Flowers from Vegetables

...the birds will move in. Of course this means that I’m “wasting space” and making my garden “unproductive” but the rewards outweigh any inconvenience. New gardeners are often surprised to see what amazing flowers different vegetables make. People with no connection to food plants whatsoever may not even know that vegetables make flowers, so it’s fun to show them a carrot flower, a squash blossom, a bean flower. My new favorite garden flower comes...

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Saturday Linkages: DIY Coffee Roasting and That Crazy Rhubarb Lady

...Garden Centers Sell Bee-Attractant Plants with Pesticide Residues Toxic to Bees http://www.beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/?p=11566 … Want your kids to play outside? Rip out the lawn! by Garden Rant » good read http://gardenrant.com/2013/08/want-your-kids-to-play-outside-rip-out-the-lawn.html?utm_source=feedly … Design The Modern Seaweed House by Vandkunsten and Realdania Byg http://www.dezeen.com/2013/07/10/the-modern-seaweed-house-by-vandkuns...

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Eight Things to Consider When Saving Vegetable Seeds

The directions for seed saving in our last book, Making It, almost got cut. Perhaps we should have just changed those directions to “Why it’s OK to buy seeds.” The fact is that it’s not easy to save the seeds of many vegetables thanks to the hard work of our bee friends. That being said, Shannon Carmody of Seed Saver’s Exchange gave a lecture at this year’s Heirloom Exposition with some tips for ambitious gardeners who want to take up seed saving...

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Is Our Furniture Killing Us?

...and every step.They promise eternal life (an exaggeration for the sake of making a point) and a return to youthfulness. “At least one tenant says he feels a little younger already. Nobutaka Yamaoka, who moved in with his wife and two children about two years ago, says he has lost more than 20 pounds and no longer suffers from hay fever, though he isn’t sure whether it was cured by the loft.” [wsj.com] Having encountered Arakawa and Madeline Gins...

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Homegrown Evolution Visits the Los Angeles County Fair

...lk bottles. They even showed us how the bottles are shrink wrapped and placed on pallets. And what says “fun day at the fair” more than watching “palletizing” on a TV placed in a vintage 1980s entertainment cabinet while sitting in 100º heat? To end on a less cranky note, we’ll leave you with these lovely vintage diagrams done in a classic early 20th century sign making style, one below and one at the top of this post. It’s really hard to say when...

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