Photo by Tracy Walsh/Poser Design
Gardening
Straw bale gardening in the New York Times: http://nyti.ms/10kt1Hf
DIY
How to fix a bicycle tube http://www.afrigadget.com/2013/02/22/how-to-fix-a-bicycle-tube/ …
Bike headlight displays speed: http://boingboing.net/2013/03/20/bike-headlight-displays-speed.html
Build-It-Solar Blog: A Inexpensive DIY Blower Door http://www.builditsolarblog.com/2013/02/a-inexpensive-diy-blower-door-that.html?spref=tw …
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FYI, that last link redirected to porn the first time I opened it from within my rss reader.
I opened your post to Safari then clicked on the link and it was fine.
That’s interesting. Thanks for the heads up–will look into this.
Hello,
I would appreciate your comments on straw bale gardening.
Thank you.
Looks promising to me–in fact we’re going to give it a try this summer. I’m going to do a post on it for Monday.
Have you guys heard of straw toxicity? http://sustainableneseattle.ning.com/profiles/blogs/herbicide-contaminants-in I was told about this just recently, and had no idea about it. I don’t even know where to source organic straw or hay in the Los Angeles area..
Yes, it’s all a part of the whole Killer Compost phenomenon. It’s appalling. Appallingly stupid. It’s not just the straw, it’s the manure of animals eating polluted feed. Mother Earth News has been following it closely for years and here is their most recent article:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/herbicide-damage-zmgz13fmzsto.aspx#axzz2OTK0Db30
We’re thinking about doing some straw bale gardening, and we’re in the same position. We don’t know if it’s possible to source herbicide-free straw. We might just try. If the straw is herbicide rich, we’ll know pretty fast.
It makes me wonder if that’s why my tomatoes did really horribly last year – I applied a lot of my own compost last year, but the year before (when I had great tomatoes) I used bagged organic compost. It’s depressing to think about. I feel the only way to get herbicide free straw is to source it from a farmer, which is not the easiest thing to do in L.A. My friend who works at livepower Farm (a biodynamic farm in mendocino county) grows their own hay for their animals and sources the rest from their hay-growing neighbors. Certainly hay from such sources would be herbicide free and much cheaper.
Oh, and I JUST got a community garden plot (Ocean View Farms) where they process a ton of horse-manure based compost for the garden. I didn’t know about this killer compost issue, otherwise I wouldn’t have used their compost. I just spent a ridiculous amount of money on tomato starts, so we’ll see what happens..