Allium ursinum

thrives in moist, acidic soil–forest conditions, in other words. In short, not appropriate for our climate in Los Angeles, but folks in the northwest might consider planting some. Like all members of the Allium species it̵7;s toxic to dogs, but we̵7;ve never had a problem with our dog eating onions (he prefers raiding our avocado tree and tomato bushes for illicit snacks). Special thanks to Steve Rowell of the Center for Land Use I...

Continue reading…

Introducing Nancy Klehm With Tips on Growing Jerusalem Artichokes

...annual plants such as basil, tomatoes, melons, etc. We have had a mild winter and a very early Spring this year – almost a month ahead according to any record. As a true farmer said: ‘This is the warmest April on record.’ And it was still March when he said it. In the past 10 days, dodging rain and wet soil, I have planted out potatoes, asparagus, peas, collards, chard, kale, radishes, carrots, beets, turnips, salsify, and cress. I have many veg...

Continue reading…

Straw Bale Gardens

Tasha Via̵7;s straw bale garden. Michael Tortorello (who profiled us when Making It came out) is one of my favorite writers covering the home ec/gardening subjects we discuss on this blog. He had an article last week in the New York Times, “Grasping at Straw” on straw bale gardening. We̵7;ve very tempted to give the practice a try in our backyard. Why? We have lead and zinc contaminated soil so growing veggies in the ground...

Continue reading…

Building With Adobe

Architect and Root Simple friend Ben Loescher, along with Kurt Gardella, is teaching a class on adobe construction. I̵7;m going to attend the second day, November 6th, and hope to see some of you there. Adobe has a storied past and a promising future in the Southwest U.S., in my opinion. Here̵7;s the info on the class: adobeisnotsoftware is pleased to host Kurt Gardella for the first in a series of classes on adobe construction within C...

Continue reading…

A Review of Williams-Sonoma’s Agrarian Line

Last week upscale retalier Williams-Sonoma announced an urban homesteady line of goods they call “Agrarian”. A number of Root Simple readers responded to the news after I linked to a Wall Street Journal article about the Agrarian line. One reader likened the “Agrarian” items to Marie Antoinette̵7;s 18th century cosplay mini-farm. Another hoped that mainstream acceptance of things like chicken coops and beehives might...

Continue reading…

Candied Grapefruit Peel

Erik sourced some nice grapefruits from our friend̵7;s tree and used the flesh to do some homework for his Master Food Preserver program. This left a big pile of organic, unwaxed grapefruit rind on our counter, so I decided to do something about it, and set off to make candied grapefruit peel. This is the technique I came up with by mashing together a bunch of different internet recipes and making two batches of the stuff. The results are d...

Continue reading…

Book Review: My Side of the Mountain

Illustration from the book: Sam Gribley and his falcon, Frightful. And his homemade shirt with extra large pockets. Naturalist and author Jean Craigshead George wrote My Side of the Mountain –the story of a boy from New York City who runs away to live on his own in the Catskill Mountains–in 1959.  Since then, it has won the Newbery Medal and been consistently ranked high in recommended reading lists for children. Recently I...

Continue reading…

Saturday Linkages: Naked Gardening, Ticks, Walking in LA and Eating Giant Rats

Couple gets booted out of the first world naked gardening day. Watch out for the nettles . . . World naked gardening day–May 4: http://www.wngd.org [Editors note: NSFW and no we won't be participating in WNGD, but I once saw a neighbor doing so while I was walking our dog a few years ago.] Making Things Paul Elkin, Maker of Many Things http://lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.com/2013/04/paul-elkin-maker-of-many-things.html#.UYSMGz1dyX8.twitter...

Continue reading…

Borage: It’s what’s for dinner

...s vanish on cooking. Some sources say only to use small leaves for cooking but I say fie to that. I used leaves of all sizes and after cooking there was no difference between them. Borage is actually rather delicate under all its spikes and cooks down considerably in to a very tender, spinach-like consistency. Instead of making little tacos with it, we folded it into tortillas with a bit of goat̵7;s milk gouda to make yummy green quesadillas&...

Continue reading…

June: National Bathroom Reading Month

By bikin̵7; friend Colin informed me last week that he had heard a report on National Public Radio about June being, “National Bathroom Reading Month”. Doing a little digging revealed that, sadly, it was just a publicity stunt for a series of un-funny bathroom humor books and did not have the backing of our congress, senate or president. Nevertheless we thought we̵7;d celebrate bathroom reading month anyways with a look at wh...

Continue reading…