Greywater Workshops in Los Angeles

The folks at the Greywater Action Team asked me to spread the word on a few workshops they are doing in the LA area in October:

Yet More Urban Homesteading Mistakes

My new excuse: I didn't write it, the kitten did!

Three of my favorite Root Simple compound blunders happened this week.

Yesterday I announced a "Vermincomposting" class. I meant vermicomposting, of course, but I'd point out that it is good to remember that vermin are actually compostable, along with everything biological --including bloggers.

Earlier this week I meant to mention Native Americans  but, due to the lazy application of spell checking software this came out as "Naive Americans".  Now, as I'm sure most readers of this blog would agree there actually is a class of Naive Americans. Maybe they'll get around to opening some casinos. Oh, wait, Naive Americans go to casinos, they probably don't operate them. This mistake reminds me of when the UCLA student newspaper, in a similar spell checking blunder, announced that the orchestra I was in would be playing Beethoven's "Erotica Symphony".

Lastly, I stained some cement pavers with iron sulfate and blogged about it. What I forgot to mention is that, the day before, I had accidentally reached for the bag of garden sulfur rather than iron sulfate and carefully brushed all 16 pavers with sulfur. The next day, noticing that nothing had happened, I realized that rather than staining the pavers I had, every so slightly, acidified them.

Time for those much delayed mindfulness exercises.

Upcoming Classes: Edible Gardening and Vermicomposting

A reminder: we have two very talented speakers and educators coming to the Root Simple compound to teach a series of classes. Sign up soon--they are selling out fast.

The first is Darren Butler teaching his Beginning Vegetable Gardening series, starting Oct. 4, and his Intermediate series starting Oct. 18th. The second is Nancy Klehm's teaching an in-depth Vermicomposting class on October 23rd. 


Details below:

Iron Sulfate as a Concrete Stain

My concrete Platonic solids stained with iron sulfate.

I'm not a big fan of concrete in the garden. It raises soil alkalinity (a problem for us, here in the Southwestern US) and it prevents rain from infiltrating into the ground. That being said, concrete is occasionally useful and/or unavoidable.

But I also don't like the color of bare concrete, nor can I afford the high price of concrete stains. Thankfully there's a cheap way to stain concrete with iron sulfate, a mineral supplement you can get at nurseries in the Western US (it can be harder to find elsewhere, but Amazon caries it).

Iron Sulfate gives concrete a pleasing, rust colored stain. I recently ended up with a bunch of patio pavers that I stained with iron sulfate in a concrete mixing tray using about a quarter cup per gallon of water. You can also mop it on. Varying the strength of the iron sulfate/water solution you use will increase or decrease the intensity of the stain. Remember that there's no going back, though. Once stained you can't get it out.

For more info about iron sulfate as a concrete stain see How I Stained my Concrete Floor.

Clean your hands with olive oil

I was just outside staining a piece of wood and got oil stain all over my hands. A bit of olive oil took it right off. These days, olive oil (or any cooking oil, really) is my first resort whenever I've got something staining, greasy, sticky or icky on my hands. I'm pretty sure we've written about this before--but it bears repeating: There's no need to expose your skin to harsh chemicals like turpentine or paint thinner.

Usually oil alone will do the trick. For tough jobs you can grit up the oil with a few shakes of salt or baking soda. Sometimes a mix of oil and soap works better.

A sad but true story: As an art student, I was taught to thin my oil paint and clean my hands and brushes with turp. I often painted holding a turpentine dampened rag in one hand for hours on end. I wiped my turp soaked brushes on my jeans ('cause, you know, it looked cool). I cannot imagine how much turpentine I absorbed into my skin over the years. It was only much later that I discovered I could clean my brushes and hands just as effectively with oil.

Oil dissolves oil. Oil dissolves a lot of things. Keep it mind.

Scrubbin' It

Say hello to my new friend the KingSeal Stainless Steel Scrubber, Heavy Duty Commercial Size. If you're doing the cast iron cookware thing, as we are, you're going to need a scrubber. And this puppy is the Hummer of scrubbers (apologies for that metaphor) and far sturdier than the usual flimsy supermarket scrubbers. It was gifted to me by Steve Rucidel, who owns a restaurant--so this is an item you'll have to seek out at your local restaurant supply store.

