Pee on your Compost

Judging from comments and our web statistics you people out there love discussing poo. So it’s about time that we move on to pee. Why waste your perfectly good urine? Indeed, both Ghandi and Jim Morrison drank their own urine for it’s reputed health benefits. But we ain’t gonna go there. Our suggestion for the day is to save that piss for your plants. Urine is a fantastic source of nitrogen and it’s estimated that we all...

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Seaching for Seeds

Old school seed searching: order assembler standing next to racks containing packages at the W. Atlee Burpee Company, 1943 It’s never too early to start planning that garden. And towards that goal, Mother Earth News has created a nice custom Google search engine that scours over 600 seed suppliers. It’s the perfect way to find those obscure plants and varieties not at the local nursery. The search engine even includes our favorite s...

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Fading into the Soft White

Mrs. Homegrown here: Honeybees congregate on our floating row covers to die. Every day, two, three, four or five will choose to land one last time on this billowing white fabric that covers one of our garden beds. There they will cling while their strength wanes, until they fall off to be lost in the mulch. I know worker bees don’t live very long. They work so hard that by the end of their lives, their wings hang in shreds. Their little b...

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Saturday Linkages: Soil Liming, Vegans Partying, Cats and Couches

Designer Seungji Mun’s cat couch. Please Stop Liming your Soil Based on the pH! | Garden Rant http:// gardenrant.com/2012/07/please -stop-liming-your-soil-based-on-the-ph.html  … Vegans party … at the butcher shop! http://www. latimes.com/features/food/ dailydish/la-dd-vegans-party-at-the-butcher-shop-20120801,0,7684645.story  … Small Homes in Working Class Neighborhoods http:// bit.ly/NMf0xX Purr-fect Playground: Human Sofa...

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Broadleaf Plantain

cooked. The seeds can also be eaten either raw or roasted, though we should note that they have a laxative effect (nothin’ wrong with that!). The plant can also be used to treat wounds, by soaking the plant and applying it to the injured area. A tea can be made of the leaves that will treat diarrhea. Broadleaf plantain was apparently one of the first so-called “weeds” introduced to the New World by the Europeans, which is why th...

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Urban Homestead on Craigslist. Act Now!

I’ve always been uneasy with the moniker “urban homestead.” It’s the title of our book (what else could we have called it?), but it’ not really accurate. The activities we describe are also practiced by suburbanites and people in rural places. And “homestead” is not technically accurate–all the readers of our book, I’m fairly certain, either own or rent their property. The term is also load...

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Iron Sulfate as a Concrete Stain

My concrete Platonic solids stained with iron sulfate. I’m not a big fan of concrete in the garden. It raises soil alkalinity (a problem for us, here in the Southwestern US) and it prevents rain from infiltrating into the ground. That being said, concrete is occasionally useful and/or unavoidable. But I also don’t like the color of bare concrete, nor can I afford the high price of concrete stains. Thankfully there’s a...

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Saturday Linkages: Urine Soaked Eggs, Currents, Squirrels and School Gardens

.../boingboing.net/2012/03/29/bald-eagle-fox-and-cat-are.html HOWTO build a robotic squirrel-squirting water sentry-gun, with python: http://boingboing.net/2012/03/26/howto-build-a-robotic-squirrel.html Tips on running a school garden: http://bit.ly/GKA3Md @ bikejuju blog post: Freak Bike Friday: Bed Frame Bike http://is.gd/f18Q5A These, and more linkages, are from the Root Simple twitter feed....

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Saturday Linkages: Tiny Houses and Succulent Suprises

Gardening Sunflower sutra | Garden Rant http:// gardenrant.com/2012/10/sunflo wer-sutra.html  … Succulent Surprise http://www. dudecraft.com/2012/09/succul ent-surprise.html  … DIY Build-It-Solar Blog: DIY Insulating Window or Door Shutters Using Astrofoil: http://www. builditsolarblog.com/2012/09/diy-in sulating-window-or-door-shutters.html?spref=tw  … Bikes Cargo cyclists replace truck drivers on European city streets: http://www. lowtechma...

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