Author: Mr. Homegrown

Making It e-Book Corrected

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Thoughtstylings

To those of you who purchased an e-version of our book Making It and had trouble reading it, I just received a note from our publisher Rodale:

The “disappearing words” are actually words that appear in a faint gray color that was hard or impossible to see over light background color settings on some devices, especially the Kindle from Amazon.

We have corrected the e-book files and re-released them to all retailers. The corrected versions should be live and for sale within the next two weeks.

In most cases customers will receive automatic notification that a (free) update is available. That notification should come by way of an email from the retailer where the book was purchased. If notification is not received by the end of August, we suggest they contact the retailer directly to request the update.

Sorry about this!

Michael Tortorello on Urban Homesteading

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Thoughtstylings
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Michael Tortorello, who wrote that nice piece about us a few months ago, “Living Large, Off the Land,” is one of my favorite writers on gardening and “urban homesteady” topics. He’s critical without being curmudgeonly and manages to separate the truth from the hype (and there’s an awful lot of hype in this movement!). Plus he managed to get an entire paragraph about my thyrsus into the New York Times. Thyrsus hype?

Since he’s far too busy writing kick ass columns to have a website, I’ve collected a few of his articles here in one place for your reading pleasure:

“Heirloom Seeds or Flinty Hybrids?“
Yes, hybrid seeds are o.k. and I agree.

“The Permaculture Movement Grows From Underground“
The wonders of permaculture plus a jab at aerated compost tea.

“Finding the Potential in Vacant Lots”
Recent boom and bust cycles have left us with a lot of room to grow stuff.

“Food Storage as Grandma Knew It“
Tortorello actually tracked down some folks who have functioning root cellars.

“The Spotless Garden“
On aquaponics. Don’t name those fish!

“Making Flowers Into Perfume“
 Build that still!

“Seeds Straight From Your Fridge“
On planting seeds from the pantry.

CooKit Solar Cooker Made Out of Wood

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Solar, Water and Power
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The nice folks at Solar Cookers International gave us permission to reprint plans for their CooKit solar cooker in our book Making It. You can access those plans, as well as many other solar cooker projects, for free, on their website here.

I’ve made CooKits out of cardboard and aluminum foil a couple of times. One problem is that I eventually bang up the cardboard and I’ve got to make a new one. This summer I had a lot of  1/4 inch plywood leftover from fixing up Mrs. Homegrown’s writin’ shed. Rather than send that plywood to the dump I decided to make a more permanent CooKit.

I blew up the CooKit pdf from the SCI website using Adobe Illustrator.  I did a tiled printout and taped the pieces together to create a life sized pattern. I used this pattern to cut out the plywood pieces.

I spray glued the aluminum foil to the plywood. Next, I drilled holes in all the pieces and inserted twist ties to, essentially, create little hinges so that I could fold up the CooKit when not in use.

The plywood CooKit folds much better than my cardboard versions did.

This type of “panel” solar cooker works best for things like polenta and rice. Now I’ve got a convenient folding panel cooker for backyard use and camping trips.

Sunflowers and Squirrels

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Animals, Gardening, Pests
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It’s a losing battle, the one we gardeners face against the squirrel menace. As the mammoth sunflowers we planted this summer approached the harvest stage, I tied some paper bags over the flower heads to prevent squirrels and birds from eating all the seeds. Mostly, it has worked. But, as you can see from the animation above, one pesky squirrel managed to figure out how to open one of the bags. Perhaps he used the adjacent tomato cage for extra leverage.

Maybe this bag worked because the Whole Foods logo scared the squirrels away with the thought of high prices and angry Pruis drivers.

I thought I had solved the problem by putting one of those ubiquitous and annoying cloth eco bags over the sunflower. Not even the City of LA logo on that eco bag scared them off.

So what to do about the squirrels? Tight bird netting on fruit trees works but is a pain in the ass to attach and remove. Commercial orchardists trap and kill. Hmmm. Along those lines it looks like we have yet another excuse to link to that squirrel melt video . . .

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

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Reviews, Thoughtstylings
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Computer modeling of complex systems has gotten us in a whole world of trouble in recent years. Filmmaker Adam Curtis has directed a superb series, about this issue, for the BBC called “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace”. The second episode “The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts” will be of particular interest to readers of this blog. It details the errors that occur when we try to model natural systems. I can’t reccomend this program highy enough. Set aside an hour today to watch this program before the BBC copyright police take it down.

Episode 2  “The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts”:

Here’s the first episode “Love and Power” about what happens when computer algorithms and, shall we say, overly confident philosophers gain control over our economic life.

Episode 1: “Love and Power”:

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace from science2art on Vimeo.