Sadly, made in China--but what ain't these days?

Now if only I didn't have to do the dishes!

Mrs. Homegrown here:  

This is indeed a fine, stout scrubbie, but as at least one commenter says, it may not be the best thing for the cast iron. For indeed, if your cast iron is well seasoned, food should come off a rag, or a couple scrapes with a flat spatula. Unless you've really burnt dinner or something.  I'm laughing right now that Erik should put forth opinions on scrubbing cast iron, when in fact he's very, very good at avoiding cleaning it day to day. He'll do dishes, but "forget" the pans on the stove. Forget them for, like, what is it now...15 years?  He's excited by the sturdy, attractive qualities of this object, and the fact his buddy Steve gifted him it--but he asked me to post this clarification re: the cast iron.

Banty Break-In! Lingerie Layer Strikes Again!

photo by Anne Hars

Above is evidence from the shocking scene in a local closet. Recently one, possibly two, bantam hens broke into an unidentified house and adopted a brassiere as a nest.

Like Root Simple

Despite my mixed feelings about Facebook (we're doing a lot of work for free for all those marketers, not to mention the creepy privacy issues), I try not to let perfection be the enemy of the good. Facebook can be a useful tool for interacting with folks. And I love hearing from you, our dear readers. So I've finally got around to creating a fan page for Root Simple. Please "like" us:

Vermicomposting Class

If you live in or around LA, we encourage you to take this unique class that we're hosting in the Silver Lake area. While it's pretty easy to get basic information on starting a worm bin, it's rare to be able to dig deeper, especially with a teacher as knowledgeable as Nancy Klehm.

GET YOUR LOOP ON!
A workshop on extreme vermicomposting for the city dweller.

October 23, 2011
9am – 1pm

The World's Most Beautiful Okra

If you live in a warm climate, okra is easy to grow and both beautiful and tasty. I spotted this variety growing at the Huntington Ranch: Burgundy Okra from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.The stems and seed pods are a deep and vibrant burgundy--a very stunning plant for your vegetable garden.

While not as striking, this year I grew Clemson Spineless okra from seeds I saved. And thanks to a tip (can't remember where I heard this) I'm having an easier time harvesting the pods. One of the problems with a small patch of okra is that, initially, you get a sporadic harvest. And you've got to pick the pods before they get too big and tough. So I've been picking a few and day and tossing them in a bag in the freezer until I have enough to cook with.

As for cooking okra I leave the pods whole as I ve been told this reduces the sliminess some people find objectionable. And pile on the spices! My favorite recipe is this Iraqi stew called Bamia. Bamia and rice makes for the perfect late summer dinner.

Mrs. Homegrown here:

I just had to second this post--this is an outstanding, gorgeous plant, pretty enough to be purely ornamental. The picture above doesn't sell it. Let's just say that the second I saw it in the Huntington Ranch, I said, "We're planting that next year."

The Big To-Do List

Robert Heinlein, in his book Time Enough For Love, suggests a list of skills everyone should know,

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

In the planning process for our first book The Urban Homestead we used a big piece of taped together paper to come up with our version of Heinlein's skill set. Most of the subjects on that paper, everything from vegetable gardening to cargo bikes, ended up in the book or in our second book Making It. Now, we don't expect everyone to master all the things in our books, but it doesn't hurt to have a cursory knowledge of, say, greywater plumbing or compost pile construction, even if you live in a Manhattan apartment. You never know when you might have to roast a pig in a pit (that will be in our next book!).

One of my favorite list of things one should know is contained in the old Whole Earth Catalog. A few weeks ago I was leafing through my copy of the WEC and realized that I had done most of the things in it (not necessarily well, mind you). Well, everything except natural child birth, large puppets and mime.

I believe we're entering the time of the self-taught generalist. But, looking at Heinlein's list, I've got a lot of things I have yet to master. Which leads me to ask you, our dear readers, what topics and skills you're interested in learning. What's on that skill to-do list? Leave some comments!

Thanks to the Urban Survival Podcast for that Heinlein quote.

