Luddite’s Moonshot: Dealing With Leafy Green Pests

...w cover, specifically Agribon 15. The row cover thickness you use will depend on your climate. I opted for the lightest available as we often have freak heat waves in the winter here. But I haven’t deployed any row cover in years. It’s a pain to use. You have to be diligent in making sure the whole bed gets covered and it’s hard to see the plants under the cover without having to pull it on and off. And row cover won’t prevent slugs. Here’s UC Dav...

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Straw Bale Gardens

Tasha Via’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. We’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 is questionable. We live o...

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It’s Calendula Season!

...ful herb. Here’s a couple of profiles to check out if you need convincing: Plants for a Future; University of Maryland It takes about 60 days for Calendula to reach maturity from seed, so if it’s spring where you live, now is a good time to plant it. Note that Calendula is a happy volunteer. Once you plant it, you may never have to plant it again. The volunteer flowers are not as big and fancy as their parent flowers–they revert to their wild form...

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Saturday Linkages: DIY Coffee Roasting and That Crazy Rhubarb Lady

...ility, and Nature http://goo.gl/fb/VQHx3Garden Centers Sell Bee-Attractant Plants with Pesticide Residues Toxic to Bees http://www.beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/?p=11566 … Want your kids to play outside? Rip out the lawn! by Garden Rant » good read http://gardenrant.com/2013/08/want-your-kids-to-play-outside-rip-out-the-lawn.html?utm_source=feedly … Design The Modern Seaweed House by Vandkunsten and Realdania Byg http://www.dezeen.com/2013/07...

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Whole Wheat Sourdough Starter Recipe

UPDATE : we have a whole (so to speak) new take on making a starter. See our sourdough starter video for a better way to do this. Back in March we showed how to make a sourdough starter with white flour. This month we converted a white starter over to whole wheat and have baked many successful loaves of bread with it. The reason that we have to do this conversion rather than starting out with whole wheat flour is that whole wheat tends to get mol...

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