Loquat Season

...ces, the parkway and people’s front yards making them prime candidates for urban foraging i.e. free food. The tree itself has a vaguely tropical appearance with waxy leaves that look like the sort of plastic foliage that used to grace dentist office lobbies back in the 1960s. In short it’s a real tree that looks fake with fruit that nobody seems to care about. The loquat tree invites considerable derision from east coast types. Blogmeister, extrem...

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Saturday Tweets: Cast Iron, Astroturf and Testing Your Microclimates

.../t.co/qj0S6jL5Z2 — Root Simple (@rootsimple) November 10, 2014 Silver Lake urban farmers get into turf war over artificial grass http://t.co/7Ce8xODsTK via @TheEastsiderLA — Root Simple (@rootsimple) November 14, 2014 From Farm to Patient Tray: Retrofitting the supply chain to meet hospitals’ demand for local food https://t.co/aPU7iE7ewJ — Rachel Surls (@RachelSurls) October 24, 2014 Drought: Beverly Hills is big water user; East L.A. is the lowes...

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Saturday Linkages: An Egg Shaped Houseboat, Bamboo Joints and the Origins of Umami

...dedecker/lowtechmagazineenglish/~3/Zre1F8bEuz4/bicycle-scale-models.html … Food The Origins of Heritage Foods Revivals 1980-1985 http://garynabhan.com/i/archives/2137 Fermenting Mentor: Uri Laio of Brassica and Brine http://wp.me/p1xg32-qw “Umami” Was Coined by the Inventor of MSG to describe Its Taste http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/umami-was-coined-by-the-inventor-of-msg-to-describe-i-693953580 … Why lettuce is making us sick: http://modernfarmer...

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My Apologies to the Skunk Community

...k: raccoon and skunk diets overlap considerably. Both are highly adaptable urban foragers. In the case of our raised beds, both the skunks and raccoons are digging for figeater beetle larvae (Cotinis mutabilis). These huge larvae must be a delectable treat, the equivalent of a raccoon and skunk sushi party. Maybe I should overcome my squeamishness and join in the nightly feast. A plate of Cotinis mutabilis larvae ceviche could just be the next hip...

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The Three Sisters

Due to the rigors of finishing our book The Urban Homesteader due out from Process Media next spring we were late getting around to planting our parkway vegetable garden. To review, the parkway is that space between the sidewalk and the street that belongs to the city but is the responsibility of the homeowner to maintain. The city, of course, wants us all to plant a lawn so that fat people can easily plop out of their Escalades unimpeded. We dec...

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