Urban Homesteading Mistakes: Landscape Fabric

Since you all seem to enjoy accounts of our many failures around the Root Simple compound, I thought I'd share what must be one of the worst mistakes I've made. It's a error up in our great chandelier of failures along with buying a 91 year old house on a hill with a bad foundation.

Two words for you: landscape fabric--that plastic stuff sold in rolls at big box stores that allegedly blocks out weeds. Just after we bought our "crack" house I started constructing brick paths and decomposed granite walkways (another mistake we'll blog about later). I thought it would be good idea to lay down landscape fabric to keep weeds from poking up. So why is landscape fabric a bad idea?

1. It's made of plastic.
2. It rips.
3. It just plain doesn't work.

After a few years Bermuda grass will inevitably poke up through it and you'll end up with what you can see in the photo above. To repeat: landscape fabric doesn't work and is a waste of money.

My favorite alternative is a very thick (minimum 4-inch, but preferably more) layer of mulch. The added benefit with mulch is that you build soil over time. With landscape fabric you just add another piece of plastic to the landfill. I know some folks swear by cardboard, and in certain situations cardboard is probably OK, but I still prefer, when possible, just piling up the mulch. You get better water penetration with mulch and you don't have the problem of bits of cardboard floating up to the surface.

So, my two cents: don't add landscape fabric to your landscape.

City of Memphis Cites Front Yard Vegetable Garden

From Mr. Brown Thumb via Kitchen Gardeners:

"This week Adam Guerrero, a math teacher at Raleigh-Egypt High School in Memphis, TN., along with three students became lawbreakers after they continued to tend to a garden after it was deemed a neighborhood nuisance. Guerrero was cited for violating city ordinances 48-38 and 48-97. His crime, as reported by the Memphis Flyer, consists of failure to maintain "a clean and sanitary condition free from any accumulation of rubbish or garbage" at his Nutbush home.

Yet another city bureaucracy has decided to crack down on a front yard vegetable garden. What makes this particularly annoying is that the homeowner is a teacher who is using the front yard garden to show his students how to grow food.

The folks at Kitchen Gardeners put together the following ways you can help:
1. Write to Judge Larry Potter at larry.potter@shelbycountytn.gov in support of Adam Guerrero's garden. Please be respectful. You are an ambassador for the kitchen garden cause.
2. Join the Facebook page called "Save Adam Guerrero's Garden," where you can show your support and receive updates about his case.
3. Sing your outrage from rooftops on Twitter using the #WarOnGardens hashtag.
4. Sign an online petition at change.org in support of the garden, which will be sent to the judge hearing Guerrero's case.

Update: Memphis Root Simple Reader Bridgmanpotery sent a link to a local article that has more details on this story. It all started with a neighbor dispute involving a cat and a scratched 1991 Cadillac Seville!

Edible Landscaping and Gardening Classes With Darren Butler

Consulting Arborist and Ecological Landscape Designer Darren Butler will be teaching two classes at the Root Simple compound starting next month. I'm currently taking a class from Darren right now at the Huntington and to say it's amazing is an understatement. If you're interested in taking either of these two classes email Darren at darren@pobox.com. Will be great to meet you all! Sign up soon as room is limited.


GROW LA VICTORY GARDENING BEGINNING CLASSES
In partnership with the LA County Master Gardener Program

In Silver Lake: hosted by Root Simple
Tuesday and Thursday evenings, Oct 4, 6, 11, 13, 6:00 to 9:00pm
$85 early registration for payments received by September 23, $95 thereafter
$25 per single class if available
Silver Lake series is filling up quickly

Recommended for those who have moderate organic gardening skills, are new gardeners, have moved to Southern California after gardening elsewhere, or who haven't been satisfied with their garden yields.

Expected topics include seed starting, seasonality and what to do when, building raised beds, choosing containers, plant selection, transplanting, soil preparation, irrigation, wise water use, pest management (weeds, diseases, insects), beneficial insects, composting, harvesting, and seed saving.

