Root Simple

How To Design a Garden Step III: Pathways

2012-01-27T05:00:00.000-08:00

So you've set your goals and have a scale drawing of the land you plan to garden. What's next? Paths! Paths keep you from compacting soil and lend visual interest to your garden. Some tips:

Establish a path hierarchy
Create wide paths with smaller branching paths. Think of the human circulatory system:

Or fractal patterns found in nature, like tree branches:

Now our property is so small that, when I'm done re-doing the backyard it will only have two main paths and one or two branching paths, but the path hierarchy concept is scalable to any piece of land large or small.

Put paths where people walk
Avoid what's called in the landscape architecture biz "vanity paths," i.e. paths that look good but aren't actually used. If people are taking a shortcut, make that a path!

Path size
A comfortable path is probably no smaller than 18 inches. If you're designing a public garden where wheelchair accessibility is an issue make the path no smaller than 3 feet. For two people to pass each other you need 5 to 6 feet, though a path that big would be for a larger piece of land than we own. Consider the size of any tools or wheelbarrows you might need to accommodate.

Materials
I'm fond of mulch. It's free, easy to maintain and breaks down into soil. I've used gravel in the past--it looks nice but it can be hard to keep clean over time. Stepping stones also work nicely. As for edging, I've been using river rock as it's easy to find in my area.

Create gathering areas
Paths should open up in to larger seating areas. We have a deck area for entertaining visitors and a smaller spot that I use as an outdoor office in the summer months. A school garden might have an outdoor classroom off of a main path.

I can't emphasize how important paths are, both aesthetically and for preventing soil compaction. Years ago Kelly suggested the path we just put in and it's a real improvement to the garden. Perhaps listening to your wife is a design lesson for another post!

Special thanks to Darren Butler and Scott Kleinrock for inspiring this post.

National Wildlife Federation Teams with Scotts

2012-01-26T14:02:00.000-08:00

Time to take down those "certified wildlife habitat" signs as it seems the National Wildlife Federation has entered into a "partnership" with Scotts, manufacturers of a host of wildlife unfriendly synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

Some thoughts:

Scotts products do grave injury to microbial and fungal life in the soil to say nothing of insects. The NWF has too narrow an idea of what constitutes "wildlife".

And perhaps the era of big non-profit organizations like the NWF, that are little more than a mailing list, is over. We need more grass roots organizations at the community level that consist of actual people meeting face to face to do things like building school gardens, teaching permaculture and making our neighborhoods safer.

For more background on this controversy see Garden Rant. And leave a comment on the NWF's Facebook page.

How To Design a Garden Step II: Using Google Earth to Draw Up a Plan

2012-01-26T05:00:00.000-08:00

So you've set the goals for your garden, as we outlined in a post earlier this week, and you're ready to start putting pen to paper. Google Earth makes it easy to quickly create a plan to scale.

Zoom in on the space you want to garden and print out an image. Next, take separate sheets of tracing paper and use them to map out:

your goals
existing conditions such as trees and buildings
future plantings
where water flows when it rains
sun and shade
problem areas
topography
future paths (more on this in tomorrow's post)
permaculture zones

For a more accurate and sizable plan you can also use Google's free 3D modeling program SketchUp. The drawback with SketchUp is that it requires a couple of evenings to learn.

If only we had taken the time to draw up a plan to scale when we first moved into our house back in 1998! Better late than never, and at least it's easier now thanks to Google.

Special thanks to Darren Butler and Scott Kleinrock for inspiring this post!

Growing Greens Under Fruit Trees

2012-01-25T05:00:00.000-08:00

In the photo above is Scott Kleinrock showing off a section of the edible garden he designed at the Huntington Gardens. At first glace it looks like a lot of weeds, but it's a clever idea: growing greens in the understory of fruit trees.

In this picture, which was taken last weekend, you see a field of:

mallow
daikon radish
arugula
mustard
vetch
calendula
cabbage

Except for the vetch, which helps build soil, all are edible and nutritious. It was grown with almost no supplemental water. Labor involved removing unwanted grasses in the first year and spreading seeds. And all of these plants readily reseed themselves.

Depending on your climate, the plants you use for this strategy could vary, but the idea is the same: select hardy, reseeding greens that take little or no care. Weed out the things you don't want. Use space that would otherwise go to waste. Lastly, sit back and let nature do her thing.

How To Design a Garden Step I: Identifying Goals

2012-01-24T05:00:00.000-08:00

Food, beauty and habitat.

Garden design does not come naturally to me. I've made plenty of mistakes and continue to make them. One of the biggest of those mistakes is thinking of a garden as a collection of plants. Designing this way leads to lots of money wasted at the nursery and a garden that looks like a hoarder's living room. Trust me, after years of misguided gardening design, your first step should be to identify goals.

Making a List of Goals

Sit down and think of what you want the garden to do. This applies to a residential space, a community garden plot, a school garden, anywhere. Include everyone who will use the space in the process. Kelly and I sat down a few months ago and came up with the following ideas about what our garden should provide:

solace and comfort
a place to meditate
food
habitat for insects and birds
beauty
a place to sit and hang out with friends
a place to sit and work with a laptop
space for our chickens
flowers for bees
space for native plants
areas that are semi-wild and not often visited
space for the composting

Think and meditate on your goals before drawing up a plan. And for those of us in the urban homesteading movement, I think it's important to measure productivity in more ways than just the amount of food you get from your yard. How will the garden provide peace and well being? Educational opportunities? Ways to commune with nature? Some goals aren't obvious at first. As authors we have a lot of people who want to come over and take photos, something we have to consider as we re-do our backyard. And I'm definitely aiming for a garden that requires less maintenance!

So what are some of the goals you keep in mind for the gardens you tend? Share some comments . . .

Special thanks to Darren Butler and Scott Kleinrock for an amazing class on Urban Ecological Agriculture that I had the privilege of attending. In this class I learned many important design concepts including the one in this post. We'll share a bunch more in the next couple of posts.

Joshua Tree Earthen Finishes Class – March 2nd, 3rd & 4th

2012-01-23T13:55:00.000-08:00

Another adobe workshop with Kurt Gardella--this one in Southern California. I'll be at this one, so hope to see some of you there:

adobeisnotsoftware is pleased to have Kurt Gardella return to California for three days of intensive instruction in interior and exterior earthen finish practices. Kurt developed much of the online curriculum for Northern New Mexico College’s adobe program, and has great expertise in both adobe construction and earthen plasters and finishes. Attendees will leave the class with knowledge of how to mix and apply earthen and lime plasters, lime washes and casein paints – the class is suitable for both building professionals and do-it-your-selfers.

Topics:

Finish selection for conventional and earthen buildings
Soil and Material Selection, Sourcing and Testing
Vapor Permeability, Water Resistance and Stabilization
Tools and Application Techniques
Application around Doors, Windows and Other Openings
Pigments, and Finishing
Detailing
Conventional and Traditional Plaster Reinforcing Techniques
Code considerations

Instruction Type:
This is a hands-on class. Attendees will have the opportunity to get dirty and use tools and equipment typical of adobe construction. Due to the course format, enrollment will be limited to 14 individuals. Children under the age of 14 unfortunately cannot be accommodated. In the unlikely event of inclement weather, instruction will occur indoors.

Instructors:
Kurt Gardella teaches adobe construction at Northern New Mexico College, is Director of Education for Adobe in Action, and is certified as an earth-building specialist by the German Dachverband Lehm.
Ben Loescher is a licensed architect, founder of adobeisnotsoftware and principal of golem|la.

Location:
The class will be conducted about 12 miles outside of Joshua Tree National Park in Landers, California, some 40 miles from Palm Springs. Joshua Tree and the surrounding area have a wealth of great hiking, climbing, lodging and food options. Directions to the workshop site will be provided to attendees prior to the class.

Registration:
The cost for the three day workshop is $190/person. Coffee and nibbles will be provided at the beginning of the day; lunch is included. Register here!

Questions?:
Please do not hesitate to contact Ben at office@g-o-l-e-m.com or (760) 278-1134.

Tame the Email Beast and Have Time To Run Your Urban Homestead

2012-01-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

The original smart phone?

When Kelly and I do a book appearance one of the most common questions is, "How do you have time for all this stuff?" Our response is two parts. The first is to say that we don't recommend people try to do everything in our book but, instead, focus on the things you like to do most. The time will appear as your interests and priorities shift. The second is that we don't watch TV.

That being said, there are many places in modern life from which to "harvest" some time other than from evening TV-viewing hours. Email is where I've begun my time harvesting lately. While incredibly useful, email has become a daily, herculean task. It's also a medium that's as addictive as crack (there has been debate about including email addiction in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Like lab rats waiting for a treat to shoot down a slot, we get rewarded via stimulation for for checking it constantly.

This is where a suggestion in a book I otherwise strongly dislike¹, Timothy Ferris' The 4-Hour Workweek, comes in handy. Ferris suggests checking your email twice a day, at 11 AM and 4 PM. Why these two times? He believes that we get our best work done early in the morning and that it's best to have that morning period uninterrupted by distractions such as email. Ferris suggests that if you were to map out a day in which you checked email constantly you would see a huge amount of time wasted just through the short but high frequency of interruptions.

By checking email once at 11 and 4 you have a chance of getting a response before the end of the day. To do this you "train" your family, friends and co-workers by placing a footer at the bottom of your email to inform them when you check your email. Mine reads,

I check my email at noon and after the sun sets. If your needs are more urgent please give me a call at [HOME NUMBER]. Bloggin' at www.rootsimple.com. Co-author (with Kelly Coyne) of the Urban Homestead (Process Media) and Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World (Rodale).

It would be cranky, but I've thought about reminding people that my phone number connects you to this device:

I may have to add on to that email footer:

I check my email at noon and after the sun sets. If your needs are more urgent, lease give me a call at [HOME NUMBER]. Regarding my communication device, the Western Electric 500 desktop telephone: It does not allow me to see what your number is, so do not be surprised if I don't know who is calling. It is wired to the wall and, thus, not "mobile". If you hear a "busy signal" (oldsters can tell you what that sounds like) it means I'm talking to someone else and don't even know you're trying to call. You should call again later. The Western Electric 500 does not function as a map, camera, meat thermometer or allow me to update my Facebook page. But it has a nice ring, and I do love hearing the sound of your voice. Bloggin' at www.rootsimple.com. Co-author (with Kelly Coyne) of some books printed on paper.

But that would be rude. Plus I do have a "mobile" communicator though I don't give that number out, because I hate getting calls on it while I'm out and about and doing things.

But I digress. I've also worked on reducing email before it gets to me by sending many a newsletter and press release to my crack spam detection unit. And I deleted my email-generating Linkedin account (someone please explain Linkedin to me). If I could delete my Facebook profile I would, but I still find it useful for keeping in touch with friends and readers. And if I could shorten my emails to the length of the typical Morse code transaction I would, but that strategy, I fear, would get misinterpreted as brusqueness.

My new email twice a day regime seems to be working. I'm getting a lot more work done. Now I want to be clear that I'm not anti--technology. I like email and find cellphones useful in many circumstances. I just think that we need, as Douglas Rushkoff put it, a "time out" to sort out what's useful and what is a time suck. I'd rather use email and cellphones as a tool to help other people, to garden, to do all the things I love to do. Taming the email beast has been a useful first time management step for me.

Leave a comment and tell us how you deal with email!

_____________

1. Why do I dislike The Four Hour Work Week? I think with this book and The 4-Hour Body, Ferris simply sat down and asked, "how do I write a best selling book?" Let's see, what topics should I cover? What do people care most about? Flat abs? check. Money? check. Sex? check, etc. Sort through the hyperbole in these two hefty tomes and you're left with a few sentences of decent advice.

Learn to Build With Earth: Adobe in Action Workshops

2012-01-20T13:35:00.000-08:00

Adobe master Kurt Gardella has announced a series of both hands-on and online adobe classes for the spring. I had the great privilege of taking a hands-on adobe brick making workshop as well as an online adobe oven building workshop with Kurt last year. We did a blog post about the brick making workshop.

You can see a listing of Kurt's online classes, which cover everything from foundations to building permits, here. He is also teaching an AIA certificate program that is both live (in New Mexico) or online that you can sign up for here.

I'm also pleased to announce that we'll be hosting an adobe oven class with Kurt here in Los Angeles in May. Details to follow.

Is This Egg Good?

2012-01-20T05:00:00.001-08:00

From left: Very Fresh • Pretty Fresh • Bad • Cat

When you're wondering about the age of an egg, put it in glass of water.

Really fresh eggs lie on the bottom the glass, flat. These are the eggs you want for poaching and other dishes where the egg is the star.

If one end bobs up a bit, as does the middle egg above, the egg is older, but still good. The upward tilt can be more extreme than it is in this picture. In fact, the egg can even stand up straight, just so long as it is still sitting on the bottom of the glass. The egg in picture above is just a tiny bit past absolutely fresh, but still very suitable for egg dishes. If it were standing up a little more, I'd use it for baking or hard boiling. Indeed, older eggs are best for hard boiling, because fresh eggs are impossible to peel.

What you don't want to see is a floating egg. A floating egg is a bad egg. (Like a witch!) Old eggs float because the mass inside the egg decreases--dries out--over time, making it lighter. I personally don't trust any floating egg, but I do know that other people draw a distinction between eggs that float low and eggs that float high, and only discard the high floaters. And I honor their courage.

It Ain't Cats but . . .

2012-01-19T05:00:00.001-08:00

yes, indeed, there is a tree collard blog.

I can haz tree kollard?

Via Ari Kletzky!

Stop SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-18T05:00:00.001-08:00

We don't normally do politics on this blog but today we're making an exception. It's our belief that two bills working their way through congress, SOPA and PIPA, will significantly impact freedom of speech on the Internet. For more info on these two bills see a blog post by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, How PIPA and SOPA Violate White House Principles Supporting Free Speech and Innovation.

Sunset Magazine's Take on Zones

2012-01-17T05:00:00.000-08:00

A Sunset Magazine zone map

Yesterday we posted a USDA zone based vegetable gardening planting guide. But the problem with USDA zones, as many readers pointed out, is that they aren't specific enough. For instance, all of the city of Los Angeles is in USDA zone 10, but the difference between where we live and the coast is significant.

This is where Sunset Magazine's more detailed zones maps come in handy. Sunset has divided the entire country into more finely delineated micro-climates. You can find your Sunset zone here. With your Sunset zone you can then use their handy online plant finder or one of their many books.

While an excellent resource, unless I failed to find it, I couldn't locate any vegetable planting schedule based on Sunset zones. Perhaps its an impossible question, proof of the adage that "all gardening advice is local."

USDA Zone Based Veggie Planting Schedule

2012-01-16T05:00:00.000-08:00

Knowing when to plant vegetables is one of the big keys to edible gardening success. Unfortunately, many gardening books, websites and the back of seed packages assume you're in a place with easily delineated seasons. What about those of us in Alaska, Southern California, Texas, Florida or Arizona? Wouldn't it be nice to have a web-based vegetable planting calendar based on zip codes?

While it's not down to the zip code level, there's a USDA zone based web tool on a site called the Vegetable Garden. Now I have to say that this website, with all those contextual ads, looks like a scraper site at first glance. But the info on our zone 10, here in SoCal, was accurate.

I'd be interested in hearing what those of you in other USDA zones think of this tool. Give the Vegetable Garden planting schedule a spin and leave a comment. I'm hoping to post tools like this on a resource page that will appear on this blog later this year and would appreciate your input.

Thanks to Root Simple reader Kristen of the Urban Farm Blog for this tip. You can also scroll to the bottom of a post we did on the 6th for planting schedules for Texas, Montreal and Southern Nevada.

The CDFA's Pesticide Theater

2012-01-13T05:00:00.000-08:00

In the fall of 2009 a citrus pest called the Asian Citrus Psylid showed up in our neighborhood. It's a major concern to commercial citrus growers since the pest spreads an incurable and fatal plant disease called huanglongbing (HLB).

The California Department of Food and Agriculture commenced a futile effort to suppress the psylid by hiring a contractor, TruGreen, to spray residential backyards in Southern California with a combination of imidacloprid (deadly to pollinating insects) and pyrethroid.

As I expected, it didn't work. The state's strategy has now shifted to releasing a parasitic wasp (Tamarixia radiata) imported from Pakistan. Citrus farmers will continue heavy applications of pesticides to keep the psylid at bay. UC Cooperative Extension biological control specialist Mark Hoddle explained to KQED (italics mine),

Hoddle says Tamarixia radiata won’t eradicate Asian citrus psyllid. Commercial citrus producers in California will still continue to apply insecticides to prevent the spread of Huanglongbing. But, he says, state regulators have already determined backyard pesticide applications are too expensive ($10-11 million so far) and too ineffective to bother with.

Frankly, I'm inclined to conclude that the original eradication program was a make-work program for CDFA officials and TruGreen all made possible by a big infusion of cash from our tax dollars and the citrus industry.

During their backyard spraying campaign in our neighborhood in the fall of 2010, the CDFA and TruGreen showed up at a neighbor's house who, at the time, had over 50 citrus trees in pots (she was operating a mini-nursery and selling the trees). CDFA and TruGreen were overwhelmed by the amount of trees and ran out of imidacloprid. They promised to return but never did, leading me to believe that they weren't really interested in eradicating a pest but were, instead, engaged in a kind of "pesticide theater". It's a bit like the security theater that goes on everyday at our nation's airports courtesy of the TSA.

