The Strange World of Artificial Plants

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Thoughtstylings
10 Comments

Ikea’s Fejka.

On a recent pilgrimage to Ikea, I ended up staring at a large display of fake plants while Mrs. Root Simple found a replacement for our kitten-shredded drapes. Viewed from a distance Ikea’s plastic plants were realistic, though seemingly outside of any known plant genus. I found myself pondering the question of what permacultural context in which these plastic plants would be an appropriate design solution. I couldn’t answer my own question. More plastic and less living things in our lives is probably not a good idea. But I am willing to consider a very limited use of artificial turf–neighbor Anne Hars once showed me Home Depot’s astonishing selection of fake grass–some that even has fake dead grass mixed in for realism. Perhaps in some ironic post-modern house this artificial turf could fit in.

It did remind me of the time a neighbor, who is a Hollywood art director, grabbed me late one evening to help her fake a vegetable garden for a movie. From her I that learned that their are businesses in Hollywood that do nothing other than provide fake plants. Not just flowers, but everything from corn to . . . hemp.

Having a bad year with your tomatoes? Green Set Inc. will set you up with some fake ones:

They even have a very large (and suspiciously shiny) fake zucchini:

But I think my favorite fake plants come from a company called New Image Plants, providers of  “The World’s Best Artificial Marijuana.” Customers? Marijuana dispensaries, the set decorator for Weeds and law enforcement! From their website:

Across the world law enforcement finds itself with the continuous dilemma of having to train new recruits to identify and find illegal marijuana plants . . . Our plants are used by many police departments across the world, the US Military and the Royal Mountain Police in Canada to name just a few.

Be forewarned that the bush above, complete with realistic buds, is a $325 gag gift for the gardener in your life. For some reason I would love to sneak one of these into my dentist’s waiting room.

How Will You Celebrate the National Day of Unplugging and . . . the Day After?

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
5 Comments

Image from Reboot’s Unplugging campaign.

I was pleasantly surprised to see an article on “unplugging” in the last issue of Sunset Magazine, “The Unplugged Home.” That the article features a family in the San Francisco Bay area (the capital of plugging in) isn’t surprising. When I was a video editor many years ago the last thing I wanted to do was sit in front of another TV when I got home. I suspect many tech workers feel the same about computers.

We got rid of our TV a long time ago and have never missed it. But the interwebs are a different matter. I think we humans are hardwired to be attracted to novelty and the interwebs are a crack cocaine pipe full of informational novelty. Sometimes I’m using the internet wisely to, say, find the optimal planting times for rhubarb. But other times I’m reading nonsense about the Bavarian Illuminati hand signals Beyonce allegedly deployed during her Superbowl appearance.

Reboot, a Jewish arts organization is sponsoring a National Day of Unplugging from sundown to sundown March 1st to 2nd. I think this is a great idea and I plan on participating–I especially like their Sabbath Manifesto.

But the problem for me is not disconnecting from the internet–that’s easy–since I don’t have a smart phone I do that every time I leave the house. No, the problem is reconnecting responsibly, i.e. using the internet productively. The internet is, after all, a fantastic research and connectivity tool.

Ahead of the National Day of Unplugging I’d like to hear from readers about how you manage technology in your household–your strategies for disconnecting and connecting responsibly. If I get enough responses I’ll feature them in a follow up post on March 4th.

Erik on HuffPost Live Tonight

Mr. Homegrown
Events
4 Comments

Just a quick note that I’ll be on HuffPost Live tonight at 6:30 PST to discuss, “Backyard Chicken Coops, greenhouses, beehives and compost bins show that back-to-the-land activities and sustainable living are back. Say Hello to Victory Gardens 2.0!”

You can watch here. Guests include:

  • Barbara Finnin Executive Director of City Slicker Farms
  • Erik Knutzen Author of “The Urban Homestead” and Founder of Root Simple
  • Rob Ludlow Owner of BackYardChickens.com

The show will be archived and I’ll post a link when it appears on the HuffPost website.