INTERMEDIATE ORGANIC GARDENING FOR SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Hosted by Root Simple in Silver Lake
Tuesday and Thursday evenings,Oct 18, 27, Nov 1, 3, 6:00 to 9:00pm
$115 early registration for payments received by October 7, $125 thereafter
$35 per single class if available
Special combined pricing for both courses hosted by Root Simple (if available):
$185 early registration for payments received by September 23, $200 thereafter

Class topics:
Session 1: Intermediate Vegetable Gardening and Nontoxic Pest Management, including methods to maximize year-round harvest in Southern California
Session 2: Soil Science, Intermediate Composting, and Aerated Compost Tea
Session 3: Drip System Construction and Best Practices
Session 4: Fruit-Tree Care, Planting, and Pruning

Broom Corn--or is it Broomcorn?

Mrs. Homegrown here:

This summer I suggested we plant broom corn for no other good reason than I saw the seed pack at the nursery and thought it would be fun to make a broom. (This sort of temporary insanity often overtakes me in the seed aisle.) So without knowing anything at all about broom corn or broom making we planted a block of the stuff. Maybe I should have done a little research into broom making before planting, but I let it slide 'til harvest time. It's not a disaster--I'm still going to try to make a broom. But now I know more and would do things a little differently if I was serious about the broom biz.

I'm going to share with you what I know about growing and harvesting broom corn to make brooms. Making the broom will have to be another post.

Seed Mania

Sea Buckthorn. Image by Maggi_94

I'm still hyperventilating from all the lectures and exhibitors at the National Heirloom Exposition in Sonoma that I attended last week. I resisted the urge to buy too many seeds. Well, I sort of resisted this urge. I ended up coming back with:

Early Stone Age Wheat from Bountiful Gardens, the seed company founded by John Jeavons. I've grew a few Bountiful Gardens seeds this summer with great success (particularly their summer, late to bolt lettuce). I'm looking forwards to growing the world's smallest ancient wheat field (2 square feet) this winter. Ancient wheat is known for being difficult to thresh and clean. At least I won't have much to harvest!

Perpetual Spinach Chard, also from Bountiful Gardens. From their catalog description, "Rare, fine old European strain of Swiss Chard. Smaller smooth dark-green leaves, small mid-ribs. Frost and bolt resistant, needs water in a dry spell."

Sea Buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) from Bountiful Gardens. The fruit of this berry producing shrub can be found in Armenian and Russian markets here in LA. I was introduced to it by my friends at Tularosa Farms. It's difficult to germinate so that plan is to gift the seeds to the TF folks and hope that they give us seedlings (an evil plan, I admit).

I also picked up some crimson clover and globe artichoke seeds from the Bountiful Gardens folks.

Desert Chia from Native Seed Search. Yes it is that chia, of Chia Pet fame. Chia is an ancient herb used by Native Americans for medicine and food.

Chadwick's Sweet Pea from Seed Dreams out of Port Townsend, WA. I really like having some sweet peas in the garden and this variety caught my eye, for its dark purple color and the fact that it's from the late Alan Chadwick.

Let me know if you've grown any of these oddball plants and how it went.

The Practical Beekeeper by Michael Bush

“There are a few rules of thumb that are useful guides. One is that when you are confronted with some problem in the apiary and you do not know what to do, then do nothing. Matters are seldom made worse by doing nothing and are often made much worse by inept intervention.”-Richard Taylor

Michael Bush, in his new book on natural beekeeping, The Practical Beekeeper: Beekeeping Naturally, begins with Taylor's quote, which could just as easily apply to gardening or many other areas of our lives. Yet doing nothing is one of the hardest things for us Homo sapiens to wrap our busy heads around. Nassim Taleb is fond of pointing out the huge number of medical mistakes that could easily have been avoided by the doctor having the courage to not intervene with some needless procedure or pharmaceutical. Up until some time in the 20th century, in fact, you were actually better off not going to see a doctor.

Michael Bush's The Practical Beekeeper is the new bible of natural no-treatment beekeeping. Bush's non-interventionist approach is based on the work of Dee and Ed Lusby and is at odds with conventional (beekeeping associations and academics) reliance on chemical treatments, re-queening, artificial insemination etc. Beekeeping, in my and Michael Bush's opinion, is one of those fields, like economics, where the experts have been thoroughly discredited by recent events--our current econopocolypse and, in beekeeping, colony collapse disorder. Of CCD, Michael Bush blames chemical treatments, directed at controlling mites and other issues, which throw off the microbial balance of the beehive. Bush's emphasis in symbiotic microbial relationships puts his work in line with soil scientist Elaine Ingham and the pro-biotic movement in human health.