Even with the parasitic wasps I'm not planning on planting any citrus or recommending that citrus be planted in Southern California backyards. Everywhere in the world the psylid has shown up, HLB has followed within a decade. I strongly suspect that growing citrus in SoCal will be like trying to grow table or wine grapes here. With grapes, Pierce's disease, spread by a very similar insect called the glassy winged sharpshooter, makes it impossible to grow anything but resistant varieties unless you use a lot of pesticides. Until a HLB resistant citrus tree shows up (probably by means of genetic modification, never a great option IMHO) I'd stick to pomegranates and figs.

A Sonora and Kamut Wheat Field in Los Angeles County!

2012-01-12T05:00:00.001-08:00

Sonora wheat

The Los Angeles Bread Bakers, of which I'm a co-founder along with Teresa Sitz and Mark Stambler, have teamed with farmer Andrea Crawford, of Kenter Canyon Farms, to plant what I think may be the first wheat field in Los Angeles County in many years.

Wheat used to be widely grown here, especially Sonora wheat, a drought tolerant variety originally bought to the Southwest by the Spanish. Along with Sonora, we planted an ancient wheat variety called Khorasan, better known under the trade name Kamut. An American airman obtained Kamut from a street vendor in Cairo in 1949. Researchers are studying ancient wheats like Kamut to see if people with wheat allergies can tolerate them better. We purchased both varieties (certified organic) from the Sustainable Seed Company.

Discing the field

The field was prepared by discing it with a tractor. We sowed the wheat by hand and then covered it temporarily with shade cloth to keep the birds out until the seeds germinate. The seeds were watered in with an overhead sprinkler, but the plan is to pray for rain. If it turns out to be a dry year, monthly waterings will be necessary.

Mark, Andrea and Nathan sowing.

Andrea plans on sowing in some red poppies to help keep the weeds down. If all goes well, a harvest party (get ready to thresh and winnow!) will take place when the grains mature. Sign up for the LA Bread Bakers Meetup (free to join) to find out when the harvest fest will take place.

The wheat field covered with shade cloth.

Speaking for the Los Angeles Bread Bakers, we're really excited to be a part of this agricultural experiment. A big thanks goes out to Andrea and her son Nathan who have made this possible. We'll post some updates on the blog as the field progresses.

Note: A quick clarification because we've had some questions. The poppies that Andrea plans to plant are not Somniferum poppies (that's a different kind of cash crop!). They are red poppies, also called Flanders poppies, Papaver rhoeas.

Low Tech Solar Heating with a Thermosyphon Collector

2012-01-11T05:00:00.000-08:00

Yet another great post from the folks at Build It Solar: a simple and low tech solar heating system called a thermosyphon collector mounted in the wall of a garage. It uses the same principle as the solar dehydrator we have on our garage roof--basically it's just some clear plastic and a heat collector made out of black window screen. If your climate is cold and sunny (think Colorado) this would work nicely.

Read the post to see a review of its performance over the past nine years here.

Call In Your Questions to the Root Simple Podcast!

2012-01-10T05:00:00.001-08:00

As I mentioned in my voluminous New Years resolution list, we're going to attempt a podcast after a false start last year. One of the ideas we have is to answer listener questions. This is where you can help. Got a question? Call and leave a message on our Google Voice number: (213) 537-2591. If we don't have the answer we'll interview someone who does. We'd prefer calls, but if you'd like to send us an email, you can reach us at rootsimple@gmail.com. Put "podcast question" in the subject line. Looking forward to some great questions and please be patient with us as it may take us awhile to produce the first show.

Greeks Go Back to the Land

2012-01-09T11:11:00.000-08:00

In today's New York Times there's an article about Greeks returning to the land and reclaiming practical skills in the wake of their financial crisis. Well worth a read:

With Work Scarce in Athens, Greeks Go Back to the Land

"I will take the rock in my hand and squeeze it, and with the water that comes out of it, I'll make pilaf to feed my daughter. We'll manage."

Solar Garden Helper Thingy

2012-01-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

From the always cool Build It Solar blog, a "garden helper machine" built by Randy, aka "PD-Riverman".

I really Love gardening but I have a bad back and when it comes to staying bent over in the garden it gets rough. So I built this Helper Machine. I call it My P-Machine. Planting/Picking/Pulling weeds/Putting around the garden machine.

It's powered by two 12 volt 80 watt solar panels that charge some golf cart batteries.

I feel like adding learning welding to my New Years resolution list!

How to Plan a Vegetable Garden

2012-01-06T05:00:00.000-08:00

Today I did the unthinkable and made good on one of my many New Years resolutions: I planned our 128 square foot vegetable garden a year in advance. Here's how I did it:

Identifying Seasons
Using an Ecology Action pamphlet as my guide, Learning to Grow All Your Own Food: A One-Bed Model For Compost, Diet and Income Crops, I divided the year into three seasons. Most of you reading this blog probably have two: a cool season and a warm season. Here in Los Angeles we have:

warm: April-July
hot and dry: July-October
cool: October-March

Picking Planting Dates
Using the handy Digital Gardener's Southern California Vegetable Planting Schedule I chose planting dates (in April, mid-summer and Septmber/October) for each season and marked them down on my Stella Natura calendar. I identified the vegetables I'd like to grow choosing only those veggies that have done well in the past and that we like to eat.

A planning form from Ecology Action

Deciding How Much to Plant
To decide how much to plant I rely on the charts in John Jeavons' book How to Grow More Vegetables. I took his three day Biointensive gardening class early last year and recommend it highly, especially for learning how to use the, at first, intimidating charts in the book. Jeavons handed out a handy planning form during the class that works with the tables in the book to help organize your garden. With experience, I also now have an idea about how many square feet of, say, lettuce it takes to keep me and Kelly in salad for a season. While not everyone likes Jeavons, I can say that my best years in our vegetable garden have been when I follow his methods (minus frequent double digging).

Planting Compost Crops
Jeavons stresses the importance of learning how to grow your own compost and fertilizer. I adapted the food/compost ratios suggested in the Ecology Action pamphlet to match our climate. Instead of growing a big winter compost crop (Ecology Action is in cooler Northern California) I decided to treat the late summer/early fall as our "winter". Growing vegetables in the hot, dry late summer here in Southern California is, frankly, a pain in the ass and water intensive. It's a time when I'd rather just take a break from vegetable gardening and just grow a bunch of drought tolerant sunflowers, amaranth, cowpeas etc. On the other hand, winter here is the best time to grow all those cool season crops like lettuce and arugula. Using Ecology Action's suggestions I came up with a compost/food growing ratio:

spring/summer - 33.3% food, 66.7% compost
summer/fall 100% compost
fall/winter 66.7% food, 33.3% compost

The compost crops will reduce my gardening workload, build fertility and assure that there's always something growing and no sun-baked bare soil.

Apologies for a Southern Californiacentric post, but you can use the same process to identify dates and how much seed you need for any climate. In fact, if you know of a good vegetable planting schedule for your climate please leave a link in the comments.

Update: Scott left a link for readers in Texas. The Texas A&M Extension Service has a vegetable planting guide here.

And meansoybean left a link for vegetable gardeners in Montreal which you can see here.

Thanks to Hak, here's Southern Nevada.

Kristen sent one for all of the US based on your USDA zone here.

2011 in Review: The Garden

2012-01-05T05:00:00.000-08:00

It's was a difficult year in the garden. A lead and zinc issue screwed up my winter vegetables garden plans. At least we managed to find some river rocks and put in a path.

I found this photo from December 2010. I was certainly a lot more organized that year.

For 2012, I'm putting in raised beds to deal with the heavy metal issue and we've already planted more native plants. But most importantly one of my New Years resolutions is to plan the vegetable garden ahead of time. And I'm going to take better notes (though I've been saying this for ten years now). Those notes simply being, the date a veggie is planted and the first and last harvests of said plant. That info will make coming up with a planting schedule easier in subsequent years. At least if I keep my many resolutions!

In Chaos Order, In Order Chaos

2012-01-04T05:00:00.000-08:00

Periodically Mrs. Homegrown and I teach vegetable gardening classes. For the students, I've been looking for a way to illustrate nature's complex, non-linear dynamics that, paradoxically, seem ordered. I stumbled across this cool sculpture that neatly summarizes the idea of "in chaos order, in order chaos."

Imagine each of the hammers standing in for one of the systems in your garden, insect life, nutrients, microbes, fungi, etc. Now imagine intervening in the motion of one of those systems. The point is that, with complex non-linear dynamics, we don't know what the end result of our interventions will be. Best not to monkey with the system . . .

You can see more sculptures by the creator of this video at www.kenkinetic.com.

Kelly's 2012 To-Do List

2012-01-03T05:00:00.001-08:00

Even the kittens will help, not hinder, the New Productivity of 2012.

I feel like Erik really threw down a challenge with his mammoth resolution list, so here's my to-do list for 2012. It's much less ambitious. I think I'll schedule the concrete activities for certain weeks and months, and post a calender to keep me on track:

-No lingering over breakfast, no excuses such as "just one more cup of tea" or "I'll just check one more blog" or "the cat needs my lap", i.e. a new striving for morning productivity. This means 1/2 hour to eat and defog, then I must do things.

-Related to the above--stick to my designated daily schedule, as if I had a real job and boss looking over my shoulder.

-Accomplish my "yucky list" this month: switching banks, upgrading my RAM, getting a new passport, and making appointments for a physical, a dental exam and an eye exam. (In terms of engaging with the medical establishment, I prefer to behave as if though the zombie apocalypse has already occurred, thus I'm well overdue for a complete overhaul.)

-Organize the labels or tags on Root Simple so our dear, somewhat abused readers can find information when they want it.

-No processed sugar for the month of January. Or beer. (sigh)

-White flour, crackers, tortillas, pasta & etc. are designated as "treats" this year, as opposed to "staples."

-No internet surfing until after supper. No email in the morning. Email at noon and in the evening.

-Repaint the living room, hall, two bedrooms and the breakfast nook.

-Spend more time outside loving the garden--just being with it, regarding it with joy instead of judgement.

-Learn to identify trees.

-Take up archery again. This means starting with practice in the back yard once or twice a week, until I have the chops back enough to visit the range without embarrassment.

-Purge the closets. To do this, I'm going to have to either pretend we're moving and have to pay to ship every object, or if I'm in a more morbid mood, I'll imagine what what would happen if Erik and I were hit by a bus and people had to come in and clean out our closets. I don't want to be remembered posthumously as a giant, acquisitive hamster of questionable taste and strange habits.

-Make a dress. (This will make Erik laugh because he will remember the last dress I made. I've had 15 years to recover, though.)

-Make a pair of shoes. Or perhaps just tall spats to start.

-Start a gratitude journal. I'm so cynical, really, that the very phrase "gratitude journal" grates on me. Which is exactly why I have to keep one.

-Get fit. To be more concrete, my goal is to be able to keep up with Erik on his masochistic hikes.

-One date night a week with my very ambitious but rather sweet husband.

Erik's New Years Resolutions

2012-01-02T05:00:00.000-08:00

Normally I don't do New Years resolutions. This year my resolution is . . . lots of resolutions. Here's the list. I expect you to hold me to it:

get HAM technician's license
learn Morse code
attend CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) classes
build cob oven in the backyard
organize messy office so it doesn't look like an episode of Hoarders
organize supplies in garage into labeled boxes
turn the garage into the ultimate man cave
fix bad knees
return to the fencing strip
increase running distance
organize bug-out box
backpack more often
camp on Santa Rosa island again
plan out garden ahead of time instead of playing catch-up at the last minute
return to biodynamic practices in the garden
learn how to sharpen knives and tools
improve writin' skills
start a podcast
shoot some how-to videos
create an iPhone or iPad app
check email only twice a day
clean up the graphic design on the blog and organize information better
take more time to cook
keep the kitchen spotless
ferment vegetables more often
celebrate the wonderful awesomeness that is Mrs. Homegrown each and every day

And that's just January. It's going to be a great year for everyone in the urban homestead movement! What are your resolutions?

Zombie Apocalypse Poll Results

2012-01-01T05:00:00.000-08:00

2012---year of the goat?

The poll results are in and a solid majority thinks that things will get worse in 2012. The results, with 617 votes:

187 30% things will get better
309 50% things will get worse
121 19% things will stay the same

I had intended to editorialize about how I see 2012 going. But I can't say it better than this anonymous comment:

I could not answer the poll. My first thought was that things will get worse. I was thinking from a world wide view, economic, food wise, etc. But I thought again and decided that really those things don't matter. I expect things around my house to get better. My love for my wife will grow and I hope hers for me. We may spend more for less, have shortages of this or that. But those are not a good measure of better or worse in my life. So my answer is that I purpose to have a better year no matter how the rest of the world does.

I'd also encourage all to read the wise blog post of Archdruid John Michael Greer, "Hope in a Cold Season."

Feiyue Shoes: The Poor Man's Vibrams

2011-12-29T05:00:00.000-08:00

I'm cheap and just don't want to pay $100 to run "barefoot" in those funny Vibram shoes even if everyone I know swears by them. So, I run . . . barefoot. In two years of actual rather than Vibram-mediated "barefoot" running, on both concrete and dirt paths, I have yet to even get a scratch.

But there have been a few times when I've encountered a particularly gravely path. Ouch. On those occasions I've been experimenting with slipping on a kind of Chinese martial arts shoe called Feiyue. Think of them as the poor man's Vibrams as they cost less than $20.

Are they durable? More than you'd expect for a $15 shoe, but they won't last forever. Are they attractive? Not particularly. And wearing them around makes me want to bust out a few parkour moves for our next book signing.

Thanks to Elon Shoenholz for the tip on the shoes and parkour moves.

2011 in Review: Urban Homestead Trademark Dispute

2011-12-28T05:00:00.000-08:00

As the year draws to a close I thought I'd review some of our posts from the previous year starting with an update on the trademark dispute over the terms "urban homestead" and "urban homesteading".

In February of this year the Dervaes Institute (DI) sent a cease and desist letter to over a dozen different individuals and organizations including our publisher Feral House/Process Media, public radio station KCRW, Denver Urban Homesteading, and the Santa Monica Public Library. In addition DI successfully manged to get Facebook to take down a page about our book The Urban Homestead, that our publisher had put up, in addition to Denver Urban Homesteading's Facebook page. As of this date both of those Facebook pages are still down.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Winston & Strawn LLP have generously assisted us in challenging the DI's trademarks. The DI filed a motion to extend discovery earlier this month. I expect a decision from the Trademark Court sometime next year but I'm not going to predict when. The Trademark Court works slowly and via correspondence. We'll let you know of any major developments.

Thanks again to the support of all the readers of this blog and to our attorneys.

For more background on this issue see our February 21 post.

Other People's Poo: Biosolids in the Garden

2011-12-27T05:00:00.001-08:00

It's people!

Why not use city compost in your garden? Ecological designer Darren Butler, at a class I was sitting in on, showed a soil report from a site that had used compost from the city of Los Angeles. LA's compost contain biosolids, a euphemism for sewage. The soil test showed high levels of:

zinc 196 ppm
copper 76 ppm
sulfur 5,752 ppm

The problem isn't human waste, it's all the other stuff that ends up in the sewer. I see a future when we'll be responsibly composting human waste (see Joseph Jenkin's website for how to do that). But watch out for that free city compost.

Update: A blog reader, Helane Shields, left an interesting series of links about biosolids in the comments. Thanks Helane!

Tomatoes in December

2011-12-26T05:00:00.000-08:00

It ain't pretty but I'm not complaining.

Note to self: the tomatoes that sprout on their own are always the healthiest. The cherry tomato above has reseeded itself for at least 12 years. Sometimes its offspring survive the winter and grow as a perennial. Our climate sort of permits this but occasionally a cold night will kill tomatoes off. And each year the fruit declines in quality.

This summer I transplanted two tomato seedlings that sprouted in the yard on their own. One turned out to be the offspring of the Italian red pear tomato I grow every year and the other a somewhat boring but prolific yellow cherry tomato.

It's Christmas and all of these tomatoes are still growing and producing. I've got an unintentional food forest started here. One of these days I'll just give up starting seeds and let nature do her thing!

A present for you...

2011-12-24T12:21:00.000-08:00

*** PEACE ***

(and buckets of cuteness)

Thank you all for being wonderful.

How to Keep that Christmas Tree Fresh

2011-12-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

Photo from WSU

Washington State horticulture professor Linda Chalker-Scott, has a podcast "Last minute advice about Christmas trees and other fun stuff" that details more than you'll ever want to know about how to keep a Christmas tree fresh in the house. And, yes, it's been studied. Apparently WSU has a Christmas Tree expert: Dr. Gary Chastagner, seen above counting dry needles.

The Sun Comes

2011-12-22T11:19:00.000-08:00

photo credit: Henry Mühlpfordt

Happy Winter Solstice!

It is the darkest day of the year, and the shortest day of the year. But from now on, every day will be a little longer and a little brighter, until the year turns once more. This is a rough time to be a gardener, even in Southern California. Everything seems to be sleeping. You, perhaps, wish you were tucked in a warm bed, sleeping, instead of frantically rushing getting ready for the holidays.

As a counterbalance to Erik's gloomy Apocalypse post, I'd just say that the Winter Solstice offers us this annual lesson: there is a dawn after even the longest, darkest night. And then things get better.

We may be facing many challenges right now, as individuals, as a nation, as a global community, but we'll get through them. We always have, we always will.

Things will change, no doubt about it. The future will not look like the present. As Heraclitus reminds us, Everything flows. But life is always made up of equal parts joys and sorrows, no matter when, or where. So whatever winter festival you celebrate, take joy in it. Get together with the people you love best. Burn some lights against the darkness. Keep each other warm. Eat something delicious.

