Why You Shouldn’t Grow an Avocado From a Pit

...you should buy a tree from a nursery. Why? Bees love to pollinate avocado flowers. If you plant an avocado seed you’ll get some weird cross between the many different avocado varieties. Odds are it won’t taste good and who wants to water a tree for nine years only to get a bushel of foul avocados? So to review: if you’d like a houseplant go ahead and plant that pit. If you’d like to keep your hipsters supplied with avocado toast buy a tree from a...

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O79 Growing and Breeding Tomatoes with Fred Hempel

...rn California. His focus is on tomatoes, peppers, squash, herbs and edible flowers. In the podcast we ask if there is such a thing as a heirloom tomato? What does a tomato breeder look for in a tomato? Why do supermarket tomatoes taste so crappy? And what happens when you turn a tomato breeding project over to an eight year old. We also talk about how to water tomatoes and prepare soil. During the podcast Fred mentions: Dumont #4 tweezers And two...

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Saturday Tweets: Touch Your Opuntia

Did you know? Stamens of many Opuntia flowers respond to touch. #plantsarecool #pokingthings #cacti pic.twitter.com/rIqJMmgV3B — Jennifer Possley (@JennPossley) April 10, 2018 Eat. Mor. Figs.@CaFigs @ValleyFig https://t.co/RaSOARO7T0 — Ernest Miller (@RLMProvisions) April 13, 2018 One of the reasons I love this herbal so much is that, in addition to the beautiful drawings (mugwort in this instance), there are intricate scenes in the background of...

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Saturday Tweets: Lyme Disease, Unuselessness and a Plum Mystery

10 Self-Propogating Herbs and Flowers That Take Over My Garden Every Spring https://t.co/CVYTSAomDL via @nwedible — Root Simple (@rootsimple) May 5, 2018 The New Look for Gardeners Freaked out about Lyme Disease | Garden Rant https://t.co/234f22E1gD — Root Simple (@rootsimple) May 5, 2018 The art of the unuseless: https://t.co/nTa3gH6iRW — Root Simple (@rootsimple) May 5, 2018 Great new resource–free online Sustainable Food Systems Sourcebook inc...

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Truth and Beauty

...’s paintings almost seem like they’re about to be taken over by the vines, flowers and grasses that tangle around the central figures. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what we can learn from the PRB and from the English and American Arts and Crafts movements. To be frank, I’m tired of my own and my generation’s cynicism and irony and I’m haunted by Adam Curtis’ critique of self-expression in contemporary art. I think it’s well past time to ge...

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