How to Freeze Food in Canning Jars

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation, How-to
23 Comments

Canning jars are the best way I know to avoid using plastic when freezing foods. You’ll want to use wide mouthed canning jars like the one above, that come in pint and half pint sizes. Don’t use jars with shoulders–these jars will break due to the expansion that happens when food is frozen.

Kerr and Ball jars are marked with a freeze fill line that’s about an inch below the rim. Don’t put food you intend to freeze above this line.

Avoiding plastic lids is more difficult. Two piece Ball lids have a BPA coating (which, I’ve heard that they are considering phasing out). I suppose you could use a BPA-free Tattler lid, though I haven’t tried them. For freezing I use food grade plastic lids sold by Ball. Food is not in contact with the lid, so I’m not too concerned about the plastic, though I understand that some people won’t agree. At least the lids are more easily reused than ziplock bags.

But jars won’t work for freezing a pork chop–see an interesting thread on Chowhound about this issue that Root Simple reader Peter Shirley alerted me to. Long story short: home freezing is a product of the post WWII era of plastics and refrigeration, so there’s not a lot of alternatives other than the jar option and less than optimal aluminum foil and heavy paper. It’s hard to beat the moisture retaining and freezer burn excluding properties of plastics. The plastic-free meat freezing alternative is to bring back the corner butcher shop and buy fresh.

Freezing Meat With Freezer Paper

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation, How-to
15 Comments

A good question came in on Friday’s post about freezing fruits and vegetables about how to freeze meat products without using plastic bags. I don’t know of a way to avoid plastic with meat products, but you can use freezer paper instead of ziplock bags. The University of Georgia Extension Service has a handy info sheet on how to wrap meat with freezer paper: Freezing Animal Products.

Correction: an earlier version of this post was entitled “How to Freeze Meat Without Using Plastic.” I had forgotten that freezer paper is coated with plastic. You can use glass canning jars to freeze (just don’t use a jar with a shoulder). While jars are a great way to freeze soups and stews, they are not suitable for cuts of meat. If you are aware of a way to freeze cuts of meat without plastic, please leave a comment.

Picture Sundays: I’m One Taco Short of a Combination Platter

Mr. Homegrown
Picture Sundays
17 Comments

It’s a huge non sequitur, but today’s impending Superbowl made me think of the gatefold for the ZZ Top album Tres Hombres. Perhaps it was the publicity person who wanted me to promote a birria meat stew concocted by a celebrity chef (and celebrity flag football participant–who knew there was such a thing?) in conjunction with the Superbowl. Or maybe I’m having a Proust moment, except with nachos instead of madeleines.

So what are Root Simple readers doing on Superbowl Sunday? Watching the game or starting a crock of sauerkraut? Or topping nachos with sauerkraut?

Saturday Linkages: Let’s Make Chickens Legal in Pasadena!

Mr. Homegrown
Saturday Linkages
5 Comments

Let’s really make backyard hens legal in Pasadena CA! 

Gardening
Preventing the heartbreak of splayage: http://ow.ly/1RN6pB

Uli Westphal’s Ripening Tomatoes http://greenroofgrowers.blogspot.com/2013/01/uli-westphals-ripening-tomatoes.html#.UQxX3qqq5vY.twitter …

The Wild, the Domesticated, and the Coyote-Tainted http://j.mp/14EAlz6 


Beyond Thunderdome
Bug-Out Security with UV : http://dirttime.com/?p=2804

For 40 years, this Russian family was cut off from all human contact #longreads http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/For-40-Years-This-Russian-Family-Was-Cut-Off-From-Human-Contact-Unaware-of-World-War-II-188843001.html#.UQgv0Pcfh0Y.twitter …

Bikesailing http://lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.com/2013/01/bikesailing.html#.UQckcMq9Xa8.twitter …

Build your own junk bagpipes out of PVC and duct tape: http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-your-own-Smallpipes-for-a-few-bucks-Membra/?ALLSTEPS …

2-In-1 iPotty with Activity Seat for iPad: http://boingboing.net/2013/02/01/2-in-1-ipotty-with-activity-se.html …

Your Biggest Carbon Sin May Be Air Travel http://nyti.ms/VesXDI

For these links and more, follow Root Simple on Twitter:

How To Freeze Fruits and Vegetables

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation
11 Comments

Photo by Flickr user leibolmai

Freezing foods is just about the most boring food preservation method. It’s also the easiest and best way to preserve nutrients. But, when it comes to freezing fresh vegetables from the garden there is one important step: blanching. Blanching slows down enzymatic activity that can deteriorate the quality of what you freeze. How much to blanch depends on the vegetable in question. Thankfully there’s a handy publication from Oregon State University, Freezing Fruits and Vegetables, that covers blanching times and many of the other particulars in freezing foods.