Our best wishes to you all! Thank you for your love and support.

Zombie Apocalypse Poll

2011-12-22T05:00:00.000-08:00

Despite the jokey title of this blog post I'm seriously interested in hearing where our readers are coming from regarding our future economic/social situation in 2012. To that end I've crafted a poll that you can find on the right top side of this blog. The poll closes on the 31st and I'll post the results in the new year. Feel free to also leave a comment below. What is your outlook for 2012?

How to Memorize Numbers

2011-12-21T05:00:00.000-08:00

Giordano Bruno's insanely elaborate memory system.

Yesterday we introduced an ancient memory system that can be handy for learning all those new urban homesteading skills. Today I'll briefly discuss a way to use a related mnemonic called the Major System for committing strings of numbers to memory.

To use the Major System you first memorize a set of consonants that represent 0 through 9. From Wikipedia, here's a table of the Major System consonants and a set of mnemonics with which to remember them:

Numeral	Associated Consonants	Mnemonic
0	s, z, soft c	"z" is the first letter of zero. The other letters have a similar sound.
1	d, t	d & t have one downstroke and sound similar (some variant systems include "th")
2	n	n has two downstrokes
3	m	M has three downstrokes and looks like a "3" on its side
4	r	last letter of four, also 4 and R are almost mirror images of each other
5	l	L is the Roman Numeral for 50
6	j, sh, soft "ch", dg, zh, soft "g"	a script j has a lower loop / g is almost a 6 flipped over
7	k, hard c, hard g, hard "ch", q, qu	capital K "contains" two sevens
8	f, v	script f resembles a figure-8. V sounds similar. (some variant systems include th)
9	b, p	p is a mirror-image 9. b sounds similar and resembles a 9 rolled around
Unassigned	Vowel sounds, w,h,y	These can be used anywhere without changing a word's number value

So, for example, to memorize the number "1795" you start with the first two numbers "17". Let's say 1 = "d" and 7="g". Next add a vowel of your choice, say "o" to make "dog". "17" now is a dog. For the 95 let's say 9 = "b" and 5 = "l" to make "ball". You now have a dog playing with a ball that you can put into a room in your memory palace. For a longer strings of numbers it's best to "chunk" them into groups of four to make them more manageable.

This is beyond the amount of time I'm willing to put into this, but you can also commit to memory 100 images to represent double digit numbers between 00 and 99 to be able to memorize longer numbers faster.

The Art of Memory

2011-12-20T05:00:00.000-08:00

We need a term for superfluous smart phone trivia Googling. After all, with the vast archive of factoids on the interwebs who needs to remember anything anymore? But what do we miss by externalizing all of our memories into an electronic form. What about those bards of the past who could recite thousands of lines of poetry, or the Greek rhetoricians who could speak for hours at a time without notes? Thankfully the basics of the lost art of memory can be mastered in an evening. And it's all in a short section of a 2,100 year old document called the Rhetorica ad Herennium.

Here's the memory trick the ad Herennium describes in two easy steps. Step one. Say, for example, you want to memorize the following shopping list: goat milk, goat milk yogurt, two blocks of tofu, olive oil, sunflower seeds and cat food (tuna). Take these items and imagine them in some memorable way. Think crazy, surreal, obscene etc. As the ad Herennium puts it,

When we see in everyday life things that are petty, ordinary, and banal, we generally fail to remember them, because the mind is not being stirred by anything novel or marvellous. But if we see or hear something exceptionally base, dishonourable, extraordinary, great, unbelievable, or laughable, that we are likely to remember a long time.

Step two. place the images you've imagined into a physical space that you know well, say your house, your childhood home, office etc. You are, as the ancients would say, creating a "memory palace". For my shopping list I used our house and imagined a goat in one bay of the garage (goat milk), a goat operating a soft serve yogurt machine in the other bay (goat milk yogurt), two giant cubes of tofu jumping up and down in the living room, Olive Oyl from Popeye in the kitchen (olive oil), Mrs. Homegrown munching sunflower seeds in the hallway (sunflower seeds) and cats dancing around a fish in the bathroom (cat food). When I used my memory palace at the store I was able to recall all but one (olive oil). Later I realized why. I was never really into Popeye and, as a result, using Olive Oyl was not sufficiently memorable. I later came up with a much more graphic way to remember the olive oil later, but this is a family friendly blog so I'll forgo the description. Even though this banal shopping list is almost a week old I was able to remember it for this blog post. And one of the great features of a memory palace is that you can recall your list in any order by simply walking through the imaginary building you're using.

While I've got the basic concept of the art of memory I need to do some more practice. So far what I've found it most useful for is learning people's names. And, as an urban homesteader, I always find myself learning new skills some of which require memorization. Now this won't help you find a lost set of car keys. That's what the ad Herennium calls "natural" memory which it distinguishes from the "artificial" memory that can be enhanced with a memory palace.

I wish this handy trick had been taught to me in school. You can get the idea across in just a few minutes. While we don't want education to devolve into rote memorization, it's a little embarrassing to think about how much memory we've ceded to the Internet in the post-iPhone era.

The art of memory is a right brain, creative activity that exercises creative visualization. It's a tool that Renaissance mages such as Giordano Bruno and Giulio Camillo used to initiate the shift in consciousness that gave birth to the Renaissance. Francis Yates' book The Art of Memory describes the role memory techniques played in this shift. The revolution in thought launched by Bruno and Camillo gave us the wonders of Western science and, ironically, the iPhones that have externalized our memory palaces. It's time to re-aim that consciousness and we'll do so by constructing new memory palaces, even whole memory cities and landscapes. To paraphrase the emerald tablet, beloved by Bruno, "As within so without."

We'll go over a mnemonic system for numbers tomorrow.

For an entertaining introduction to the art of memory see Joshua Foer's book Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.

Hay Boxes or Fireless Cookers

2011-12-19T05:00:00.000-08:00

Illustration from The Fireless Cook Book

Mrs. Homegrown here:

Jessica from Holland sent us a letter recently praising our work, but very, very gently scolding us not including the hay box, a groovy old energy saving technology, in our book. We do stand corrected! And her enthusiasm for hay boxes has reignited our interest, too.

We actually considered hay boxes for Making It, but didn't end up building one for a variety of reasons, including just plain running out of time. But I have to admit one of the primary reasons was that natural gas here is really inexpensive, so the cost savings of starting and finishing a pot of soup on the stove, vs. starting a pot of soup on the stove and finishing it in a box, just wasn't compelling enough for me to make a lifestyle change. This is a silly excuse--water is also inexpensive here, but I'm obsessed about saving that resource. I guess a lot of what we choose to do just comes down to our various quirks and passions.

I'm thankful to Jessica for reminding me of the hay box. I believe that my New Year's resolution will be to meditate on the sources and real costs (in terms of the environment, human health, etc.) of gas and electricity, and work on new ways to conserve energy. The hay box, or fireless cooker, may be one of these strategies.

What the heck is a hay box?

Sorry if I'm leaving some of you out of the loop. A hay box aka fireless cooker is a very old fuel saving technology, which perhaps has its origins in Scandinavia. It is simply an insulated box that you put a hot pot of food into, and leave it all day (or all night) to finish cooking. It's the forerunner of the crockpot.

This cooking technique isn't limited to hay boxes. The same concept is used by people who put oats and boiling water into a Thermos at bedtime and enjoy the finished oatmeal in the morning, or by campers who wrap their sleeping bags around a cooking pot so they'll have hot food when they get back to camp.

As far as I can tell, no one is selling fireless cookers made in the old style, but they are quite easily fabricated at home--or improvised in emergencies. However, if you are in a buying mood, a very similar technology exists in something called thermal cookware. These are essentially giant Thermoses--I'm including a link to a random example of one on Amazon here.

Why would you want to build a fireless cooker?

To save time at the stove
To have food ready when you get up, or come home from work
To save energy, because you're a do-gooder.
To save energy, because energy is expensive/unreliable where you live.
To learn this technology well so you'll know how to use it in case of emergencies. (A fireless cooker combined with something that can boil water, like a camp stove or a rocket stove, would be a great combo for any emergency, long or short.)

Okay, so how do you build one?

It's really simple. You're just insulating a pot. There are many ways to do it, including simply bundling the pot up in a bunch of quilts. But if you're going to do this regularly, you probably want a more stable system than that. You'll want to build a box.

First, though, you should probably start with your pot and build from there. This technique works best when the pot is full, so you'll want to choose a soup pot/dutch oven sort of pot that is the right size for you and your family. It should have a lid, obviously, and should be made of something can come and go off the stove top--i.e. no ceramic.

Once you've chosen your pot, you'll need a box to keep it in. This box should allow enough space for at least 4" of insulation all around your pot. (We'll talk about the insulation next.) So the pot height/pot width plus at least 8"= the minimum dimensions of your box.

The cooker could be anything sturdy with a lid, but the tighter built, the better. A big cooler would work great. I've just had a crazy inspiration that one of those newfangled ottomans that are hollow inside for stashing away your junk when company comes would also work nicely!

You can make a "two holer" if you want to have the ability to cook more than one dish at a time. In that case you might be able to build one in a hall bench or a big toy chest or trunk. If you can't scavenge anything, you could build a wooden box with a hinged lid. A well-insulated, box-style solar oven can do double duty as a fireless cooker, too. Whatever you choose, the box should have a lid that either latches or can be weighed down so it closes securely.

If your box is not built pretty much airtight--say it's pieced together out of wood--you should seal it up before you insulate it. In old manuals they recommend gluing a layer of paper all over the interior. You might choose to use tin foil or a Mylar space blanket. A space blanket would help reflect heat no matter what your box is made of.

Then you need to choose an insulating material.

Early 20th century options, as per old books:

Hay or straw, cut fine
Sawdust
Wool (they mention this is the best material)
Southern moss
Ground cork (it seems fruit used to be shipped in this!)
Softwood shavings ("excelsior")

Contemporary recycled options:

Styrofoam or foam. Carving a pot-shaped hole into a block that fit your chest would be the best, but scraps could work, too.
Shredded paper. At last, something to do with all those bills!
Cotton or polyester batting taken from old pillows or quilts.
Wool in the form of cast off sweaters and blankets, perhaps shredded?
This might sound nuts, but if you cut down a bunch of weeds, let them dry and chop them up, they would work as well as hay. Straw has that nice hollow stem construction which probably holds heat better than hay, but some weeds have the same sort of stems.

Note: I'd discourage using fiberglass insulation for safety reasons. It's nasty to work with and you don't want to risk any of it getting in your food.

Fill the box up all the way with insulation. The box should be filled to the top, but the material shouldn't be packed so tightly that there's no airspace. Tiny air pockets are where the magic happens.

Next, make a permanent nest for your pot in the box by hollowing out a pot-shaped hole in the insulation material. Line that hole, as well as the top surface of the insulation, with a one big piece of fabric. Secure that fabric to around the edges of the box with staples or something. That will allow you to lift the pot in and out easily and will also keep bits of insulation out of your food.

The final insulation step is to make or find a cushion sized to fill all the empty space in the box from the top of your pot to the closed lid. It should be fat enough that you have to use a little pressure to close the lid. There should be no open space at the top of the box. And again, the lid must latch or otherwise secure tightly. In the image at the top you can see the two cushions that come with that set up.

It's often easier to understand something just by looking at pictures. If you do an image search for hay box, you'll see lots of them, many improvised quickly. Whereas searching fireless cooker brings up more antique images.

A fireless cooker from a 19th century German catalog, image courtesy Wikimedia.

Cooking with the Hay Box

Okay, this is all very theoretical for me because I haven't done it yet, but this is what I know, and I hope those with experience will comment to help us newbies out.

The cooker is perfect for anything you'd associate with a crockpot, like pot roasts and other stewed meats, soups and stews and chile, bean dishes and also hot cereals, polenta, whole grains and rice.

First, it's pretty much impossible to offer up exact cooking times. It's going to vary by both quantity of food and the construction of your box. In short, you're going to have to play with it.

But the gist of it is that you start your cooking on the stove. If, for instance, you're doing an initial saute, you'd do that first, then you'd add all your ingredients and liquids and bring it up to a simmer (for how long may vary by recipe--the old cook book I'm consulting most often recommends 10 minutes boiling on the stove for meaty dishes, but if I suspect for non-meat things you could just bring it to a boil and then take it off immediately) then move it to the box to finish cooking. A good box should hold heat for 8 hours. The actual cook time will be less--how much less will vary by dish. But it will not burn or overcook and it will keep warm until you're ready to eat.

I've heard that in general you would use less water than with stove top cooking because there's no evaporation.

Here's some of Jessica's tips:

Suggestion: put the beans/lentils/wheat/rice/peas in a thermos flask together with the absorbable amount of boiling water/stock. Do this in the morning. In the evening you have a thermos with still warm and well-cooked food. With just a few seconds of boiling water. Think of the hours per month that you can turn off the stove and still have warm, cooked food!
...

It works fine with other things as well:
Eggs: put pan with eggs and boiling water in, take out of hay chest after 10 minutes (or more, or less, depending on your experience.
Vegetables: take out of hay chest after 110 to 125% of ordinary cooking time. Experiment! Don't use a lot of water.
Stock... why not?

It even works with things like meat balls and chicken wings. Have the meat on high fire until the outside develops the right crust or color, then keep in hay chest for xx time until inside is 'done',

Mr. Google can lead you to various resources on this technology, but my favorite resource so far is this old book: The Fireless Cook Book by Margaret Mitchell (1909), which is actually both a construction manual and a cookbook--a wonderful crusty old cookbook with recipes for things like Mock Turtle Soup. You can read it online at Archive.org, or download a pdf or even as an e-reader file--for free!

Do you have any recipes, tips or techniques to share? Please do!

An obligatory nanny-state warning: If food drops below 140F (60C) for an hour or more, bad bacteria can move in. You might want to take the temperature of your food when you pull it out of the box and see where it is. If it has dropped below that temperature, put it on the stove and rewarm it to at least 165F(74C).

Acquainted with the Night

2011-12-16T05:00:00.000-08:00

Light from Sunday Paper on Vimeo.

This poetic video, shot in my own overlit hometown, likely expresses the filmmakers ideas about wasting electricity. But like all good art it has multiple interpretations. I'm going to suggest that it shows how electric lighting has stolen the gift of night, robbing us of our night skies and peaceful sleep.

There's a large body of evidence that artificial light plays havoc with our sleep patterns, health and psychological well being, to say nothing of its detrimental effect on wildlife. And then there's that night sky. You can actually count the number of stars in the sky in Los Angeles.

Thankfully this is one of the issues that we can help change on the home level. Other than one small LED light at the bottom of our entrance stairs we have no landscape lighting (though Mrs. Homegrown did sneak a string of Christmas lights past my bah-humbug filter). We can also take measures to darken our bedrooms at night. While this may at first seem like tin foil hat talk, consider that the International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified night shift work as a carcinogen.

Several years ago I heard a psychologist speak eloquently on the need for dark nights (unfortunately I can't remember his name). He proposed getting a small town do a trial period of shutting all their lights out at night to see how it would change the well being of the town's inhabitants. It's a great idea. So let's get on it. I'd like to think we can experiment with returning night to our towns and cities before that dinosaur juice peaks out.

Chill Hour Calculator for California

2011-12-15T05:00:00.000-08:00

Please excuse another California-centric post, but if you're in the Golden State and like to geek out on keeping track of your chill hours here's a handy tool bought to you by UC Davis: Cumulative Chilling Hours. Each year this page keeps track of chill hours between November 1 through end of February. If you know of a similar resource for other states/countries leave a link in the comments.

As cool (so to speak) as this tool is, what constitutes a chill hour and what kinds of fruit will grow in a particular climate is a complex question. For more on this debate see a provocative article on the Dave Wilson Nursery website, "Chill Out".

CoEvolution Quarterly Online

2011-12-14T05:00:00.000-08:00

While hunting down old appropriate technology resources on the Internet, I was delighted to find the winter 1978 issue of CoEvolution Quarterly, put out by the folks behind the Whole Earth Catalog. This issue of CoEvolution profiled Robert Kourik (which CoEvolution spells "Kourick") who practiced permaculture before Bill Mollison gave it a name:

[Kourick] is developing methods of growing edible and ornamental plants together for maximum beauty, minimum upkeep, and a self-sustaining yield of food.

He does it by concentrating on growing perennials that do not need to be replanted each year and annuals that reseed themselves spontaneously. He uses ground cover plants that fertilize other plants, such as the beautiful pastel-flowering lupin which puts nitrogen in the soil. . . Kourick's goal is to develop what he calls a "self-reliant" garden that produces all of the nutritional needs of each plant. "The gardener," he says, "can then supply his own nutritional needs by adapting his diet to the garden's produce."

Amen is all I can say to that. A garden that requires fewer inputs is exactly what I'm working on right now.

In the same article Kourik mentions incorporating fruit trees, kept pruned small, into his gardens,

Robert Kourick believes that tree crops can be a mainstay of any garden, and he has discovered a plant breeder in Modesto, whom he calls the "new" Luther Burbank. This man is Floyd Zaeger [I think that should be "Zaiger"] who has developed genetic dwarf fruit trees that are strong on adaptive qualities and perfect for Kourick's garden.

Floyd Zaiger, incidentally, is the person who developed several of the fruit varieties I mentioned in yesterday's blog post including the pluot, the aprium and the necta-plum. He developed these varieties through a herculean breeding program involving hand pollinating something like 150,000 trees.

