles Bread Bakers held their debut demonstration today thanks to the folks at Good. As you can see from the picture above some serious bakers showed up.

Teresa Sitz and Mark Stambler

Teresa Sitz demonstrated her wild yeast no-knead bread. You can read her recipe over on the LABB Facebook page.


Wild yeast breads have a number of advantages over breads made with commercial yeast. Due to higher acidity they keep longer and have a tangy, more complex flavor. Some say they are better for you. I love the magic of creating bread with just flour, water and salt.

Thanks again to Teresa and Mark Stambler for sharing their expertise.

Power of the Patch

Our littlest Ramshackler sits on a hand-me-down car seat whenever we venture for a drive. After six years of use, the cover started to show some wear.

Whistle Stop Book Tour of the Northwest

              Erik does in fact bear an uncanny resemblance to Pierre Trudeau. Credit: Duncan Cameron/National Archives of Canada, PA-136972

Rodale, the publisher of our new book, is sending us on a speaking tour of the Pacific Northwest to promote Making It. Bringing this sort of groovy, DIY info to all you hardcore locavores, transitioners, freegans, goat herds and urban hillbillies in SF, Seattle and Portland seems a bit like bringing coals to Newcastle. But heck, we're not complaining-- we're thrilled to be able to head north into your gorgeous lands.


San Francisco Events:

Friday, April 29, 7 PM: Speaking at Book Passage
Corte Madera Book Passage Store--not the one at the end of Market, the one on the other end of the ferry line: 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera, CA 94925

Saturday, April 30, 12 PM: Meet us at 12 noon on the lookout point of Sutro Heights Park.

We'll take a walk along the cliffs and forage a salad, then hang out and chat while we eat. BYOB and anything else you want to eat or share. Afterward we might retire to the Cliff House for cocktails. If it's pouring rain that day, you'll find us at the Cliff House bar instead of in Sutro.


Seattle Area Events

Sunday, May 1st, 2 PM: Speaking at the Elliot Bay Book Company  
1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122

Sunday, May 1st, 7 PM: Speaking at the Land Trust Building on Vashon Island
This talk is brought to you by a partnership between Books by the Way and the Vashon Island Growers Association (VIGA)

Monday, May 2, 7 PM:  Speaking at  the University Place - Pierce County Library
3609 Market Place W., University Place, WA 98466


Portland Events:

Tuesday, May 3rd: Possibly will do a gathering in some public place this evening, to meet any of you who want to come out and chat. TBA. Suggestions welcome.

Wednesday, May 4, 6-7:30 PM: Lecture at The People's Food Cooperative
3029 Southeast 21st Avenue, Portland, OR 97202

(And before you all ask why we're not speaking at Powell's, the answer is we'd love to, but they're all booked up. The timing wasn't right. We hope someday to speak there, and will definitely be visiting anyway just to look around.)

Los Angeles Bread Bakers Demo This Weekend

First off, along with co-founders Mark Stambler and Teresa Sitz I'm proud to announce the Los Angeles Bread Bakers (LABB). Click on the link to join us via Facebook.

This Saturday April 9th at 2 p.m. LABB will demonstrate how to create a starter (levain) at Good Magazine's Launch Weekend. The event will take place at:

Atwater Crossing
3229 Casitas Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90039

Looking forward to meeting new LABBistas. LABB's goal is to share techniques, put on workshops and build wood fired ovens.  If you're not in LA we hope you'll consider forming bread baking groups all over the world!

Deep Bedding for Chickens

We've got about 5-6" of loose stuff on the floor of our chicken run. Underneath that, it's black gold.

Around this time of year, folks are getting chickens. Some for the first time. So I figured it was time to talk about deep bedding again. I know we've written about it before, in our book, or on this blog, but this advice bears repeating:

Nature abhors bare ground. 

Line your chicken coop and run with a thick layer of mulch.

Doing this is called "deep bedding."

Deep bedding solves a whole lot of chicken-related problems in one easy step:

• It goes a long way toward controlling odor. 
• It reduces flies (it not only absorbs poop, it actually fosters parasites that kill fly eggs)
• It makes the coop area much more attractive to look at. 
• It gives the chickens more to do (ie scratch) which keeps them happy, which keeps them from developing bad behaviors
• It saves you work, because you don't have to clean it out very often. Maybe not at all. Depending on your set up.

