Does Compost Tea Work?

...D3Kx7I4d4hU If you’d like to pick an argument in the mostly staid world of gardening, I can’t think of a better subject than compost tea. I’ve, somewhat cowardly, tried to stay out of the fray and leave the debate to Linda Chalker-Scott and Jeff Lowenfels. If you forced me to pick a side I’d lean towards Chalker-Scott’s skepticism. Thankfully, I can now point towards the eXtension.org webinar on making and using compost teas that I’ve embedded abo...

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June: National Bathroom Reading Month

...are a water quality report like this one to what kind of water is good for making beer. Performance Bicycle Catalog. We get a lot of these catalogs since every few months we break a bike tail light and have to order a new one. They just don’t build bicycle accessories to last! These bike catalogs, aimed at recreational cyclists who drive somewhere to ride their bikes (note the cover) feature lots of god-awful candy-colored spandex outfits, $5,000...

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On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

...which you were paid to do the things you like to read about on this blog: gardening, beer brewing, jam making, beekeeping etc. Or how about a world in which teachers, nurses and caregivers made more money than tech CEOs? Sadly, we don’t live in that utopia. Instead we have an economy that often rewards people who either do nothing all day or whose work degrades our lives. Anthropologist David Graeber takes up these questions in his book Bullshit...

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Saturday Tweets: Ascension K-Mart Choppers

...ip: Don’t touch tomato plants while wet. It increases chances of disease. #gardeningtips #growtomatoes pic.twitter.com/6qyL3hDD5d — Gardenerd (@gardenerd1) May 2, 2019 While the question of whether we are truly alone in the universe remains unanswered, this is certainly a bat, eating watermelon. pic.twitter.com/7LApFHJi7e — Paul Bronks (@SlenderSherbet) May 1, 2019 History of CNC Machining, Part 1: by @bantamtools https://t.co/VOoS6W0bXT — Root Si...

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A Sasquatch in the Garden?

I keep a mental note of all the objects I’ve dug up while gardening over the years. The soil surrounding our house has mostly thrown up broken milk bottles from the days of the milkman. I’ve also found a lot of what I think are perfume bottles. Mostly though my shovel hits chunks of long buried concrete. Then I curse. But this week, while we’ve been working on version 5.3 of our difficult to garden steep front slope, I uncovered the strangest obj...

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