Robert Kourik went on to write an excellent series of books, Drip Irrigation for Every Landscape, Roots Demystified, and Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally

You can read CoEvolution Quarterly and the Whole Earth Catalog for free on the Interwebs at wholeearth.com or download individual pdfs for $2. One of these days I'll put up a separate page of links to more free appropriate tech and prepping resources when I get the time.

Dave Wilson's Top 21 Fruit Trees for the Southwest US

2011-12-13T05:00:00.000-08:00

A Necta-plum from our tree harvested in July 2010.

Do you live in a warm climate and have less than 500 chill hours? "Rock star orchardist" Tom Spellman, with the Dave Wilson Nursery, has some suggestions for low chill fruit tree varieties based on productivity and performance. His recommendations:

Dorsett golden apple
Fuji apple
Pink Lady apple
Cot-N-Candy Aprium
Flavor Delight Aprium
Minnie Royal cherry
Royal Lee cherry
Arctic Star nectarine
Double Delight nectarine
Snow Queen nectarine
Spice Zee Necta-Plum
August Pride peach
Donut peach
Eva's Pride peach
Red Baron peach
Burgundy plum
Emerald Drop pluot
Flavor Grenade pluot
Flavor King pluot
Splash pluot

Of the trees on this list, we've got the Spice Zee Necta-Plum, a beautiful tree with pink blossoms and red leaves in the spring that produces a super sweet fruit. It's still too young to evaluate it's performance but I'm happy to have it in our garden. We also have a Fuji apple that's a few years old which is growing but has yet to produce fruit. Last year we also planted a Flavor Delight aprium (in a less than ideal location), and it's also too early to evaluate its performance.

We sourced almost all of our trees by mail through the Bay Laurel Nursery, which carries Dave Wilson's trees (Dave Wilson is wholesale only). Get your orders in now as Bay Laurel sells out of many varieties by the time they ship in February.

You can read the complete list of Tom Spellman's low chill fruit suggestions with his comments here.

If you have mature versions of any of these trees please leave a comment and let us know where you live and how your trees are doing.

Thanks to Ari Kletzky for suggesting this list.

Gingerbread Geodesic Dome

2011-12-12T05:00:00.000-08:00

Scout Regalia Reel 02: Gingerbread Geodesic Dome from Scout Regalia on Vimeo.

Now you can bake your own version of Drop City without getting "baked" yourself! Some local designers, Scout Regalia, have cooked up a gingerbread geodesic dome and offer a kit for making one.

Now when it comes to geodesic domes as shelter I'm with former dome builder Lloyd Kahn who concluded that "Domes weren’t practical, economical or aesthetically tolerable."

But when it comes to gingerbread domes, I'm all for it!

Via the Eastsider.

Three Power Tools Every Urban Homesteader Should Own

2011-12-09T10:16:00.000-08:00

On nearly all the work I've done on our house, everything from chicken coops to wood floors I've used just three power tools:

corded drill
circular saw
~~sabre saw~~jig saw

While I also own a router, a miter saw, a sander and a few other miscellaneous power tools, the three tools above I consider essential. Even if you don't own a house, but would like to build some furniture or help a friend or relative with a repair project, this great triumvirate of tools will get you through 99% of all jobs. For that 1% of problems that require an exotic tool, you can rent one.

I prefer corded tools as I hate it when a battery dies in the middle of a day's work and corded tools have more power. That being said, there are a few times when I wish I had a battery powered drill. I'd also recommend spending a little extra to get high quality models of these three tools. They've all lasted 10+ years of heavy use.

I've got a non-powered backup for each of these tools, with the exception of the drill. Sometime before that that zombie Apocalypse/Mayan 2012 meltdown thing happens, I'd love to learn how to use hand tools. But in the meantime, I'll stick with electricity.

Michael Reynold's Beer Can Houses

2011-12-08T05:00:00.000-08:00

The National Archive just put thousands of 1970s era images from the Environmental Protection Agency online. One of the photographers working for the EPA, David Hiser, captured New Mexico architect Michael Reynolds building houses out of adobe and aluminum cans. See a selection of these photos after the jump . . .

Caption: "Detail of a wall in an experimental home built of aluminum beer and soft drink cans near Taos, New Mexico. for this wall the cans were laid horizontally in two thicknesses which are separated by a vertical sheet of foam insulation. The exterior will be a combination of glass, exposed can ends and unpainted concrete. Unskilled labor and the cheapness of materials will allow the structure to be built as much as 20% less than conventional housing."

Caption: "Exterior of an experimental all aluminum beer and soft drink can house under construction near Taos, New Mexico. This shot was taken two months after the foundation was laid. the wood forms on the top will be used to pour concrete beams."

Interior view of the all aluminum beer and soft drink can experimental house near Taos, New Mexico. the owners report the house seems to work well so far and gives the feeling of being very solid. the south facing windows capture heat from the sun, a good feature because the winters of the southwest are severe."

Caption: "Bottle window in the entranceway to an experimental home
built with empty steel beer and soft drink cans near Taos, New Mexico. the ends
of the cans used in a non-load bearing wall are seen around the window."

Caption: "Another experimental house made of empty steel beer and soft drink can construction near Taos, New Mexico. This house will be plastered with adobe like the other homes in the area, but will have cost up to 20% less, according to architect Michael Reynolds"

The same house, above, with an exterior coat of adobe.

Caption: "Lawyer Steve Natelson, who lives near Taos, New Mexico, relaxes on the bed of his experimental home built of empty steel beer and soft drink cans. On the wall is a mural of cans left exposed. It was the first such house built by the architect Michael Reynolds who believes this type of housing can be built for as much as 20% less than the conventional method. The Federal Housing Administration has shown interest in issuing loans on this type of housing. The cost is $25,000 to $30,000 for a two-bedroom home."

See more of David Hiser's photos of New Mexico here.

For more about this EPA photo collection read an article in the Atlantic, "Documerica Images of America in Crisis in the 1970s".

Earthquake Proofing the Pantry

2011-12-07T05:00:00.000-08:00

So I finally got around to earthquake proofing the pantry. All it took was a bunch of four foot bungee cords which seemed to have just about the right amount of stretch to span our seven foot shelves. You could probably use the same four foot bungee cords to span an even longer shelf. I used eye hooks to anchor the ends of the cords.

Looking at the picture, the height of the cords on some of the shelves might not be optimal (looks like some of the jars could slip under in a good shaking). But, all in all, I'm pleased with the results.

Armchairs Made From Scrap

2011-12-06T05:00:00.000-08:00

Artist and designer Wholman has some really nice plans for a chair made out of scrap over at Instructables. Check out his many other very cool Instructables here. And his blog: ObjectGuerilla.

Testing the Lead Testers

2011-12-04T15:21:00.000-08:00

Varian ICP-MS from Wikipedia

Dear readers,

Excuses for a technical post here, but we need your scientific expertise. If you have experience in soil laboratory testing techniques, or know someone who does, please send us an email at rootsimple@gmail.com or leave a comment. We're attempting to reconcile slightly different lead results from three different labs and I'd like to be able to write about soil testing methods. Two of the labs we sent samples off to (UMass and Timberleaf Soil Testing) use inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP) to test for lead. Wallace labs uses an extractant, AB-DTPA (ammonium bicarbonate Diethylene Triamine Pentaacetic acid).

Here's how Wallace described their lead testing techinique,

We use AB-DTPA (ammonium bicarbonate Diethylene Triamine Pentaacetic acid).

It is a gentle extractant and it mimics roots in extracting minerals from the soil. Most often environmental tests are made with boiling acids which are more aggressive than roots. The AB-DTPA method is a standard testing method of the Soil Science Society of America. It is called the universal extractant. It measures the bioavailable or plant available minerals which is expected to be adsorbed by plants. Most of the background heavy metals are occluded and are unavailable to plants. Our testing does not see the occluded metals.

Total lead is approximately 10 times higher than our AB-DTPA measured lead. We recommend that AB-DTPA lead be less than 30 parts per million for home production of edible produce.

UMass says,

We use a modified Morgan solution (dilute glacial acetic acid and ammonium hydroxide) to measure extractable lead (using ICP). Total Estimated Lead is calculated using a correlation established during a study performed here at UMass that compared total digestion levels to extractable levels using 300-400 soils.

I divided one soil sample into three parts and sent a portion to three labs. While all three labs indicated the presence of above natural levels of lead, there were enough differences between the tests to warrant a closer look at the techniques. Your assistance would be greatly appreciated and we'll share what we find out.

Food Preservation Resources

2011-12-04T05:00:00.000-08:00

Due to a popular post on making prickly pear jelly, we get a lot of emails asking for advice on canning. So I thought I'd list three favorite food preservation resources.

I like to go to respected sources when canning for reasons of both safety and reliability. While botulism is fairly rare, it's a highly unpleasant way to pass this vale of tears. But beyond the safety issue, if I'm going to go through the work of canning, I want to know that the recipe is going to work. There are few things more frustrating than a big batch of jam or jelly that doesn't set. Yes, you can call it "syrup" but it's still a big blow to the ego.

My three favorite resources are the National Center for Home Food Preservation which has recipes for all kinds of food from fruit to meat, the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving and Ball's website. All of the recipes in these two websites and book follow USDA guidelines.

The reason I came up with a prickly pear recipe is that I couldn't find any other ones that worked. But if I were canning something like, say, peaches I'd go with one of the above authorities. If you have a favorite food preservation resource leave a comment.

Quick Tip

2011-12-03T07:43:00.000-08:00

I've learned that if I put a sheet or two of our otherwise useless weekly newspaper at the bottom of my counter-top scrap pail, dumping it out becomes much less gross. No more fuzzy, slimy things stuck to the bottom. Why did it take me so longer to figure this out?

What's going on in the garden?

2011-12-02T08:10:00.000-08:00

I don't know...

but I think the okra is finished.

Cat allergies, cat hearts, cat cuteness: an update on all things cats.

2011-12-01T05:00:00.000-08:00

Many apologies to people who don't come here to hear about the cats.

This won't take long.

I just wanted to give two quick updates. The first is to let you all know that Phoebe is doing amazingly well despite having an insanely malformed heart. The meds have perked her up, so she and Trout are playing all the time. To look at her you'd never think anything was wrong. So thank you so much for all your supportive thoughts and let's hope she stays with us a good while.

The second update is on allergies. I've posted about this before. When we got Phoebe I was technically allergic to cats, but I decided to push on through that little impediment, powered by the twin engines of Denial and Will, just as I'd done when we got our dog. It worked.

Then Trout came into our lives. I hoped that I'd get a pass on the allergies, as I'd already adjusted to Phoebe. But instead I had to start all over fresh with him. And it was worse this time around. Not least because Trout is super affectionate and is always, quite literally, in my face. (He kisses!)

I worried that I might have overloaded my system beyond all tolerance, but guess what? The symptoms have been gone for almost a month now, long enough for me to declare victory over pet allergies--my third victory so far.

The secret? Pig-headedness. Willingness to be constantly snotty. Absolute faith in mind over matter. I took nothing for relief, nothing at all. Not even nettle tea this time, because I was out of nettles. I think it's important not to have a crutch, to force your body to work through it. The whole process took about three months.

I realize that there are people with worse allergies than mine, and I don't mean to underplay anybody else's experiences. I'm sure some allergies are so severe that they can't be ignored. But I'm intrigued that this works, for me as well as for others I've heard from, and just wanted to say that it is possible to break free.

My Big Fat Worm Bin

2011-11-30T05:00:00.000-08:00


These worms are fat and happy

Some of you may remember that Earth Goddess Nancy Klehm taught a vermicomposting class at our house in October. Some of you reading this may have even attended!

That day, Nancy and the class foraged and gathered materials to fill a bin and worked together to chop, moisten and prep the materials. The materials included our own kitchen scraps, farmers market trimmings, cardboard and newspaper gathered from neighborhood recycling bins, chunks of our infamous prickly pear cactus, a "nitrogen contribution" from one of the more intrepid class members, some well aged humanure compost and some of the aged cat compost from our kitty litter compost barrel. (More on that later.) We didn't have our final worm bin built at that time, so the materials were layered like a lasagne in a 50 gallon drum. When introduced the worms from our sad little kitchen bin into this pile of goodness, the worms thought they had landed in nirvana.

Since then, Erik has built a giant wooden bin for us following Nancy's plans. It's a simple thing, very like a toy chest. Nancy's plans called for it to be 4 feet long, but Erik built the chest 5 feet long because he was working with 10 foot boards (less waste that way, you see). The result is a long pine box that looks disturbingly like a coffin! But that's okay. Really, what better than a pine box full of worms staring us in the face to remind us all that we have to seize the day?

Why do we have a coffin on our back porch, you ask?

The inside view, proving it is not a coffin. We're going to decorate this somehow--which might help, or it might just look like we have a decorated coffin on our back porch. Right now the process is stalled because we are bickering over which pretentious Latin motto to paint on the side.

I transferred all the contents into the ~~coffin~~ box. What was interesting about Nancy's mix is that it is much more like an active compost pile than the traditional newspaper shreds + scraps that make up a typical worm bin. The materials had heated up while sitting. Heat isn't good for worms--they like to occupy cool compost piles--but I figured in a box of that size they could find cool pockets and edges to hang out in until it cooled off. And that's exactly what they did. There weren't so many of them to begin with, and they were happy to hang out on the top layer until the rest cooled.

Since then, a wormy miracle has taken place. First, given the space and resources, they've started breeding like crazy. That's to be expected. More interestingly, they've grown. The worms are getting super big and fat. I figure they're like goldfish, adapting to fit their space. I think they really like the diversity of materials they're living with, both in terms of habitat and nutrients.

The surface of the bin as of today. You'll see it looks a lot like a compost pile, as opposed to a bunch of newspaper.

For my part, I love, love, love having a huge worm bin because it can easily absorb all of our kitchen waste. I can take my entire one gallon scrap pail, dig a hole in the bin, and dump it all in. When we had the small worm bin--which was made of a plastic storage bin--I could only add a cup or two of scraps at a time. This made the bin more of a hobby than a convenience. What's extra cool is that those huge scrap loads vanish really fast in the new bin, whereas scraps tended to linger in the small bin.

Here's a morbid question for you all: Whenever I add new scraps and see the old ones broken down so quickly, I recall something about an old cemetery in France, I believe, which was known for breaking down bodies extra fast, due to the composition of the soil. Mr. Google isn't helping me recover this lost information, but I believe the cemetery was nicknamed "the man eater" or the "bone eater" or something like that. Does anyone with similarly Gothic tendencies happen to know what I'm talking about?

On outdoor worms:

Outdoor worm bins do have to be protected from worm predators--lots of critters like to eat worms, even dogs--either by weighing down the lid or latching it somehow. For now, we're just keeping a big chunk of broken concrete on top. (Uhh...do I hear banjo music?)

Extreme temperature fluctuations are a problem outdoors. Worms like the temperatures we humans prefer, essentially. If it's broiling out and they can't find cool ground, they'll die. When their bin freezes, they'll die. Freezing is not an issue for us, but Nancy, being from Chicago, is an authority on cold. She says what happens with outdoor bins there is that when the deep freeze comes, the adult worms will die off, but the eggs will overwinter, and the bin will rebuild itself in the spring. Obviously, if you want your worm bin to function year-round in a cold climate it will have to be kept in a basement or a mudroom or somewhere where the temperatures are a little more moderate.

On the flip side, the mass of a big bin helps insulate the worms from the heat. They can dive deep, or hang out on the shady side of the bin. But it helps quite a bit if you can give the worms some shade during the summer, either by moving the bin under a tree or setting up some kind of screen to block the worst of the sun.

Managing the waste stream:

Diverting all kitchen waste to the worm bin works well with our waste stream because of late, Erik has preferred to build his compost piles all at once--usually when we clear out our garden when the seasons change. The piecemeal additions of food scraps interferes with the timing of his compost harvest. See, if you build a pile all at once, you get finished compost much more quickly than if you add material a bit at a time. This is not to say that "bit at a time" piles are bad, they're just slower. Now we have the best of both worlds.

Regarding the cat poop compost:

This should probably be a whole other post. But the short version is that I've been composting our cat litter in its own separate pile. This works pretty well, but with two indoor cats (aka pooping machines) the bin fills up fast. When we built the worm bin, Nancy had us harvest some of the older, more finished kitty litter compost from the bottom of the cat pile to mix into the worm pile as a base material, and I will continue to do this whenever our cat bin overfloweth. The ability to transfer some of the mature material to the worm bin will function as sort of a pressure release valve on our cat pile, allowing the whole system to work better.

Is this safe? I'm not going to say it is. I'm not going to recommend that any of you do this. When it comes to composting pet or human poo, we believe good composting technique, worms and time make all things well. But obviously if this is done badly, it could be quite dangerous. If you're interested in extreme composting, as always, I recommend you visit Joe Jenkins' site--he's the author of The Humaure Handbook.

So from Erik, me and the worms: A huge and hearty thank you to Nancy and to all the class attendees who helped us make this wonderful bin!

Gifts for the Holidays Food Crafting Workshop

2011-11-29T18:32:00.000-08:00

One way to avoid the consumerism of the holiday season is to make your own gifts. And if you live in our hometown you can learn how to make edible gifts while supporting the recently revived Los Angeles Master Food Preserver program. From their announcement:

Join the Master Food Preservers of Los Angeles County and Homegirl Cafe for a special workshop and fundraiser on Sunday December 4th from 1 to 4 pm.

Master Food Preservers Ernest Miller, Felicia Friesema, Joseph Shuldiner, Amy Goldman, Roshni Divate and Craig Ruggless.

