Looks like Baker’s talent extended to gardening!
Saturday Tweets: Addictive Snacks and Ninja Houses
"3 Addictive Snacks That Are Actually Good for You" (the chickpeas are killer) https://t.co/u79ixiFHLG
— Michael Pollan (@michaelpollan) January 23, 2016
Ninja House: Open-Ceiling Layout is an Agility Course | Designs & Ideas on Dornob https://t.co/6V12RzOYJD via @dornobdesign
— Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 19, 2016
Build this Solar Powered Hydroponic Water Garden on Wheels – MUST READ! https://t.co/PXhU21ji7m
— Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 18, 2016
Internet of Things security is so bad, there’s a search engine for sleeping kids | Ars Technica – https://t.co/nNwSH5uVMK
— Eric Rochow (@GardenForkTV) January 23, 2016
Ill advised grafting projects
Many thanks to Dr. Brew for alerting us to this Simpsons routine about crossing tomatoes with tobacco. I took a look at the research on grafting tomatoes to tobacco root stock (though it seems Homer crossed the seeds) and the technique shows some promise. According to this study,
Tobacco grafting had a positive effect on the tomato plant cultivation performance; the onset of flowering was almost 15 days earlier and the tomato flower and fruit yields increased in both tomato cultivars. Tobacco grafting resulted in 5.0% and 30.1% increase in total fruit weight for cv. Sweet and cv. Elazig, respectively. Because the level of nicotine was within acceptable ranges, tobacco-grafted tomato fruits were considered to be safe for consumption. Self-grafted tomato cultivars also had flowering time onsets almost 11 days earlier. However, self-grafting caused 6.0% and 7.6% less total fruit yield per cv.
It does remind me of the unsuccessful attempt back in the 1970s to graft hops onto cannabis root stock with the goal of creating a legal looking plant containing THC. The grafts take but the “Hopijuana” plants contain no THC. No doubt this is a huge disappointment to the microbreweries of Colorado.
073 Permaculture From the Inside Out with Rachel Kaplan
In this week’s episode we talk to Rachel Kaplan who is a somatic psychotherapist, permaculture designer, educator, and author. Rachel lives on a small urban homestead with her family and their many critters in Petaluma, CA. She is a co-founder of the 13 Moon CoLab, an all-woman teaching team offering an evolutionary training, Permaculture from the Inside Out. Her collaborators in this venture are Kyra Auerbach, Delia Carroll and Cassandra Ferrera. Rachel wrote Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living (with K. Ruby Blume), and is currently working on a long-awaited book about community dance ritual with dance luminary Anna Halprin. Her website is: www.13mooncollaborative.com. Friend 13 Moon CoLab in Facebook here. During the show Rachel also mentions: Daily Acts, Starhawk and Mark Lakeman.
If you want to leave a question for the Root Simple Podcast please call (213) 537-2591 or send an email to [email protected]. You can subscribe to our podcast in the iTunes store and on Stitcher. The theme music is by Dr. Frankenstein. A downloadable version of this podcast is here.
A Guilty Pleasure: The Mid-Century Menu
Back in my time-wasting grad school days I made somewhat of a hobby out of thrift shopping. Along with the mandatory copy of Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream, every thrift store would have a collection of post-war, space-age cookbooks. Recipes, in this period, are a kind of recombinatory matrix of industrial ingredients. You take some cocktail wieners, a dollop of mayonnaise, some ketchup and a surprise ingredient, say dried prunes and roll them all up into a ball that roughly resembles a low earth orbit satellite and you’ve got dinner.
This is the culinary territory explored by “Retro Ruth,” the genius behind the Mid-Century Menu blog. She cooks up one mid-century recipe a week and feeds it to her husband Tom who does a kind of visually documented taste testing. It’s great fun and their blog is one of my favorite internet time holes, even though I’ll never make this stuff. In the past year they’ve been covering the outer-stellar potlucks featured in the background of the Astronaut Wives Club. Then there’s the cocktails. The disasters, such as the Salmon Vermouth Casserole, are particularly entertaining.
Did you grow up with this stuff? As always, we love your comments.
Support Root Simple
The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science A grand tour of the science of cooking explored through popular American dishes, illustrated in full color.