(This is a little off topic, but in a similar way we also advocate thick mulch over any bare ground in your yard. It will improve the soil, encourage worms, discourage weeds, conserve water, etc. If we had lots of spare time, money and a big truck, we'd drive around LA dumping mulch on the many, many parched landscapes that desperately need it.)

How deep? What do I use?

The deeper the better. Say 4 or 5 inches to start, and you will add more to that as it breaks down. As to what to use, you can use any dry organic matter--leaves, husks, straw, dry grass clippings, pine needles. We use straw, and a lot of dead leaves fall into the run, too.

If you want to use straw, try this: just toss a few flakes* of straw into the center of the coop, and the ladies will do all the work of distributing it for you. Scouts honor. Go away, come back in an hour, and it will be so level and even, it will look like you spread it yourself.

Start to think about your chicken coop/run as a compost pile rather than as an animal enclosure. That is what it will become. The chickens break down the bedding material, all the veg scraps you give them, and their own manure, through their constant scratching. Over time, the floor of the coop and/or run becomes a deep soft deposit of compost. Ours is sort of like quicksand. We throw all sorts of stuff in there--kitchen scraps, huge stalks of bolted lettuce, armloads of nasturtium, squash rinds--whatever goes in vanishes within a day or two. The hens peck at it until all the good stuff is gone. Then they trample it. Then they bury it. It all becomes one.

Wear and weather break down the bedding, so you will need to add fresh material every so often. You may also choose to harvest the compost that accumulates in the run. When you do so is up to you. We don't harvest more than once a year, but your mileage may vary. When you do clean it out, replace what you took with lots of new bedding.

You will probably want to transfer what you harvest into a compost pile to finish up before it goes into your garden.


Note: The hen house is different

Our hens don't spend any of their waking hours in the hen house, except to visit in the laying box. This means they never scratch around in there, which means this whole "living compost" system just doesn't work in the house. The poop remains where it falls beneath the roost, untouched. Because of this, we have to clean the house out regularly. To make clean up faster, we don't use straw or leaves inside--though we could--instead we use wood shavings, because those scoop out fast and easy, like a cat box. The soiled litter goes into our compost pile.

Hens so hot, they had to be put behind bars!

*Flake, a vocab word: Straw bales are compressed in such a way that when they are unbound, they come apart in sections about 4 or 5 inches thick. These are called "flakes."

Urban Homestead, Urban Homesteading: These Terms Belong to All of Us

Our attorneys at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the law firm, Winston & Strawn, have filed a petition to cancel the bogus trademark registrations for the terms "Urban Homestead" and "Urban Homesteading."

You may read the EFF's press release here, and the actual petition here. It is a thing of beauty. We are very fortunate to have access to the talents of some of the best people in this business.

We hope that this petition will prevail for everybody's sake. It goes without saying that these trademark registrations are ridiculous and hurtful and an insult to the generosity of spirit which is integral to this movement. We help each other--we don't hold each other back.

Our lawyers tell us that the petitioning process takes a while, so don't expect lots of news right off the bat. Just know that the wheels of justice are turning.


(If this is all news to you, read this previous EFF post on the subject. And here's our own original post.)

Bees love poppies

Geoff Lawton Soils Video

Help, I'm turning into a soil geek. I just spent an evening viewing a video entitled Soils featuring permaculturalist Geoff Lawton.

What I like about this video is that it's not just about soil, but Lawton actually shows you what you can do to improve your soil. In the DVD he demonstrates how to build a compost pile (lots of carbon material), contoured vegetable beds, a compost pile heated shower and a simple vermiculture system using an old bathtub to name just a few projects. You get practical tips in a professionally produced DVD. Here's a trailer:



Soils is available for around $40 US on the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia website, which also has an interesting blog. In an email the Institute said that they allow educational screenings of Soils as long as you don't charge admission. So get some friends together, watch this video and then go shovel some manure! It would also make a nice addition to a school library.