The Practical Beekeeper would benefit from an index (something said of our first book) and some editing for repetition, but those minor points aside, this is a must-have book for beginning and advanced beekeepers. There's much good, practical information and I learned a lot reading this book on a long train trip. Bush has many interesting tips and tools that you can build yourself. And it's the few books I've seen that tells you how to do swarm captures and cut-outs.

Bush's website, The Practical Beekeeper also has an encyclopedia's worth of handy info.

Loofah Sponges

We talk about the joy of loofah--or luffa-- (Luffa aegyptiaca) all the time, but I don't believe we've every blogged about it here. I was reminded of it when we received a letter from Candace, who heard us on a podcast talking about how much fun it was to grow loofah sponges. She said:

I wanted to thank you for that part of the interview in particular.  I decided to grow some this summer and it has been a great joy.  It is a beautiful vine, and the flowers are always loaded with bees, bumble and honey and all kinds of other insects. By the way, luffa are delicious.  Mine has been eatable at a diameter of 1 to 1.5 in and a foot long with no problem.  There are several recipes on line for them as well. They are a definite interesting grabbing item to share at get togethers, pulling the skin off and shaking out the seeds.  I've gotten several people interested in growing them that have never grown anything before by showing them the luffa.

Thanks for the feedback, Candace! And thanks for reminding us about this great plant. It's just fantastic to be able to grow your own cleaning tools. They're expensive in stores--too expensive to consider using on dishes and such--and just try to find one that's organic and locally harvested!

Salad, Undressed

And the award for strangest recipe book cover goes to . . .

Photos from the National Heirloom Exhibition

 Today's the last day of the National Heirloom Exhibition in Santa Rosa, California. I'm overwhelmed! Here's a few photos:

Back to bloggin' when I get back to Los Angeles.

National Heirloom Exposition

Mr. Homegrown here:

I'm up in Northern California for a few days to attend the National Heirloom Exposition in Santa Rosa. The lineup looks spectacular--all for the low admission of $25. Hope to meet some of you there!

Home Sweet Dumpster

Via Lloyd's Blog, artist Gregory Kloehn's dumpster living unit.

Salvia Means Salvation: White Sage

Salvia apiana, photo by Stan Shebs

Mrs. Homegrown here:

Today I was lucky enough to be able to take part one of a two part class taught by Cecilia Garcia and James Adams, Jr., authors of Healing with Western Plants at the Theodore Payne Foundation. I've blogged about their book before, and was thrilled to be able to see them in person.

Cecilia is a Chumash healer. James is a professor of pharmacology and a botanist. In both the book and in person they do a wonderful tag-team act, delivering both the Chumash message and the Western scientific take on various plants. Not that they're doing a Scully and Mulder. James is very taken with the gentleness and efficacy of these plants and repeatedly said he wished western medicine would reconsider their value.

I thought I'd give you a taste of today's lessons by telling you a bit of what I learned about white sage, Salivia apiana, we'wey (waykway) in Chumash. The most fragrant and beautiful of all Salvias.

The Wound of Separation Invades Every Fortress

The gold standard in podcasting for me is the always enlightening C-Realm podcast hosted by "KMO".  A recent two part interview KMO did with Charles Eisenstein, author of a new book called Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition, will be of particular interest to Root Simple readers.

The interview covers a wide range of topics including the creation of a gift economy, collapse and transformation. I especially like Eisenstein's critique of the myth of separateness and the need for building community resiliency as opposed to unabomber-style "let's run off to the woods and avoid the zombie apocalypse." Spoiler alert: the zombies will find your cabin.

Here's part one of the interview: "Emperor of What?"

And Part II: "From the Heart to the Fringe"

Eisenstein's book is being serialized on Reality Sandwich here. 

Free Postmortem Exams for Backyard Flocks in California

It's too late for us now, but if I had another two chickens die in close succession, I'd consider rushing the bodies off to one of the California Animal Health and Food Safety's labs run by the University of California Davis' School of Veterinary Medicine.