Learn how to make truly unique and special home crafted food gifts for the holiday season! Topic include food ornaments, elegant liqueurs, gourmet mustards, seasonal spiced jams and candied fruits.

Guests will take home samples and recipes, knowledge and a healthy dose of holiday cheer.

Proceeds benefit the Master Food Preserver program, a volunteer community education group of the University of California Cooperative Extension.

The cost is $45 and you can get your reservation here.

The workshop will take place at the Homegirl Cafe which is located at: 130 West Bruno Street, Los Angeles 90012.

Meet the Good Guys: Beneficial Insect Poster

2011-11-29T17:58:00.000-08:00

The good folks at the University of California Integrated Pest Management Program (IPM) have created a handy little poster featuring some of our best insect friends--the natural enemies of garden pests.

They want it spread far and wide, so they're promoting this link to a downloadable PDF fit for printing. This is a great resource for home gardeners, but also for teachers, schools and community gardens. Laminate it and pass it around! And please feel free to share the PDF link with your circles:

http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/FAQ/natural-enemies-poster.pdf

(The UC Statewide IPM website is a great resource, even if you don't live in California. Go there and you'll find fact sheets on residential pests and advice on how to deal with them.)

Two Vegetable Gardening Commandments

2011-11-29T05:00:00.000-08:00

Two of our vegetable beds looking kinda shabby.

I spent the Thanksgiving weekend up on the vegetable gardening equivalent of Mount Sinai receiving a set of revelations. Someday I'll have Mrs. Homegrown transcribe the complete stone tablets (urbanite rather than stone, technically) I received in their entirety. In the meantime, I'll share two of the commandments:

1. Thou shalt not have more vegetable beds than thou canst maintain in a worthy condition.

We've already reduced the amount of vegetable space in our garden and replaced it with native perennials. I'm considering cutting more vegetable space. Having a lot of poorly maintained vegetable beds sends out a big invitation to the sorts of insect visitors we don't want in our gardens. Better to have one well maintained and productive vegetable bed than ten poorly maintained beds. And right now I've got a few less than optimal beds.

Light row cover stretched over hoops protects the bed from cabbage moths

2. Thou shalt secure thy vegetable beds with bird netting or row cover material even if thou thinkest "I'll get lucky this time."

I do this every year even though I know that if I leave a newly planted bed unprotected it will be visited by a clumsy skunk or a cat looking for a place to poop. I hate bird netting--it inevitably gets tangled and is a pain to work with--but the fact is that if I don't use it I don't get any vegetables. And, if I plant any brassicas at this time of the year without first covering them with row cover material, they will get munched to the ground by cabbage leaf caterpillars. I've found that once the plants gets established I can pull off the row cover or bird netting and enjoy a season of un-munched veggies.

Kelly Speaketh on this Issue:

Erik seems to need to get this off his chest--he gets dramatic when garden disasters occur, and we've been hard hit by the skunk and cutworm brigades this week-- but I'd say he's being way too hard on himself.

First and foremost, we learned about the possibly high levels of lead in our soil, just when we were at the critical transition stage between the summer and winter garden.The whole yard became off-limits at that point. We just let things go until we knew what we were going to do--and we're still figuring that out. So yup, the two beds in the top pic look like crap, because they are completely untended beds--beds that have been waiting around for us to figure things out. They don't look that way because we have too many beds.

We've had fallow beds, and cover cropped beds, beds gone a little wild, and beds full of things going to seed, but I've never thought our beds poorly maintained--except in the last two months. So I think Erik just needs a glass of scotch or something tonight.

Just to be factual, we have four vegetable beds. We used to have more ground space where we could plant food, which helped with rotation, but we'll be doing all our veg growing in our four raised beds from now on out, and dedicating the ground space to natives and other perennials. We had planned to do this prior to the lead thing, coincidentally--to save labor. We figure four beds is plenty for the two of us.

As to the lead thing (that's what I call it--"the lead thing"), we are still getting conflicting tests from different services. One testing service even insists we don't have a problem at all! Until we sort this out, we've decided to "Keep Calm and Carry On" and plant in raised beds.

As to Commandment #2: I agree entirely! The beds must be protected. Otherwise husbands have breakdowns.

How to Build an Igloo

2011-11-28T05:00:00.000-08:00

TRANSA | Iglu Bauanleitung from Sooli Entertainment on Vimeo.

Paul Overton over at Dude Craft (a great website, by the way) described this slick video as "Swiss hipsters build an igloo." Sure looks like fun. Instructions are in German, but I think the process is pretty self explanatory. Makes me want to head up into the mountains and give this a try.

Netafim Tiran, a Greywater Dripline

2011-11-25T05:00:00.000-08:00

In a lecture I heard recently, Leigh Jerrard of the Greywater Corp mentioned an intriguing product from Australia: a dripline compatible with greywater. Now, if you tried to push gunky greywater through conventional dripline it would clog in seconds. According to the manufacturer, Netafim Tiran Greywater Dripline gets around this problem because,

Each dripper has its own mini filter. When a contaminant attempts to enter the emmitter, it is rejected by the emitter and simply remains in the tube. The irrigation system should be flushed once a year, however anecdotal evidence indicates that flushing may only be required every 5 years.

100 meters of Netafim costs 100 Australian dollars excluding tax, or about .30 USD a foot. Not a bad price if it performs as advertised. ~~Some quick Googling failed to turn up a US distributor.~~ Root Simple reader Rachel wrote to point out Netafim's distributor locatoer: http://www.netafimusa.com/wastewater/support/locator.

To use Netafim you need to add a filter as you do with every drip system. I could see this product working nicely with Art Ludwig's Laundry to Landscape system.

If any of you have worked with Netafim, leave a comment.

I'm Thankful for Lemmon's Marigold

2011-11-24T05:00:00.000-08:00

Spotted at the Huntington Ranch: Lemmon's Marigold (Tagetes lemmoni), a four to six foot wide schrub native to Arizona and northern Mexico. More info on this beautiful plant here. I want one in my garden!

The Holiday Gift Truce

2011-11-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

One of the traditions my family has experimented with in the past few years is the holiday gift truce. At Thanksgiving we agree to terms. In the past we've exchanged names and given one gift per person or we've just agreed to not do any gift giving or shopping (kids are exempt). Though we haven't tried it, another option would be to contribute to a favorite charity, say Heifer International, in lieu of gifts.

Economics professor Joel Waldfogel has studied the inefficiencies of gift giving and calls Christmas, "an orgy of value destruction." The problem? When it comes to gift giving we're not very good at guessing what people actually want. In a Bloomberg article Waldfogel says, “People value the items they receive as gifts 20 percent less per dollar spent than the items they purchase for themselves. These are items that are not well-suited for their tastes.”

Particularly in challenging economic times it's hard to justify this orgy of value destruction, not to mention the stress and time spent in mall parking lots. I'm interested in how readers of this blog navigate the holiday season. Do you make your own gifts? Do you think gift giving is important? Do you give cash or savings bonds? Or do you avoid gift giving altogether?

What Do You Love?

2011-11-22T08:21:00.000-08:00

A very talented filmmaker named Alex Gorosh did this superbly shot little mini-doc about little old me for Good Magazine. It's part of a series of videos entitled "What Do You Love?" Thanks Alex!

If you want, leave a comment telling us what you love!

Meet the Gophinator

2011-11-22T05:00:00.000-08:00

The Gophinator

Thankfully, we don't have gophers, but dealing with them is one of the first questions we get when teaching vegetable gardening classes. You can use raised beds lined with hardware cloth. But, other than target practice (a no-no in urban areas), most people I know with gopher problems end up using traps or zealous cats.

Several sources have told me about the Cadillac of gopher traps, the aptly named "Gophinator". Scott Kleinrock of the Huntington Ranch is one of those Gophinator fans, who stressed avoiding the cheap traps available at big box stores. The Gophinator is sturdy, easy to set and made out of stainless steel that lasts much longer than cheaper traps.

To use it you need to dig around and find the main subway line the gophers ride. Scott hooks up a wire and a stake to the traps to remember where they are placed.

The Gophinator is manufactured by Trapline products and you can order one and view some instructional videos here.

How do you deal with gophers? Leave some comments!

Urban Homesteading Thing Catching On

2011-11-21T05:00:00.000-08:00

I have a Google alert set up for the phrase "urban homestead". Lately I've noticed more real estate and apartment listings using this phrase. Our neighbors Anne and Bill even used it to rent out their duplex. A rental listing that includes the photos in this post came from a real estate concern renting out an apartment in Edmonton, Canada. For $1,600 Canadian dollars a month you get:

hot water on demand system.
sunroom has a high efficiency wood burning fireplace that helps keep house warm and cozy in the winter.
fenced back yard is an urban oasis with three apple trees, three plum trees, eight choke cherry bushes, a grape vine, covered deck, and enclosed fire pit with a private seating area. A perennial flower garden lines the path to the front yard. Three rain barrels provide ample water for large vegetable and flower gardens.
get to know your neighbours at the nearby community hall and rink. The hall holds a variety of children, youth, and adult-focussed classes, programs, and events, such as free dog training; playgroups; skating, yoga, and dance classes; children's Halloween and Christmas parties; community bbqs; collective kitchen; and more!
trained dogs welcome; absolutely no cats.

Other than that last bit (Dogs but not cats? Someone please explain the logic.) I'm happy to see fruit trees, rain barrels and community activities listed as an asset. Maybe that common sense thing is catching on.

The Whip: A Homemade Moisturizer How-To from Making It

2011-11-18T05:00:00.001-08:00

A quick little project: lavender infused moisturizer, two Calendula/plantain salves and a chamomile infused lip balm. Enough unguents to see me through Christmas.

Mrs. Homegrown here:

Confession: I can't live without my homemade moisturizer. This is not true of all things. I like take-out food sometimes, and I prefer Ibuprofen to willow bark tea. However, I'll never go back to store bought lotion.

This recipe appears in Making It as Olive Oil Whip. It's my every day body lotion/face cream and I figured it was about time to share it with you. It only has three ingredients. It's safe and wholesome and very effective. Heck, you could eat it!

You might find it heavier than what you're used to, because it doesn't contain all the chemical dryers that store-bought stuff has (see the Skin Deep database for the scoop on what's in your favorite moisturizer). But I promise you that if you use it for a week you'll get used to the difference--and then you'll get hooked. My skin has never been so happy as it has since I started using this stuff, and I'm saving tons of money.

The Whip

Ingredients:

1/2 cup olive oil (It's particularly nice to make this with herb-infused oils, but it's also very good with plain oil. I just made a batch with oil infused with lavender buds. Heavenly!)

2 tablespoons (.5 oz) of organic beeswax, either in bead form or grated and packed into the spoons. (You can use vegan waxes instead. I specify organic because beeswax really concentrates pesticides and herbicides.)*

1 cup of tepid water, filtered or bottled or distilled is best.

Optional: Essential of your choice for scent, about 10 drops

*I know, I know, you have to buy wax, which is sort of a pain, but it's very worth it because if you do, you can make salves and lip balm, too. If you have a honey person at your local farmer's market, you might ask them. I also like the pastille (bead form) beeswax that they sell at Mountain Rose Herbs. It's very convenient. If you get a block of wax, you'll have to grate it. The charm of that wears off fast.

Equipment:

You need a double boiler, an improvised double boiler--which would be a heat proof bowl balanced over a saucepan--or my favorite method, a Pyrex measuring cup sitting in a small saucepan.

You will also need a countertop blender or a powerful stick blender. A weak stick blender may not be up to the task.

A couple of clean and dry jars to store your lotion in. This recipe makes about a 1 1/2 cups.

Wax and oil heat up in Pyrex measuring cup in a saucepan. Our grimy stove is now immortalized on the Interwebs.

The Procedure:

Put the olive oil in your double boiler setup and add the wax. Heat over gently simmering water until the wax vanishes into the oil.

Meanwhile, measure out your tepid water. Cold water will make the lotion seize up too fast. Hot water makes the texture strange. Tepid water is what you want.

Optional step: I find it helps to pre-warm the blender jar by filling it with hot water prior to blending. See, some of the liquid wax will solidify when it hits the cool glass of the jar. This isn't a huge problem, but you might scrape some of those chunky bits of wax into your finished lotion when you're emptying out the blender. Heating it first minimizes the problem. So just fill it with hot water and let it sit until you're ready to blend. Empty it out at the last second. You don't have to dry it.

Get your blender or your stick blender all ready to go. Do a pre-flight on the blender. Make sure the ring at the bottom is tight. If you're using a stick blender, you can actually blend the lotion in the jar you're going to keep it in, which eliminates a lot of clean up.

With a stick blender you can make the lotion right in the jar.

Take the oil off the stove. Now is the time to stir in the essential oil if you're using it. Don't dink around and let it oil/wax moisture cool. Move promptly to the blender site and pour the oil into the blender or the container you're using with the stick. Start your engines. Pour the tepid water in steady stream into the whirling oil. It will start coming together immediately. If the blender chokes, stop it, scrape down the sides and start it again. Incorporation should only take a few seconds. Look for unincorporated pockets of water and keep blending until they're gone.

(Once in a rare while I'll end up with a little water that just won't incorporate because the emulsification process finishes and for whatever reason, it didn't get included. If this happens, just pour it off. But generally you should be able to get the whole cup mixed in. You can experiment with using less water if you want. As you reduce the amount of water, the moisturizer will become more like a butter and less like a lotion. A ratio of equal parts water and oil makes a butter that is a really dense weather barrier, good for extreme conditions and outdoor activities.)

While the lotion is still warm, pour it into your chosen vessels. Leave the lids off until it cools. It will thicken some on cooling.

Storage:

This keeps at room temperature for at least a month or two. Signs of decay include texture changes, color changes and outright mold. I've only seen this happen in little jars of the stuff that I've used for travel and have forgotten about. I might go through my usual supply too fast for it to go bad. This is a natural product, though, so you should make it as you need it, rather than making it in bulk and expecting it to keep for a year.

Clean up:

Oil and wax can be tricky to clean off glass, and hard on your pipes, too. The secret, I've discovered, is baking soda. Shake some in and wipe it around. It picks up grease just like sawdust picks up vomit on a fairground midway. Dump the greasy soda lumps in the trash. Boiling hot water rinses help, too.

Last note:

This lotion and even more so the Silky Cream in Making It are good make-up removers/cold cream substitutes. You can slather this on and tissue it off to clean your face, or for a light moisture treatment.

Dutch Edition of The Urban Homestead!

2011-11-17T05:00:00.000-08:00

The Dutch edition of our book The Urban Homestead is out! How cool is that? More info here.

Today is American Censorship Day

2011-11-16T10:04:00.000-08:00

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

This sort of advocacy is unusual for this blog, but we believe a free Internet is essential for both cultural innovation and democracy. Sure, the Internet is mostly made of porn and kittens, but we like it as it is. What we don't want to see is it being unduly controlled by either the government or corporate interests, so we're participating in American Censorship Day by offering up this information to our readers.

Today, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is headed to the House Judiciary Committee. The purported purpose of this bill, and its counterpart in the Senate, is to stop infringement on copyrighted material, but the scope of the proposed law is way too broad and vague, and if you spin out the implications, downright scary. It has has the power to censor the Internet. It can blacklist or bankrupt sites on whisper-thin grounds, it will impede small businesses and new start-ups, and even punish individuals with jail time for infringing copyright in smalls ways, like, for instance, posting a family video in which copyrighted music is playing in the background.

This bill is likely to pass, and it will happen soon.

It's hard to summarize all the nasty pointy prongs of this legislation in a few words. The video above does an brief overview--be sure to watch to the end for last second updates. Our smart friends at the EFF, who are helping us with the whole Urban Homestead trademark thing, have written several cogent, lawyerly pieces about this legislation:

Disastrous IP Legislation Back and It's Worse than Ever

SOPA: Hollywood Finally Gets a Chance to Break the Internet

American Censorship Wednesday

Today there is a call for mass action. You may have noticed some of your favorite sites have blacked themselves out in protest.

If you'd like to take action, the EFF has provided a page that helps you shoot a pithy email to your own congresspeople. It only takes a couple of seconds and feels really good:

Take Action

Grassfed Turkey Cooking Tips from Shannon Hayes

2011-11-16T05:00:00.000-08:00

Thinking of cooking a grass-fed turkey for Thanksgiving?

Just in time for the holidays, grassfed cooking expert and farmer Shannon Hayes has a blog post with pastured turkey cooking and purchasing tips that you can read on her blog grassfedcooking.com. We're honored to have been included in Shannon's book Radical Homemakers.

One of her most important tips is to know what you are buying,

"If you don’t personally know the farmer who is growing your turkey, take the time to know what you are buying! “Pastured” is not necessarily the same as “free-range.” Some grass-based farmers use the word “free-range” to describe their pasture-raised birds, but any conventional factory farm can also label their birds “free-range” if they are not in individual cages, and if they have “access” to the outdoors – even if the “outdoors” happens to be feces-laden penned-in concrete pads outside the barn door, with no access to grass. “Pastured” implies that the bird was out on grass for most of its life, where it ate grass and foraged for bugs, in addition to receiving some grain"

Wishing all of you a happy, pastured holiday season.

Only at Home: Huntington Ranch Symposium Nov. 18

2011-11-15T12:39:00.000-08:00

Not to be missed: the Huntington is putting on an exciting program this Friday November 18. I'm going and hope to see some of you there. If you're interested in growing edibles in Southern California, this is the place to be!

Only at Home: 2011 Huntington Ranch Symposium
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
San Marino, CA

Marking the second year of Ranch operations, this one-day symposium focuses on aspects of urban agriculture that can't be duplicated in commercial settings. From the use of gray water irrigation systems to growing offbeat edibles, learn how to harvest the unique potential from your home garden. From 8:30am to 5:00pm.

