Homegrown San Francisco Events

Homegrown Evolution will be in San Francisco this week to speak at the Studio for Urban Projects. The talk will be on Sunday, April 5 at 2:00 pm. We’ll rap about what we’ve been up to and do a brief demo about self irrigating planters, the ideal way to grow food when you don’t have any dirt to call your own. The Studio for Urban Projects is located at 3579 17th St., San Francisco (between Dolores & Guerrero). Also, in San...

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The Ecology Center of San Juan Capistrano

Kelly and I had the privilege of doing a short talk this weekend at the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano. If you’re interested in Southern California food forestry, greywater, chickens, you name it, this is the place to visit. They have an amazing garden, classes and a well curated gift store. When people ask us how to design garden and house systems in SoCal, we’re going to send them to the Ecology Center....

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Saturday Linkages: I’m tired of doom, let’s garden and make things . . .

er-et-al/ … Small batch artisanal high-fructose corn syrup: http://boingboing.net/2013/05/30/small-batch-artisanal-high-fru.html … Nolita’s Little Free Library http://www.stereotank.com/Little-Free-Library … Fitness Is It Better to Walk or Run? http://ow.ly/lyt12 Activate Demand Home Depot, Lowe’s stop selling bee-killing poisons. Click to take action: http://bit.ly/13mU9GQ Help the EFF save podcasting from a patent troll: http://b...

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Lord of the Flies Inspired Bike Rack

Homegrown Neighbor here. When I saw this unique piece of public art/functional bike rack I just had to stop and take a picture to share.  I was on my way home from the Central Library, where I had checked out some books on Belgian beer for a project I’m working on. I walked up Broadway to catch the bus home, stopping at Grand Central Market on the way. But outside the market I saw this truly strange sculpture with many bikes locked to it....

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Tomatoes in December

It ain’t pretty but I’m not complaining. Note to self: the tomatoes that sprout on their own are always the healthiest. The cherry tomato above has reseeded itself for at least 12 years. Sometimes its offspring survive the winter and grow as a perennial. Our climate sort of permits this but occasionally a cold night will kill tomatoes off. And each year the fruit declines in quality. This summer I transplanted two tomato se...

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Self Irrigating Planter Resources

Homegrown Evolution is up in San Francisco this weekend to do a talk about the world of self-irrigating planters (also known as SIPs or self-watering planters or a couple of other variations on that general verbiage). In our opinion SIPs are the food growing tool of the aspiring urban agriculturalist. Make or buy one of these things and vegetable container gardening is a breeze. No need to water your pots three times a day during the summer! For...

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Our Favorite Searches

...ng Portably for answers to that. “how to make methamphetamine using a 5 gallon bucket” Can’t help you there, but we can suggest a healthier use for a 5 gallon bucket. “pizza dough peak oil flour” It may be shameless promotion, but we think we’re the only source for a pizza recipe for peak oil fans. Of course, sticklers for detail will point out that we did not grow and grind our own flour. We’ll get to ho...

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Saturday Linkages: Of Granola and Turlets

...ake Good Bread http://huff.to/UHEpMm  Bad News Department Citrus industry using insecticide deadly to bees: sulfoxaflor has surfaced again http://shar.es/YTAP7  CISPA is back: worst Internet law since SOPA needs you to fight it! – Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2013/02/18/cispa-is-back-worst-internet.html … The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food http://nyti.ms/154Tqde For these links and more, follow Root Simple on Twitter:...

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Plastic or Wood?

Some time ago the folks at the FDA and USDA recommended that we replace our wooden cutting boards with plastic ones (such as the fine Elvis model on the right). This injunction rose out of rising fears of salmonella and e-coli poisoning in our food, which are, by the way, the signature bacteria of our deplorable factory farming system. But that’s another rant. This rant is about the boards. So as we were saying, it was out with the nasty,...

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