Garden Update Part II: The Good the Bad and a Lot of Ugly

...nts. Part of the reason for the lushness of the yard is that we divert the rainwater from the roof to a pipe that runs 20 feet away from the house and into the center of the yard. We get a lot of rain concentrated in February and March and it’s a whole lot easier to store it in the earth than to try to capture it in a tiny barrel. Said pipe awkwardly crosses a path, however, something our landscape professional Laramee Haynes will address. The pip...

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Water your Trees with Greywater

...e Brad Landcaster’s thoughts on soaps and detergents. Let me also note the utility of Landcaster’s books and website when it comes to all things water conservation related, especially how to grade and configure tree plantings to optimize rainwater irrigation. One last and rarely mentioned issue, is if “greywater” should be one word or two or, in the neologistic spirit of “apisoir,” perhaps we need to invent a sexier word for reusing our water. Gre...

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Saturday Linkages: Pallets, Ladybugs and Portlandia

...egs – Outstanding – IKEA Hackers http://po.st/a3Hn0G Jailed for collecting rainwater: http://theflyingtortoise.blogspot.com/2014/08/gary-harrington-aged-64-and-resident-of.html?spref=tw … [Update: A reader notes that there is more to this story than the headline indicates–looks like the person jailed may have been damming streams and taking water from his neighbors.] Little chicks wearing muffin wrappers as tutus! http://www.recyclart.org/2014/08/...

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Mistakes we have made . . .

...gallery, has stopped designing water features unless they are supplied by rainwater. Sounds like a good idea to us! And with the chickens we did not want to provide habitat for raccoons. 2. Mixing Chicken Breeds Speaking of chickens, a friend of ours who grew up on a farm confirmed that “chickens are racists”. Like talk radio hosts, hens will pick on anyone who is different. In our case, our green egg laying and weird looking Araucana gets the cr...

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Make Mag

...gation system in your vegetable garden. Eric Muhs tells you how to collect rainwater to use for flushing your toilet (very clever!). Celine Rich-Darley tells you how to vermicompost in your apartment. Michael Perdriel explains how to make an off-grid laundry machine. Limor Fried and Phillip Torrone hook up a electricity monitor to a computer to twitter their energy usage. You’ll have to buy a copy or subscribe online to see all this wonderfullness...

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