Featuring: Master gardener Yvonne Savio, native plant specialist Lili Singer, the greywater expertise of Leigh Jerrard, garden designer John Lyons, master preserver Ernest Miller and soil expert Corey Wells. Delicious continental breakfast, lunch and afternoon refreshments provided by Little Flower Candy Company. The daytime event will close with an open tour of the Ranch.

When the symposium draws to a close please decide to stay for more fun with a local beer tasting and farm dinner. Keynote speaker Dr. Robert Wallace will present on the botany of beer. Featuring local artisans Craftsman Brewing Company, Eagle Rock Brewery and Little Flower Candy Company. From 5:30pm to 8:30pm.

All-day event - $40
All-day event plus additional beer tasting, dinner and lecture - $65

Tickets available at: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/204977

Erik's EDC

2011-11-15T05:00:00.000-08:00

It's about time I listed my "everyday carry" or "EDC" for short. For those of you not familiar with the EDC subculture, there are entire websites devoted to posting, critiquing and obsessing over the items you carry every singe day (not, say, just when going on a hike). I went through somewhat of an EDC mid-life crisis last month and emerged on the other side with the following items:

1. A nice Saddleback Leather Wallet that Mrs. Homegrown bought for me after she got sick of my ugly overstuffed old wallet.

2. My old Leatherman that I use every single day.

3. A mini pen--I got a box of 12 from an office supply place. It fits nicely in a pocket and I don't have to worry about losing it.

4. Ferrocerium Fire Starter "nanoSTRIKER" --this neat little tool has a blade and a ferrocerium rod. You strike the blade against the rod and you get a shower of sparks.

5. Small keychain pill holders--the red one contains a cotton ball soaked in Vaseline to use as kindling with the fire starter. The blue one contains ibuprofen (I'm a runner) and Benadryl (for insect stings).

6. MAGLITE K3A016 AAA Solitaire Flashlight. I had tried a smaller flashlight that used watch batteries, but it had a tendency to open up in my pocket and those watch batteries are expensive. This one has not turned on accidentally or opened up.

You'll notice that I don't have a cellphone--Mrs. Homegrown and I share an old one with next to no battery life and I don't have it with me everyday. That may change soon when we switch plans. And I'll admit I have yet to use the fero rod for anything other than a bizarre time killer when I deliver lectures to college students.

What's your EDC? Comments . . .

Many thanks to Jack Spirko of the Survival Podcast for the handy EDC list he put together that turned me on to those pill holders and fero rods. And read an interesting interview with Bernard Capulong, founder of EDC.com, here.

The Pressure is On

2011-11-14T05:00:00.000-08:00

My pressure cooker is my new best friend. Especially when I'm not in the mood for cooking, I can toss a few ingredients in, lock the lid down and come back to a healthy, nutritious supper in just a few minutes.

Unfortunately I couldn't find a pressure cooker cookbook up to my standards. All of the ones I checked out from the library, even those newly published, seemed stuck in the 1950s tuna noodle casserole era, when pressure cooking was last popular. Thankfully, a friend sent us a copy of Pressure Cooking for Everyone by Rick Rogers and Arlene Ward. The recipes are simple and I'm especially fond of the squash risotto and vegetarian chili.

Speaking of vegetarian, the recipes in this book are on the meaty side (Kelly is a "fishatarian" and I simply don't buy supermarket meat). Someone does need to do a good vegetarian pressure cooker cookbook as the only one I could find was stuck in a kind of brown rice and bean sprouts 1970s style vegetarian groove.

Pressure cooking saves energy, a real plus during tough economic times. And with this cookbook our great recession era meals need not be bland.

Cargo Bike Roundup

2011-11-11T05:00:00.000-08:00

First, thanks all, for your help with my cargo bike review that I'm writing for Urban Farm Magazine. For those of you not familiar with the new crop of cargo bikes here's what I'm writing about:

Longtail Bikes

Xtracycle FreeRadical

The "longtail" revolution began with the invention of the Xtracycle "FreeRadical" back in 1998. The FreeRadical extends the back wheel and allows for the installation of two huge pannier bags and a seat. You provide the bike--I used a cheap 1980s era hardtail mountain bike. I've had my FreeRadical since 2006 and can't say enough good things about it. I can easily pack four bags of groceriesin the generously sized bags and still easily glide through traffic in Los Angeles. And I've used it to go bike camping.

A few years ago Xtracycle teamed with Surley to make the "Big Dummy" a bike frame with a FreeRadical welded in. This reduces the shimmy under load that happens sometimes with a DIY FreeRadical/bike combo. Xtracycle also started producing their own bike/Free Radical combo called the Radish.

Yuba Mundo 21 Speed

Some other companies have since introduced products very similar to the Big Dummy and Radish. One that I really like is the Yuba Mundo. It'a a very sturdy bike with fenders and a two-legged kickstand.

Kona Ute

There's also the Kona Ute.

Trek Transport

And, in this now crowded longtail market, the Trek Transport.

Bike Trucks

Cetma Cargo

If you can afford one, these are probably the best option for hauling kids. Your cargo or passengers have a lower center of gravity (important especially as those kids grow). Plus, with the passenger seat up front, you can keep an eye on them!

Other Options I'm not Reviewing

When I visited Copenhagen a few years ago I saw a lot of big cargo trikes like the Christiania Trike above. I'm not looking at these because I have my doubts about how practical they are in most US cities. We just don't have the kind of bike infrastructure they have in Northern Europe. Plus, a lot of Root Simple readers wrote to tell me they don't handle well on turns. Please correct me if you think I'm wrong. I'm also not considering trailers, because that would be another article.

While not cheap, all of these bikes are less spendy than a fancy carbon fiber racing bike and a lot more useful. My Xtracycle has allowed us to get by with just one car between me and Kelly. While I realize that cargo bikes aren't practical for everyone, I suspect we'll be seeing more of these beasts on the road soon.

And, a bit of a tangent here, but if you don't know the story of Freetown Christiania, where the Christiania bike is made, it's entertaining.

Lead Update

2011-11-10T14:36:00.000-08:00

Our post about a high soil lead level needs an update. I asked my doctor do a blood test to check for lead levels since we've eaten plants grown in the backyard and done a whole lot of digging over the past 13 years. The good news is that no lead showed up in my blood.

In the interest of "testing the testers," I took one soil sample and split it in three, sending one sample to Wallace Labs, one to the University of Massachusetts and the other to Timberleaf Soil Testing. I'll report back on what those tests come up with.

Hopefully that first test with the high lead level was a mistake. I've realized that one small lead paint chip in a soil sample could easily throw off the test since we're checking for something that is measured in parts per million. I'll admit that this lead issue is definitely a complicated problem that is at the limits of my grasp of scientific methods. I appreciate all of you who have chimed in with advice, prayers and good wishes.

Video Thursday: A Houseboat, Tomatoes and Tiny House Living

2011-11-10T05:00:00.000-08:00

One way to live cheap in expensive Northern California. Via Lloyd's blog.

Growing tomatoes in Brooklyn. Via BoingBoing.

Wish I had seen this before I went to college.

Don't Cut Down Those Sunflower Stalks!

2011-11-09T11:48:00.000-08:00

I learned a neat gardening trick at the Huntington Ranch this weekend:

1. Grow tall sunflowers.
2. Harvest the heads but don't cut down the stalk.
3. Use the decapitated stalk as a trellis for beans, peas etc.

Depending on your climate, they could last a couple of seasons. As simple as lather, rinse repeat.

Seeking Opinions for a Cargo Bike Review

2011-11-08T10:20:00.000-08:00

A Christiania trike

I'm reviewing a few cargo bikes for Urban Farm Magazine and I'm interested in hearing opinions from you, our dear readers. Leave a comment or send me an email. Let me know what cargo bike you have and what you think about it. What do you haul? Did you give up a car? Note: I'm not reviewing trailers, just cargo bikes.

I have an Xtracycle that I've used for years and am very happy with. But there's a lot of new options out there.

Mud for the People! Building an Adobe Garden Wall

2011-11-08T05:00:00.000-08:00

This weekend Kelly and I had our first adobe encounter. We were lucky to have been invited to attend a workshop led by Kurt Gardella and Ben Loescher. Kurt also teaches both live and online classes that you can find out about on his website, www.kurtgardella.com. We'll post announcements for future classes, because I haven't had so much fun in a long time! This past weekend's workshop focused on making bricks and building an adobe garden wall. If you want to learn about adobe, Kurt and Ben are the folks to go to. And, lest we forget, adobe is the traditional building material of the Southwest United States and many other parts of the world. Adobe needs just people power and locally available materials.

What follows, after the jump, is a pictorial essay of our adobe experience.

We missed the first day of the workshop, but pieced together what Kurt and Ben went over. One of the first steps is to determine the clay/sand content of your soil and to do that you do a jar test. When you mix some soil with water in a jar and let it sit, the clay settles on top, the silt below that, and the sand on bottom. You can measure the sample and determine percentages.

At the workshop, held in the high desert town of Landers, CA the sand and clay were sourced locally and from the site.

The clay got sifted through 1/4 inch hardware cloth to get out chunky bits that can lead to weaknesses in the bricks.

To make both the bricks and the mortar, water is mixed with a half a coffee cup of asphalt. The asphalt helps the bricks and mortar resist water. Traditionally, prickly pear cactus soaked in water and fermented was used before the modern convenience of asphalt.

Our instructors went with a mixture of about one part clay to two parts sand for the bricks and mortar.

A couple of handfuls of straw were added to each wheelbarrow full of mortar and brick mix to add strength.

Here's the consistency of the mortar.

To make a brick you press the clay/sand/straw/water/asphalt mix into a form made out of 2 x 4 lumber. The nice thing about adobe bricks is that you can custom size them for your project, though there are traditional sizes.

Before you build anything, however, you have to test your bricks. Here you can see different sand/clay mixtures drying in the sun. You can also make a brick out of whatever soil you have on hand and see how it holds up.

The first test Kurt did was drop one on a corner from about waist high. It didn't break and thus passed the test.

Another test is standing on a brick. Even though the brick we used weren't really finished drying, they still passed. For a building that will be inspected you will probably have to send bricks to an engineer for more precise tests.

This is the way you stack bricks for drying. Depending on the climate, it may take several weeks before they are ready to use.

And you have to be careful how you transport them. This is the right way to stack bricks when moving them in a truck. If you stack them flat you risk a lot of broken adobe.

Adobe bricks are heavy. To move them out of the truck we formed a big bucket brigade. Here Kurt demonstrates an advanced technique where you toss a brick to the adobe worker next to you.

Ben explained different types of foundations and how adobe construction can meet even California's stringent building code. And, yes, if you build it right (vertical rebar and a bunch of other details) an adobe building will stand up well in an earthquake.

To begin our garden wall we placed a "story pole" on each end of the wall to keep everything plumb and on the level.

Since it was just a garden wall and not a building, we did a simple gravel foundation beginning with this trench.

And some gravel-compacting line dancing.

Kurt dry-laid the bricks to emphasize that you should size structures to the dimensions of your bricks to avoid, as much as possible, cutting bricks.

When laying bricks we used our thumbs as a guide to space the mortar joints.

Kurt showed a couple of different ways of cutting adobe. One way was just scoring with a machete.

A light tap and the brick broke neatly in two. This brick is still a little moist in the center--good enough for a garden wall, but not dry enough for a building.

Next, Kurt showed how to shovel the mortar (again, made out of the exact same sand/clay/water/straw/asphalt mixture as the bricks and in the same proportions).

After you dump the mortar, you roughen it a bit with the end of a shovel to make it easier to press the brick into the mortar bed.

Here Kurt presses a brick into the mortar and lines it up with the line attached to the story poles

He also checks with a torpedo level. Kurt explained that you can't "develop a close personal relationship with each brick." That is, you have to keep the wall level as a whole unit and not get caught up in overusing the level on each brick. He also explained the work flow. The master mason sets the level of the end bricks and the apprentices fill in the center of the wall. When everyone knows their task, with the master providing guidance, things move along smoothly.

This spoon-like object is what you use for "pointing" or creating the groove in the mortar between adobe bricks.

You can also use a bent piece of plastic electrical tubing as a pointing tool. You only point if the wall will not be plastered. If you plaster, irregularities in the joints help the first layer of plaster adhere.

With a lot of people working, the wall went up fast.

Kurt demonstrates an alternate way of keeping the wall plumb and level.

He also showed how you would integrate doors and windows into and adobe structure.

Nearing completion, the wall is looking so good that I want to rush home and build one myself.

Kurt brought along an assortment of tools that you would use for plastering, including some really nice Japanese trowels. He also explained, that for the first plaster coat, you can also just use your hands. Such is the sculptural quality and plasticity of adobe. You never stucco adobe. Adobe is plastered with adobe and/or lime/adobe mixtures. Typically, plastering is done in three coats, a rough coat, a leveling coat and a finish coat. Screen your materials with progressively finer screens as you go. The materials for the finish coat should be quite fine, say fine enough to pass through 1/8" screen.

We ran out of bricks and did not complete the wall. It also began to wobble a bit, a sign that it's time to stop. Four or five courses for a structure is good for a day. Let it dry and it will be ready to continue the next day.

At the end of the workshop we went into a little "homesteader's" cabin on the property. The deal with homesteader cabins is that back in the 1950s that the government would give you a five acre parcel if you built a shack with the minimum dimensions of 12 by 16 feet. So people built tiny shacks to just those dimensions!

Kurt teared off some nasty wood paneling in the shack to show how you could retrofit a building with adobe. Here he is starting to fill the space between the interior studs with adobe. The idea is that the adobe will insulate the walls, providing vital insulation in a harsh desert climate. This may not work as well in more humid places. Here the thick layer of mud will dry fairly quickly. Elsewhere it might encourage mold.

Next we nailed some reed fencing material over the adobe-filled studs and started to plaster the wall with the same adobe we used to fill the wall. The reed fencing gives the adobe something to hold on to. Here again, as with the garden wall, the interior wall would be given three progressively smoother coats.

The miracle of all of this is that it is dirt. The insulation is dirt, the bricks are dirt, the mortar is dirt and the plaster coats are dirt. Nothing could be simpler. There's an art to it, to be sure, but its amazingly elegant in its essence.

As the sun set over the high desert landscape we concluded our building and headed over to Pappy and Harriet's for some beer and BBQ. I'm really looking forward to working with adobe again someday soon.

Shameless Self Promotion, With Kitten

2011-11-05T05:00:00.000-07:00

We've heard from several people that Making It is an excellent sleep aid.

Just a reminder that our two books, Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World and The Urban Homestead make great holiday gifts. There's also a Kindle edition of both Making It and
The Urban Homestead if you're e-inclined.

Even if you just click through our Amazon bookstore (on the right column) and don't buy any of our books, we get a cut of any subsequent Amazon purchases you do make. Really! Strange but true. All proceeds go towards kibble and cat litter.

Deadly Nightshade vs. Black Nightshade

2011-11-04T15:03:00.000-07:00

I spotted the sign above at the Heirloom Festival in Sonoma. The sign made the claim that "deadly nightshade" is actually a choice edible. Unfortunately, there's considerable confusion over the popular name "deadly nightshade." The plant most commonly referred to as "deadly nightshade," is Atropa belladonna, which is a highly unpleasant and toxic hallucinogen. "Black nightshade," Solanum nigrum, on the other hand, is edible. The potted plant below the sign was Solanum nigrum not Atropa belladonna. One must be careful when using the popular names for plants!

Solanum nigrum

To add to the confusion, Solanum nigrum is eaten and used as animal fodder all over the world, though many sources continue to describe it as toxic. As with all members of the Solanum family there's still a great deal of superstition when it comes to toxicity. Remember that many Europeans considered tomatoes to be poisonous well into the 18th century. Even today tomato leaves, used by my Filipino neighbors as a seasoning, are still labeled by many as poisonous. An interesting article in the New York Times "Accused, Yes, but Probably Not a Killer" busts the tomato leaf toxicity myth.

Atropa belladonna - don't munch on this one!

The confusion over the case of the alleged toxicity of Solanum nigrum may stem from our lack of intimacy with plants in the West. The use of Solanum nigrum by indigenous peoples is actually a bit complicated. Different soil conditions can, it turns out, produce some toxic alkaloids in Solanum nigrum. Cooking eliminates the alkaloids. Jennifer M. Edmonds and James A. Chweya, writing for the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, describe the uses of Solanum nigrum and end up advocating for its widespread use as a cultivated food source. Here's what they say about it's toxicity in their book, Black nightshades, Solanum nigrum L. and related species, which you can read in Google Books,

. . . the comparable number of accounts reporting that these species [Solanum nigrum] are harmless as food and fodder sources suggest that this toxicity is variable. Indeed a chemical suvey of various members of the section Solanum reported the presence of potentially toxic alkaloids only in unripe fruits, with ripe berries and vegetative parts tacking these compounds. Shilling et al. (1992) therefore concluded that the plants are probably only poisonous to indiscriminate feeders such as livestock who might consume the whole plant. However, these plants are browsed and used as fodder for animals without any detrimental effect in some areas, and Rogers and Ogg (1981) suggested that the development of toxic levels of these alkaloids is dependent on their growth under certain conditions or in certain localities, and even on the age of the plants concerned. Other reports suggest that the amounts of poisonous 'princinples' vary greatly with climate, season and soil type (Cooper and Johnson 1984). It is highly probable that boiling destroys any toxicity inherent in these species; most ethonobotanical reports of their use as vegetables refer to cooking, boiling and even repeated boiling with the liquid being discarded; similar reports of the use of berries also refer to their being poisonous when uncooked or unripe. Drying, however, does not destroy the toxicity of the solamine-type alkaloids (Everist 1974). It is these glycosidal alkaloids which are responsible for the bitter taste often associated with the Solanums.