One thing not covered in that pamphlet is that some foods like berries, green beans, peas, diced onions, whole-kernel corn etc are more convenient to cook with if you can just pour them out of a freezer bag without having to break them out of a solid mass. To do this you’ll individually quick freeze IQF them. To IQF:

  1. Wash, blanch (veggies) and cool .
  2. Spread in one layer on a cookie sheet and place in the freezer for four to six hours.
  3. Pack in sealed containers or in freezer bags.
  4. Label with date to avoid freezer mystery bag phenomenon.

Now when the zombie apocalypse arrives and everything goes Beyond Thunderdome, freezing will not be the best option (unless, like Tina Turner, we figure out how to turn pig waste into propane to power our refrigerators). But I digress.

Failed Experiment: Bermuda Buttercup or Sour Grass (Oxalis pes-caprae) as Dye

Mrs. Homegrown
Domesticus, Herbs, Mistakes
17 Comments

The “dyed” t-shirt is on the left. The shirt on the right is a basic white tee. I could have achieved similar results by entropy alone.

Chalk this one up to the failures column. In an attempt to use Bermuda Buttercup (aka Sour Grass) and various mordants to dye a couple of white t-shirts yellow and green, I succeeded in dyeing both snowy white shirts a pale shade of …let’s call it ecru. Let’s not call it “grimy old t-shirt white.”

There was a moment last night when one shirt took on an extremely light, delicate yellow-green cast–and that was exciting– but the color came out when I hand washed and rinsed the shirts.

Perhaps it was a half-assed project all along. I had no burning reason to dye with Oxalis–except that it’s thick on the ground right now. Also, Oxalis is rich in oxalic acid, which is supposed to (cough) serve as a built in mordant, helping the plant dye to bind more easily to both plant and animal fibers. Oxalis theoretically yields tones ranging from lightest yellow to a sort of acid green, depending on which additional mordants you might use. Used straight, it was supposed to yield a very pale yellow.

So I thought, why not play with it and see what happens?

My only information source for this project was The Handbook of Natural Plant Dyes by Sasha Duerr. This, also, was a mistake. I usually use more sources when I start a project, but I felt lazy.

I don’t know if this is a flawed book or not–I’m not judging yet. It’s on probation. It’s a pretty book, and inspirational in that it makes you want to dye everything you can lay your hands on–hell it makes you want to raise your own sheep and spin your own yarn, so you can dip it in acorn, cabbage and fennel dye, sing some folk songs, dance a dance,  compost the solids and acidify your garden soil.with the spent dye.

It sent me into fantasies of living in some groovy Sonoma-Portlandish nirvana where my house is clean and has plaster walls and wood beams in the ceiling (the wood beams are always in the fantasy) and a fire in the grate. I’d watch the goats graze in the back yard while I cheerfully sip tea and knit something marvelous out of hand spun angora dyed with Oxalis.

(As opposed to the reality of me stumbling around our money pit of house in my exceedingly unnatural and ancient polar fleece robe, desperately searching for a chair to sit on that doesn’t hold a cat, so I can watch the LAPD stalking around the unoccupied house across the street, guns drawn, trying to nab arsonist squatters, without being in the line of fire. True story! Just happened!)

ANYWAY. Point is, the book did not serve me well in the matter of Burmuda Buttercup.

This is, therefore, an anti-project post. Following these steps will get you nowhere.

A more determined dyer or a better blogger might soldier on and find the correct answers and report them to you as a public service, but I’m sorry my friends.  I’m giving up on this one and will probably try onion skin next.

Read on if you dare.

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