Thanks to Scott Kleinrock of the Huntington Ranch for the tip on this one. Scott said the Geoff Lawton Food Forest DVD is also worth viewing.

Meet the drones

Action shot! Check out those huge, beautiful eyes

I found this drone scrambling around on the ground in our yard. I don't know why he was there. Perhaps he was all worn out from nightclubbing. Perhaps the ladies in his hive had booted him out. It's hard to say. But I enjoyed taking a close at him, to appreciate the difference between him and his sisters, the worker bees, first hand.

Worker--Queen--Drone

Drones are longer than the workers, and a lot thicker through the body. Not so large that they'd be mistaken for bumble bees, but they're definitely big, husky boys. The queen is longer than a drone, but much more slender--and anyway, unless you happen to catch her mating flight, you'll never see a queen out and about. So if you spot an extra-large honey bee, it's a drone.

The other dead giveaway for drones is their huge, shining eyes. Drones have one function only: to mate with a virgin queen. Should one come by. And should they be able to catch her. So they have to be on constant lookout, and moreover, they have to be looking up at all times, because she won't be stretched out on a lounge chair, waiting for him to bring her a cocktail. She'll be flying super-high up. He needs those huge eyes to spot her.

(As an aside, I don't know why drone has become a synonym for a mindless worker (e.g. office drones). Drone should be a synonym for a highly privileged but ultimately disposable male, a male who lives off the work of others, his sole function to continue his genetic line, i.e, an aristocrat. I read a P.G. Wodehouse novel in which a gentleman's club--in the historical, English sense of the term, not the euphemistic strip-joint sense--was named the Drone's Club. And that was the best use of drone I've yet encountered.)

The last thing--and the coolest thing--you should know about drones is that they don't have stingers. They cannot sting. Or bite. Or even wound you with a sarcastic remark. They're lovers, not fighters. So if you've always wanted to pet a bee, don't be afraid to pick one up.

Erik has been reading up on the amazing, secret life of drones lately, and I hope he'll post about that soon. It will blow your mind.

Miner's lettuce

Miner's lettuce reminds me of tiny lily pads

I was delighted to find a specimen of this delicious little weed growing in our yard among the poppies: miner's lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata), but I don't think it will thrive.

This plant is native to the West coast of the U.S. (and down into S. America, I believe) but it doesn't do well in LA.* I never see it on the streets in my neighborhood, it's too hot and dry. The only place I ever spot it--and rarely at that--is in wet, shady places in a few parks.

However, it loves the weather up North. In San Francisco, it takes over entire yards. Folks up there seem a little overwhelmed by it--and all I do is marvel that they're not eating it as fast as it can grow.

See, miner's lettuce is one of the best of all edible weeds: tender, mild, succulent. The perfect salad green. Search it out where it is buffeted by sea breezes, and it will also taste of salt.

You can buy seed for this plant and attempt to establish it as a feral green in your yard, or even grow it in beds. I've never tried here--I prefer to hunt my weeds.

Tell me, where else does it grow? How far East has it spread?  Comment if you know it or grow it.

If you want to learn more about miner's lettuce, here's a nice longer article about it at Hunter Angler Gardener Cook


* ETA: I overgeneralized. I should have said "my side of LA." A commenter from Westchester points out she grows it just fine, so folks on the west side of LA and the beach communities should try some seeds, or look for it when you're out.

Los Angeles Announces Parkway Cemetery Program

Merging interest in "green" burials and urban land remediation, the City of Los Angeles just announced a groundbreaking new program: parkway cemeteries. Like many cities across America, Los Angeles has a huge debt, $350 million to put a number on it. So it comes as no surprise that city officials are seeking innovative ways of enhancing revenue sources. 

Most often a tangle of weeds and compacted earth, parkways have seen attention in recent years as space for community orchards and vegetable plots. With LA's new program, for just a $375 application fee and approval of the homeowner, you can designate your final resting spot on the street of your choice.

In announcing the plan Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa positioned the parkway cemetery program as a transportation solution, "Why subject your relatives to lengthy commutes to visit your grave when we can have distributed 'drive-through' cemeteries?" Adding, "We've got all that lawn out there so why not use it?"

A special thanks to Doug Harvey for tipping us off to this story.