The Solanum nigrum growing in our backyard.

A few Solanum nigrum plants popped up in the yard last month and I've let them grow. While I can't say that I'm a big fan of the berries, I've tasted them raw and lived to tell the tale.

The Secret to Barefoot Running

2011-11-03T09:31:00.000-07:00

Born to Run author Christopher McDougall had a provocative piece in yesterday's New York Times, "The Once and Future Way to Run" about a simple 19th century technique for teaching good running form. The "100-up" drill McDougall describes forces a runner to land on the ball of the foot rather than the heel. Even though I've switched to barefoot running I still heel strike occasionally, a habit caused by a lifetime of wearing cushy shoes. I'm gong to make this drill a regular part of my fitness program.

The article also takes a jab at Rodale's Runner's World magazine which, apparently, hasn't ever seen a shoe it didn't like. Multi-million dollar advertising contracts with shoe companies just might be the reason why. This is a common ethical lapse in fitness journalism. A local free running rag I picked up had a cover story on barefoot running which was all about . . . minimalist shoes! In two years of running with no shoes at all (i.e. barefoot) I have yet to get even a scratch.

Click on the article link above to see a helpful video showing the 100-up drill.

Too Much Phosphate

2011-11-02T05:00:00.000-07:00

Symptoms of chlorosis. Image from the Washington State University

Our possible backyard lead situation is a good reason to get a soil test, but if that didn't convince you the Garden Professors at Washington State University just blogged about another important motivation: the bad effects of too much phosphate.

An overabundance of phosphate can interfere with a plant's ability to uptake iron resulting in interveinal chlorosis, a yellowing of the leaves between the veins. So adding fertilizer that contains phosphate to soil that doesn't need it is a waste of money, damages the environment and can kill your plants. Of all the soils I've tested in Los Angeles, all are already high in phosphate, meaning that most fertilizers, both organic and chemical are both unnecessary and potentially toxic to plants.

As the Garden Professors also note in another post, it can be very difficult to diagnose problems just with visual cues. Chlorosis, for instance, can also be caused by other factors. As Garden Professor Linda Chalker-Scott puts it, "You can't fly by the seat of your pants on this one, folks." While I'm probably a bigger proponent of intuition and "woo-woo" than Chalker-Scott, I think it's a good idea to balance our left and right brains. No reason you can't get a soil test and talk to those plant Devas.

Thoughts on Samhain

2011-11-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

Image from the beautiful book, Haunted Air by Ossian Brown

Mrs. Homegrown here:

I celebrate Samhain on November 1st because I enjoy marking the changing seasons of the year by making these old festivals my own. It's so easy to lose track of time in an electronic culture. It's even easier to lose track when you live in Los Angeles, land of the perpetual sunshine.

Samhain marks the last harvest of the year. The weather is cold enough to keep meat, so it is also the time when all non-breeding livestock was slaughtered and cured--otherwise they'd have to be fed through the winter. It also is the start of the dark half of the year, a time of long nights and introspection.

This is a time of transition, and the air is alive with the excitement of it. The leaves are bright, the branches bare and stark against the sky. The days are blue, but the nights are cold and black. The wind kicks up. Dead leaves skitter and bolt across the asphalt. The crows come back to our neighborhood around this time of year and caw in the palms: southern California Gothic. It's my favorite season here.

The Celts believed places and times of transition--dawn, dusk, midnight, crossroads, lakes and streams, caves, etc.--held supernatural energy. These were places and times where the boundaries between our world and the other world was very thin. Samhain was one of those transition periods, and coming as it did at the last harvest, at the beginning of winter, it was associated with the dead.

And of course, within the Catholic Church November 1st is also marked as All Saint's Day and the 2nd as All Soul's Day, both of which honor the dead, the sainted dead and the faithful departed, respectively. And All Soul's Day is better known around here as Dia de los Muertos (and celebrated in style).

Face it, this is the time of year to deal with mortality and memory.

Halloween is lots of fun. (I love the genial anarchy of both Halloween and Fourth of July--they're my favorite holidays.) So I save Oct. 31st for trick o' treaters and parties and celebrate Samhain on the 1st, quietly, with a just a few simple gestures. I don't plan on slaughtering any animals (Did I just hear our chickens breath a sigh of relief?) so I clean the house instead, and attack one drawer or closet, and shed things I don't need anymore, both as sort of a psychological purge and in preparation for the busy holiday season to come. I like to make a nice meal, too, something celebratory, and burn candles on the table against the darkness. Then I round up Erik and we toast our dead.

Do you do anything special this time of year?

Goat Worship: A Halloween Exclusive!

2011-10-31T05:00:00.000-07:00

Dance with me in the witches' grove! Bwah ha...ha...er.... Well, okay, if you're not so into that, I'll take an apple instead.

This Saturday our friends Gloria Putnam and Steve Rudicel at the Mariposa Creamery in Altadena gave a free, two-hour class on the basics of goat keeping. I was there with bells on. I've always wanted goats.

It was a wonderful afternoon--about forty "goat curious" people like me showed up. Gloria and Steve's goal in this, as in many of their activities, is to build community. They want more goat owning neighbors. They want everyone to be as excited about goats as they are.

Gloria also said that when she got her first goats, she didn't know any goat keepers. She knew nothing. Everything she read on the Internet contradicted and confused her. The goat message boards were full of scary stories. She wants people to know that it's not hard to keep goats. A lot of it is common sense. Good management goes a long way toward preventing the situations that lead to the scary stories you read on the message boards. As a beginner, what you really need is other goat keepers you can call on, and watch, and learn from. This is why she and Steve are spreading the good word--they want to build community--so local goat keepers can support and educate one another

Gloria produced a beautiful handout which she has given me in PDF form to share with you all out there in Internet Land. Download it here. It's a great overview of the basics, with a list of resources at the end. It does focus on goat-keeping in the Los Angeles region, but it will be useful no matter where you live.

Lots of goat porn to follow, interspersed with some of my notes.

Steve and Gloria tellin' it like it is to the goat curious. Steve is wearing his Altadena booster shirt. Altadena rocks! And Gloria is in her Backward Beekeepers sweatshirt, which is the fashion statement of choice in these parts.

Why keep goats? Why operate a home dairy?

Why should you keep goats? Well, for the milk, of course. And the cheese--which is milk's higher purpose. In an urban area (at least in this part of the world) it can be nigh near impossible to lay your hands on fresh, organic raw milk. If access to that kind of food is important to you, you almost have to be DIY. Did you know that a good milk goat can give a gallon of milk a day?

Then there's the ethics. As many of you know, Erik and I stopped buying eggs at the supermarket because we couldn't support the egg factories anymore, especially once we learned that "cage free" and "free range" are just marketing gimmicks. We started keeping hens to sidestep the insanity. If we had the room, we'd keep goats in a heartbeat, for the same reason. The industrial milk business is not something we want to support. We use very little milk, and the milk we do use is goat's milk.

Beyond this, there's pure pleasure. Believe us, fresh goat's milk from a well run creamery does not taste "goaty." Nothing can compare with fresh, raw milk from animals well loved and fed and carefully milked.

Gloria also points out that for her, goat keeping provides an almost mystical connection to our ancestors, a reconnection to this ancient, ancient human activity of caring for milch animals. Again, like keeping chickens, keeping a few goats was once normative. Well, it is still is normal in a lot of the world--but here and now, it's exotic, an almost forgotten art. And that's a shame. Goats are wonderful creatures.

Enter the paddock! Goats are escape artists, so gates like these need to be secured--carabiners work well

A milking station elevates the goat and provides snacks, which are a great incentive toward cooperation.

Look at that foam! A good dairy goat can give a gallon of milk a day. Steve and Gloria milk their goats twice a day. Once a day is acceptable, too, but twice a day increases the yield by 20%.

This device is called a strip cup. The first squirt of milk from the goat goes in here. The screen lets you know if the milk texture is off--a sign of trouble.

How much does it cost?

You don't keep goats in the city/suburbs to save money. Just as it is with eggs, you're always going to be able to buy milk at the store for less than it costs to raise it at home. However, if you're committed to high quality, fresh, raw dairy and gourmet cheese, you know how hard it is to find, and if you can find it, how expensive it can be. I think you can get good milk for more reasonable prices in other areas of the country, but around here raw goat's milk goes for about $20 a gallon. Gloria and Steve estimate their own milk costs more than that, but they admit it is much higher than it need be because a) they are keeping several non-producing goats as pets and b) they are buying really expensive hay for logistical reasons and I'll add 3) they're paying SoCal prices for everything.

(I should insert here that Mariposa Creamery is not a commercial dairy. They are producing milk and cheese for their own consumption--and keeping goats because they love goats. So this isn't at all about profitability.)

They say they could save a lot of money on hay if they had somewhere to store it and could buy it in bulk, instead of having it delivered in small quantities. They'd save even more if they had time to forage for the goats. Goats actually prefer tree trimmings to expensive hay. All in all, they figure it costs them about $5 per day to support each goat, that include the food, supplements and medicines. But theoretically you could almost feed your goats for free, if they had access to forage or you had time to forage for them.

In planning your own costs, you will also need to factor in the cost of the infrastructure: fencing, housing, feeding and milking equipment. This can be expensive or it could cost relatively little. It depends on your circumstances and leanings.

How much does it cost to buy a good milk goat? Around $300 locally. That's for a goat with her kids just weaned, ready to milk. Of course it's much less cash up front to raise up a baby.


Meet Mint. She's thirsty after being milked.

How much food? What kind of food? Milkers eat 2 flakes of hay each per day. The non-milkers eat 1 flake. (There are 10-12 flakes per bale, roughly.) Goats eat hay, but would prefer some nice foraged tree branches. They also get a little grain, veg scraps, and access to the condiment bar. See the next pic...

This surprised me as a goat newbie: the goats get constant access to three nutritional supplements: kelp, mineral salts and baking soda. They nibble at these when the like, when they feel they need them.

Spontaneous still life: hay hook and a green egg

Goat milk does not taste "goaty" if handled properly. First, it has to be processed instantly: out of the goat, straight into the dairy, where it is filtered--which is what is going on in this picture--and then chilled down as quickly as possible. All the equipment, of course, is very clean.

If only my kitchen were so clean.

I admit I was kind of getting off on all the stainless steel.

But back to the point. Once the milk is filtered it is cooled down fast by being placed in a bucket of cold water packed with those blue ice brick thingees, and then put in the fridge. Submersion in ice water cools much more quickly than simply putting the milk in the fridge, or even into the freezer.

If you have goats, even just a couple, you're going to have plenty of milk. What do you do with it?

Make cheese, of course! Aren't these incredible? Gloria and Steve made these with their own hands. This is the triumph of the DIY spirit.

Source-->Product-->Paradise

Goats in the City and Suburbs

Goats, being smaller than cows and happy to live on forage rather than pasture, are ideal milch animals for smaller spaces. You need to keep two goats minimum, because a single goat in an unhappy goat. Three goats is apparently a very good number, though Gloria says the more the better. They're busy, curious animals and having lots of companions keeps them happy and less dependent on you for company.

Exactly how much room you need to keep goats is one of those questions which is hard to answer. More room is always better. Gloria and Steve's eleven goats are living in a yard about the size of generous suburban back yard. The kind of yard where you can play fetch with a big dog or toss a football--but by no means a pasture or huge space. Within that space is the goats' shelter, a pile of logs for them to climb on, their feeding and watering stations and a chicken coop. The specific codes of your city or county might specify a certain size lot for livestock or a certain distance the animals must be from neighboring structures.

This is their first aid kit for the flock. It's pretty straightforward. Stuff for wound care, charcoal paste for poisonings, an epi pen for allergic reactions, and antibiotics for serious emergencies. The most important item in here may be the thermometer, which is an important early warning device.

Sometimes life is just pretty

Did I mention these are Nubian goats. Their milk has the most butterfat for any goat this size.

This is my new best friend, Dot. The sweetest kid in the world. She followed me around like a puppy asking to be scratched and giving me the big eye treatment. I was seriously tempted to stuff her in the hatchback and make a getaway.

Hay, nice manger!

Dot is shaking her head, saying, "No, you cannot capture my cuteness with your tiny box. Put it away and pet me!"

A milking goat drinks 5 gallons a day. This system refills automatically, so Steve and Gloria know their goats will never run out of water, even if they get stuck somewhere and can't get home to refill.

A log pile provides entertainment for busy goats. So do children.

Goats and chickens get along well, but goats will eat all of the chickens' feed, so you have to protect those areas. It's very bad if a goat is allowed to gorge on large amounts of grain--it can kill them. Yep, they can digest oak branches but grain is a problem. It turns septic in their stomachs.

This kid got up on the log pile and started posing. She's Dot's sister.

This is my wistful look.

Did you want a profile?

I pulled back to capture the nobility of her pose.

Seriously. Can we just bronze it and put it in a park?


All hail our Caprian overlords.

Happy Halloween everybody! (Photo courtesy of Gloria Putnam)

Weekend Movie Recommendation: Buck

2011-10-29T05:00:00.000-07:00

Even if you're not owned by a horse, there's a lot to learn from an extraordinary movie called Buck. The subject of this documentary, "horse whisperer" Buck Brannaman, crisscrosses the country teaching a method of horse training (or is it people training?) that can be applied to any animal. The results are amazing--a dance between man and horse.

Brannaman's techniques embody a stoic calm and sensitivity born out of a miserable childhood. As a survivor of abuse, he's very in tune with the nature and effects of fear. He teaches that the relationship we have with our animals is much more about our own baggage than what's going on with the animal. As he puts it, "Your horse is a mirror to your soul, and sometimes you may not like what you see. Sometimes, you will."

This is a beautifully shot and edited documentary, thought provoking and very much worth watching. Good news: if you have Netflix, it's a available for instant viewing.

Return of Recipe Friday! Carrot Soup

2011-10-28T10:32:00.000-07:00

We had a party at our house last week and lots of people brought baby carrots. And no one took their baby carrots home with them when they left. So I took the pile of baby carrots and made a pureed carrot soup with them--one of my all-time favorite soups, in fact. Working with baby carrots was kind of fantastic. No chopping! No peeling!

Doing this reminded me that I haven't shared this recipe on the blog, so I dug up the original recipe card. This is one of the oldest recipes I have. It sort of taught me the basics of soup making. I no longer refer to the recipe when I cook, but it was good to go back and see the original instructions. This soup is just about an ideal soup. It's fast and flexible, doesn't require many ingredients and seems to please everyone. At heart it's vegan, but can be made more decadent by adding dairy. I wish I could credit it properly, but it's something I copied from a magazine onto a card fifteen years ago or so.

It's amazing how such a simple soup can have so much flavor. The sweet-spicy flavor and bright orange color also make it an ideal dish for this time of year. Each time I eat it I feel like I'm doing something really good for my body.

Carrot Soup

2 tablespoons olive oil or butter
About 2 pounds of carrots, peeled and sliced into chunks* (Peeling is optional but the soup tends to be sweeter/less earthy if you peel. To tell the truth. I never weigh my carrots--I use as many carrots as I have. If it looks like a whole lot, I'll add more onion to balance it out. If I don't have a lot of carrots, I still follow the recipe as is--it works, you just have less soup.)
1 large onion chopped
6 garlic cloves peeled
3-5 whole spice cloves (not absolutely necessary but very nice)
A little bit of salt. It doesn't need lots. Start with 1/2 teaspoon or less and add more later if it's needed.
About 4 cups of water or vegetable broth. Broth makes it extra rich, but I usually use water.
Fresh lemon juice, about one tablespoon. Best just to have a lemon on hand.
Pinch of sugar

Optional: yogurt or sour cream or heavy cream for topping

Heat oil in a a large heavy bottomed pot or saucepan. It should have a lid. Add the carrots, onion, garlic and cloves and saute until the onion is translucent. Then add the water or broth and salt. It should just cover the carrots. Cover the pot and simmer until the carrots are tender--maybe 30 minutes.

Fish out the spice cloves and discard. Puree the soup until smooth, either with a stick blender or a countertop blender or a food mill. If you use a countertop blender, do it in small batches instead of filling up the blender so you don't get the exploding volcano effect, i.e. hot carrot soup launching from your blender. Believe me, I've been there.

Do a final adjustment of seasoning after it's blended (put it back in the pot if you used the blender). At this point add the lemon juice, which is the magic trick of this recipe. I don't consider this ingredient optional. The recipe calls for one tablespoon of lemon juice but I usually add more. If it seems right, a bit of sugar. Just a pinch or two. Sugar really helps if the carrots aren't sweet. Then polish it up with salt and pepper to taste. You can add more hot water or broth to thin it if it seems too thick.

If you wish, serve it with a swirl of yogurt or cream on top, and maybe a sprinkle of chives for fancy.

It keeps well overnight, improves, even.

Changing it up:

I often add different herbs and spices at the beginning. For instance, I think thyme and carrots like each other, so I'll often throw some sprigs of thyme in at the beginning, to be sauteed with the onions. Same goes for sage. Sometimes I'll add a bit of cumin. Or cinnamon. Or cayenne. Or ginger. It's up to you if you want to push the soup toward more of an herbal/lemony flavor or more toward spicy/exotic or toward a sweet pumpkin pie profile. It's endlessly flexible.