A Root Simple reader who is a veterinarian tipped us off to this service. You don't need a veterinarian (though you might need one to help interpret the results) and the service is free to those with less than 1,000 birds. All you need to do is get the body, as soon as possible, to one of four labs in either Davis, Turlock, Tulare or San Bernardino.

The backyard flock submission form is available at: http://www.cahfs.ucdavis.edu/submission_forms/index.cfm. The addresses of the labs are on the form. I'm sure that many other states offer similar services. Call your local Extension Service for details and leave a comment if you know about your state's testing programs.

SIP Improvement

Tomato SIPs on the Chicago rooftop of the Green Roof Growers

We've featured self-irrigating pots (SIPs) in our first book and have done a lot of experiments with them over the years. One of the problems with growing tomatoes in SIPs is that the roots can get into the water chamber and cause problems and diseases. I found a nice workaround to this problem via an anonymous tip on a BoingBoing tomato post:

With tomatoes, you need to lay down a layer of high-quality landscape cloth (don't use the cheap stuff) to keep the tomato's roots from getting into the water chamber. You run it from the bottom of the bucket all the way up to the top of the soil line. If those roots get to the water chamber, your tomatoes will end up tasteless and watery. As long as you lay down the cloth and keep the SWC full, use good potting soil, fertilizer, etc. - you will have some damn good tomatoes, and plenty of them!

I'd also recommend growing smaller tomato varieties in SIPs.

If you're using SIPs this season, leave a comment and let us know how it went.

Virtual Herbs

That list of preparedness resources on hardcorepreppers.com I blogged about this past week is now online and working again. There's some great stuff there as well as some goofy items. As one Root Simple reader pointed out, the "herbalism" file is actually a list of imaginary herbs from World of Warcraft. Oh how I love when the virtual and real worlds collide.

How to start a chicken retirement community

Mrs. Homegrown here:

So--here's the story of another mistake we made. When Erik and I first got chickens we didn't lay out a plan for dealing with the chickens as they aged. That was the mistake. Simple as that. Make your plans, people!

We learned how to slaughter chickens--we knew we could do it if we needed to--but we never really sat down and decided what would happen to our ladies when they stopped laying. We're very good at procrastinating that way.

What happened is sort of surprising, looking back.

Kitten Meet Kitten: How to handle kittten introductions?

photo by Anne Hars

I'm leaving behind the gloomy chicken news of the last couple days to announce that we've been suckered blessed yet again by our neighbor Anne with a locally grown sustainable kitten. We are now officially "cat people."

Everyone, meet Trout, a bouncy brown tabby boy with white boots.

We've had Trout for a couple of day and are trying to convince Phoebe (our older kitten) that this is not, in fact, the worst thing that has ever happened in the world. While in actuality, in her little 5 month old head, it probably is the worst thing that has ever happened.

So Trout is living in Erik's office/guest room and I'm trying to introduce them bit by bit. I read the internet things that said he'd have to stay in the office for a whole week before Phoebe could even set eyes on him, but I don't have the patience for that. So I've already hosted limited interactions. They go like this:
 
PHOEBE: Mwwwwrrrrraaaahhhhh. Hiiiiisssssssssss.

TROUT: WTF lady? Let's play! Look at this tennis ball! Woohee!

PHOEBE: Mwwwrraaaaahhhhhhhh

Basically she's fascinated by him, yet terrified at the same time. At first I thought it was all about territory, but she bolts and hides if he starts toddling her direction. And sadly, he has no common sense or social skills, so quite often wants to run up to her. My job as cat hostess (because really, what else do I have to do?) is to keep him entertained so she can watch him from a safe distance. Then, when even observation is too much, I whisk him away.

We'd be very interested if anyone has any tips.  Like I said, I've read what seems to be the standard procedure of the extremely slow introduction--separate spaces, wiping their scents on each other, exchanging rooms, etc. We're doing that stuff already--in our half-assed way.

I'd be particularly grateful for some kind of "Kitten Make Friends" magick spell that I could invoke over their tiny stubborn heads. Anyone got one of those, lemme know.