You can also make this same soup with sweet potatoes instead of carrots. Sometimes I mix the two.

*A reader points out that she grates her carrots when she makes carrot soup. Good point! The smaller your veggies, the faster they'll soften up. Dinner will be on the table sooner--and she thinks it may make better tasting soup, too. But if you don't have the energy to grate, big chunks will soften up just fine. It's all good.

Epic Chayote Vine

2011-10-28T05:00:00.000-07:00

This little apartment garden in our neighborhood is one of my favorite examples of an edible landscape. Its main, perhaps only, feature is an enormous chayote (Sechium edule) vine that snakes across the (north!) facade of the building.

If you're interested in growing chayote, here's an old Mother Earth News article.

What We're Going To Do About That Lead

2011-10-27T05:00:00.000-07:00

White sage, yarrow, rosemary and aloe vera--the kind of plants we'll be planting more of.

Let's assume that we have a lead problem in our backyard. That's a big assumption at this point because we now have two very conflicting test results. But, for the sake of an argument, let's say the first alarming test is true, what are we going to do about it?

These are the options:

Radical remediation: Remove all the soil in the yard and replace with new soil.
Cover the contaminated soil so that it doesn't give off dust, and so people can't come in direct contact with it, e.g. lay sod, cover the yard with concrete or decking, or lay down a thick layer of mulch.
Grow ornamental plants only
Grow all food in raised beds
Attempt phytoremediation (grow plants that uptake lead, pull them and send them to the dump)
Move

It turns out we were already doing some of these things, so we're just going to keep on going as we were with a few changes. Our yard has always been covered in a thick layer of mulch and we do most of our growing in raised beds. We will stop growing edibles directly in the ground. We'd already planned to redesign the yard to include lots more native and Mediterranean flowering plants. These we can't eat, but will secure the soil and provide food and shelter for lots of beneficial insects who will aid our food crops. We're really happy that we've always mulched, because it has helped keep the (potentially) contaminated soil in place and has increased bio-activity as the mulch decomposes.

This raised be would have to be raised higher.

Most plants don't take up much lead, it turns out. Our soil phosphate levels are high and the pH is moderate, two factors that further decrease the ability of plants to access lead. The main health concern comes from directly ingesting dirt, and that can be avoided by washing and peeling vegetables and fruits. The recommended wash for lead is a splash of vinegar in water (1 tsp per 1 1/2 qts water).

I'd be more concerned if we had kids and they played in the backyard. Little kids, of course, are most at risk because they tend to ingest dirt during play. If it turns out there is a lead problem at our house, I plan on knocking on the doors of my neighbors with kids, warning them about what I've found and offer to help them do a lead test. In our public speaking and teaching we emphasize the importance of getting a soil test and we'll keep doing this.

Phytoremediation, the process of growing plants that concentrate lead, pulling them up every year and disposing of them holds a lot of promise. Unfortunately I don't see how it would be practical in a residential situation. If the contamination is widespread I'd have to remove every plant and tree and grow nothing but, let's say, sunflowers, for perhaps several decades. (Sunflowers pull up lots of lead.) In short, phytoremdiation is an intense, long term process.

I think the most important thing we can do is spread the message that soil is a sacred resource--something that we should not foul up in the first place. More and more we're coming to realize that soil is everything--our future and our well being is inextricably tied to its health. We know how to treat it right. We're just not doing it. We know what toxins are, and we've know it for a long time. For instance, lead has been known to be a problem for thousand of years. Benjamin Franklin, in a letter dated July 31, 1786, comments on lead poisonings caused by contaminated rum, and the lack of concern about this problem: "You will observe with concern how long a useful truth may be known and exist, before it is generally received and practiced on."

You said it, Ben.

Gardening Tip: Senecent Seedlings

2011-10-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

With seedlings, small is good.

Mrs. Homegrown here:

Senescence is the "change of the biology in an organism as it ages after it reaches maturity" (see Wikipedia). I believe I'm experiencing it right now.

What we're here to warn you about today is buying plants which are old before their time. Seedlings which are senescent.

What are senescent seedlings? Basically, these are seedlings whose roots have met the bottom of their container. See, plants have their own intelligence and follow their own internal clocks.

If, for instance, a little tomato seedling spends enough time in a tiny pot or shallow flat, its roots will reach the bottom of the container. When it meets this resistance, it will start to feel confined, and it will say to itself, "Well, this is it. This is all the space I'll ever get, so I better get going on the reproduction." At that point its biology will change and it will flower and start to do it's best to set fruit or seed as soon as possible. In short, it intends to reproduce before it runs out of resources.

The result of this biological shift is that this plant will never really thrive in your garden. It will stay smallish and bear just a little before closing up shop. It's not that the plant is unhealthy, it's just that it's done. You won't get much performance out of it. It's the tomato that never gets tall. It's the pepper plant that makes one single pepper.

Beware: Most nursery seedlings are senescent.

So keep these things in mind:

When you buy seedlings, look at the bottom of the container. If roots are poking out, it's a no-go. This pertains particularly to annual vegetables. Perennials don't like being root bound either, but the outcomes are not as extreme.

In addition to long roots, also look for tell-tale signs of maturity in a vegetable, like flowers or fruits. Tomato plants already bearing tiny tomatoes are not a good thing. Cukes that are flowering are not a good thing.

Look for the smallest, youngest seedlings you can find. Teeny tiny is good. The more leafed out they are, the longer their roots will be.

If you're raising plants from seeds, don't let the seedlings sit around too long. Get them into the ground when they open their first true leaves. If you can't plant for some reason, transplant them to deeper containers.

Get a Soil Test!

2011-10-25T05:00:00.000-07:00

Regular readers have probably already got this message, but right now we can't repeat it enough. If there's a lesson with our backyard lead scare , it's to practice due diligence when beginning a garden --or better yet, when you buy property--and that means getting a soil test from a soil lab. They're not that expensive, especially when you consider the high cost of remediation, and the well being of your self and your family.

Test soil for both nutrients and heavy metals when:

Buying a house or land
Starting to grow food in your yard
Are growing food and have never tested
Starting a plot in a community garden or a school garden
Buying soil in bulk

Property does not have to be on the former site of gas station to be suspect. Lead contamination comes not only from lead paint on older houses, but was also deposited all over urban centers and near busy roads via a constant rain of fine particulates from auto emissions.

It really is a shame that lead testing is not a standard part of the inspection phase of home-buying, especially as this is a pervasive problem in urban areas.

Do companies that sell bulk soil test that soil for lead? A few phone calls Darren Butler made to local companies indicate that they don't. So let the buyer beware here too. Wondering about bagged soils? Susan Carpenter, at the LA Times, tested a bunch and found no problems. She did find a possible lead link to fish fertilizer, however.

We've used all three of these services. UMass is the cheapest by far, but gives the least analysis. However, if you just want your lead level numbers, that's not a problem.

Wallace Laboratories
UMass Soil Testing Service
Timberleaf Soil Testing

In our next lead post we'll let you know what our plan is. And we know there's interest in all this, so over the week we'll talk about remediation, raised beds, what's dangerous, what's edible, and more. Fun for all, guaranteed!

Cat Update

2011-10-24T19:30:00.000-07:00

Last week was fairly traumatic around here. We learned two scary things--the first was that we might be living on a Superfund clean-up site, and the second was that something was seriously wrong with our kitten, Phoebe.

As Erik just posted, the lead issue remains up in the air, and will be for quite some time. But we did find answers regarding Phoebe, and while it is bad news, it is not as bad as our worst imaginings, and it's good just to have answers and a course of action. We're finding our feet again and will get back to a regular blogging schedule this week.

Turns out little Phoebe, found on the street when she was only 4 weeks old and bottle raised by us, was born with a heart defect. The kitty cardiologist (the excellent Dr. Zimmerman at AVCC for you Angelenos) identifies it as a complete AV canal defect. This is a rare and serious heart deformity. Dr. Zimmerman drew us a picture of a normal cat heart and then one of Phoebe's heart, and all we could think was that it was a miracle this kitten lived a minute outside the womb.

As I understand it (and please forgive the very loose terminology) there are four chambers to the heart, the left and right atria and the left and right ventricles, and each pair is divided by a septum, a wall. In Phoebe's heart, the septa are breached in both pairs, so her blood is flowing around her heart all willy-nilly. (In precise terms she has atrial septal defect and a ventricular septal defect).

We really don't know how she's functioning at all. It's also a miracle that she survived her spaying. We will no longer be using the services of the vet who somehow overlooked her loud heart murmur when prepping her for anesthesia.

There is little we can do for her. There is medication which will ease her heart action some. Dr. Zimmerman would not give us a prognosis because, as she says, "kitties always surprise us." So Phoebe might have weeks, she might last years. She's not in pain--she is just not as active as she used to be before the symptoms of this defect became more pronounced. Basically she's acting like an elderly cat, happy to nap a lot and watch our other kitten, Trout, play. If she does start to roughhouse with Trout she'll run out of air and have to stop. But it seems like she's figured that out already, and even simple Trout seems to understand that he has to leave her alone.

So yes, we're sad, but we're also relieved we don't have to make any big decisions regarding surgery (there is none) or her quality of life. We'll just enjoy her each day and be thankful we have that day together--which is, after all, how we should enjoy all the people and critters that we love.

Lead Update

2011-10-24T09:20:00.000-07:00

This week I thought I'd do a series of posts about soil and heavy metals beginning with a few more details about the possible lead contamination situation in our backyard.

Two weeks ago Darren Butler, who is teaching a vegetable gardening series at our house, led a class project where we took four samples from different locations in the backyard, mixed them together and sent them off to Wallace Laboratories, a local soil testing lab with an international reputation. The results came back showing plant available lead levels at 112 parts per million. Note that "plant available" is different than the total amount of lead in the soil. The total amount would be about ten times higher or 1,120 ppm. According to the University of Minnesota Extension Service,

Generally, it has been considered safe to use garden produce grown in soils with total lead levels less than 300 ppm. The risk of lead poisoning through the food chain increases as the soil lead level rises above this concentration. Even at soil levels above 300 ppm, most of the risk is from lead contaminated soil or dust deposits on the plants rather than from uptake of lead by the plant.

If the Wallace Labs report is correct, we've got a serious problem. It is possible that, in sampling and averaging multiple locations, we hit a "hot" spot where someone may have dumped paint or paint chips. Clearly, we'll have to set up a grid of tests to see if the problem is isolated.

I re-did the first test, trying as best I could to take samples from the same locations and sent this second test off to the less expensive UMass soil testing service. The results came back with substantially lower lead levels: 220 ppm, in the "low" range according to most experts, but still higher than I would like. Except for the soil pH, all the other numbers were completely different.

The next step will be to test the testing services. I'm going to take one sample and split it into three parts, sending one to Wallace, another to UMass and the third to Timberleaf Soil Testing. I hope that two of the testing services agree on something!

In subsequent posts I'm going to discuss what we're going to do, phytoremediation (spoiler alert: I don't think it's practical in residential situations), and my issues with the real estate industry.

This week the Center for Disease Control and Prevention is promoting their National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week. Especially if you have kids, get your soil and the interior of your house tested.

One Craptacular Week

2011-10-19T17:54:00.000-07:00

It's been one hell of a week. First we find out, via a soil test, that our backyard may have high levels of lead and zinc. We'll write a lot more about this once I confirm the results--I've sent in another sample to a different lab. And my doctor has agreed to give me a blood test. Whatever the results, I want to help get out the word about this serious issue--ironically, next week is National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week.

Then yesterday we found out that one of our kittens, Phoebe, has a some sort of serious heart defect. The blogging muses can sometimes leave us at times like this so don't be surprised if it takes us a few days to get ourselves back together.

So please hold our dear little kitten in your thoughts and prayers as well as the worldwide need for healing our soils. After all, we all need to eat, and all food whether it be plant or animal based, has its origins in living soil systems.

SunCalc: A Sun Trajectory Calculator

2011-10-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

In attempting to figure out how to align a garden path with the sunrise of the summer soltice (that's the way we roll at the the Root Simple compound), I came across a neat Google Maps hack: SunCalc, the creation of Vladimir Agafonkin.

According to the description on the site,

SunCalc is a little app that shows sun movement and sunlight phases during the given day at the given location.

You can see sun positions at sunrise (yellow), specified time (orange) and sunset (red). The thin orange curve is the current sun trajectory, and the yellow area around is the variation of sun trajectories during the year. The closer a point is to the center, the higher is the sun above the horizon. The colors on the time slider above show sunlight coverage during the day.

I can see SunCalc being useful for laying out a garden, window and solar panel placement, evaluating potential real estate, or for planning your own personal Stonehenge.

4 Vermicomposting Tips

2011-10-17T08:14:00.000-07:00

Ecological landscape designer Darren Butler has been teaching a series of classes at the Root Simple compound this month (I think there may be a few open slots in his Intermediate Organic Gardening class if you're interested. Click here for details). Darren dropped a few vermicomposting tips during the beginning class that we thought we'd share:

1) Worms don't like empty space in their bin. They dislike voids. They appreciate it very much if you bury their entire working area under a very thick layer of light dry carbon material, like shredded newspaper or chopped straw. Yes, it's standard practice to put a layer of cover material over the scraps--but the difference here is that Darren recommends that the cover layer should fill all the empty space in the bin, from the worm level to the lid.

To be clear, you never want the bin's working material (worms, scraps, etc.) to get super deep. That's just asking for problems, because the deeper that material, the more likely the bottom is going to turn nasty and anaerobic. What we're talking about here is filling the empty air space with dry matter--sort of like an insulation layer.

2) Harvesting worm castings (separating the worms from the castings) is always a bit of a challenge. Well, not challenging as in hard, but challenging as in requiring patience. Our method has been to mound the castings into a pyramid outside on a sunny day. The worms instinctively work their way down to the base of the pyramid to avoid the light. Once they do, we take off the top and sides of the pyramid and transfer that to a bucket. That material will be mostly worm free. Then we reform the pyramid and do it all over again.

This method is fine, but Darren's method is a little faster. It works on the same principle--the photosensitivity of worms--but instead of making pyramids he lays out softball sized mounds of castings. The worms will cluster at the bottom of the balls, allowing you to harvest off the tops and sides. This works faster than our pyramid method because the worms don't have as far to move. You can harvest faster, and get it done all at once instead of forming and reforming the pyramid.

Of course when you're doing either method you should remember the worms are very vulnerable when they're out of their bin like this, vulnerable to heat and sun--you don't want to forget about them!--and also to predators like chickens, birds and even dogs.

3) Some of you have worm bins with spigots for collecting "worm tea" aka leachate. Did you know it goes bad within 24 hours of production? If you use it, use it right away. Never use undiluted leachate on plants--it can harm them. To use it on plants, dilute it with 4 parts water, put it in a spray bottle, and spray on foliage. They'll uptake the nutrients through their leaves. Alternatively, you can use it as a soil drench (for watering) when diluted with 16 parts water. In its straight form it can be used as an insecticide.

4) Darren's favorite way of using worm castings is new to us and quite interesting. Castings are fertilizer, but more than that. They can help bring life to your soil. He takes golf ball sized plugs of fresh castings and buries them here and there in his garden beds (or pots). Used this way, they are little beneficial microbe arks that will help invigorate the life of your soil. A little bit goes a long way. You are, in effect, inoculating your soil with microbial life.

New to worm composting, or just vermi-curious? The classic book on the subject is Worms Eat My Garbage: How to Set Up and Maintain a Worm Composting System by Mary Appelhof.
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Rearranging the yard, yet again!

2011-10-14T08:56:00.000-07:00

Backyard redesign, in progress.

Mrs. Homegrown here:

This is all my fault. Last fall we re-did the back yard, but I decided it still needed a few refinements. I feel a little like a sitcom wife who can't make her mind up about the draperies (cue Erik, the long-suffering husband, moaning in the background)--but we can't be afraid to fix our mistakes.

Perhaps I shouldn't say mistake. There was nothing wrong with the last design. It's just that after a year of living with it I saw how it could be improved. These are the three things that the redesign addresses:

1) Flow. Movement within the garden. The old layout looked great but lacked flow. I think gardens should have paths. They should invite you to move through them, lead you on a small journey of discovery, rather than challenging you to make left-right decisions, as if you were playing Pac-Man. The primary change in our layout is that I've established a new curving path that will carry you through the garden. It connects with the pre-existing path to form a loop.

One advantage of establishing a path is that once the "people space" is established, all the rest of the garden becomes useable plant space. We actually have more growing space now.

2) Perennials: The last redesign put a lot of emphasis on growing space for annual plants. In turned out to be a little more space than we needed. Annuals are a lot of work, especially here, where we garden year round and a bed can cycle through 4 crops a year. We'll still have dedicated annual beds, but I'm going to reassign some of the beds formerly given over to annuals to useful/edible perennials.

3) Experimentation. Of late we're very intrigued with the idea of transitioning to a natural form of gardening that is hands-off---rather like our Backwards Beekeeping methodology. We're greatly influenced by The Ranch edible garden at the Huntington Gardens, created by Scott Kleinrock, and Erik is currently taking a class with Scott and Darren Butler that expands on some of these ideas. It would take a whole post, perhaps two or three to explain this in detail. And we'll write those! But suffice it to say for now that it will be useful for us to have more space to experiment with.

So above you see a preview of the garden. We've not done much but lay down the path, move the bird bath and pull up the summer crops. Most of the greenery left consists of tomatoes which haven't yet given up the ghost and a sturdy stand of okra.

Stay tuned for planting! We'll talk about our perennial choices, our layout and this whole hands-off gardening experiment as we go along.