Maggots!

...n make out of a garbage can, or you can buy a specialized composting bin. This is what we use around the Survive LA compound. The process is simple – put compostable materials (no meat, fish or oils!) into the bin, keep it moist but not wet, and wait a year. Also remember not to put weeds in the pile as the seeds can spread to wherever you use the compost. To speed up the decomposition process in a single pile composter, you can remove the...

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Greywater Workshops in Los Angeles

eywater, common types of systems, what products to use, and take a tour of several existing systems. We will also be creating a mock-up of a laundry-to-landscape greywater system with all the parts and tools needed to install it. Greywater System Maintenance: Advanced Workshop When: Friday October 14, 2011 – 1:00pm – 5:00pmWhere: LA Eco Village 117 Bimini Pl Los Angeles CA 90004Cost: Sliding scale $25-50Register hereSimple greywater s...

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More on our gardening disasters

We need to put the heart back into our garden. (Our Heart of Flax from way back in 2011) I thought I’d chime in on the subject of this year’s garden failures. Before I do, I’d like to thank you all for your kind advice and commiseration that you left on Erik’s post. First, I will agree that it really, truly has been a terrible year in the garden. Sometimes Erik gets a little melodramatic when it comes to the crop failure...

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Moonshine

...ome legal fermentation experiments, but we can’t help but feel envious of some comrades of ours in France we visited a few years ago who recounted how their families used to ferment the excess fruit in the yard and take it to a licenced farmer to distill into the French version of moonshine, eau de vie. Here in the states it’s illegal to distill anything yourself but perfectly o.k., as a recent article in the Wall Street Journal point...

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Plum Lemon Tomato Power’s Heirloom Tomato

...sh gardening efforts, we somehow mislaid the names of the tomatoes we planted making our reporting efforts incomplete. We do know the name of the wondrous plum lemon tomato pictured above, well worth planting again next year. It’s a meaty, sweet, yellow tomato delicious both fresh and dried. Allegedly the seeds for this tomato originally came from an elderly seed seller in a bird market in eastern Moscow which the Russian police have since...

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Erik Thoughtstylin’ in Urban Farm Magazine

” His answer follows. He was in high guru form that day. I hope Urban Farm will forgive me for lifting the whole quote: The action at the top of the to-do list on the path to true sustainability is not a tangible thing. It’s a change in perspective, a breaking down of the barrier between what is “within” and what is “without.” It is a recognition that our internal intentions and actions expand ever outward, tra...

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July Linkages

...Also, readers of this blog will enjoy Tortorello’s articles, especially “The Return of the Root Cellar”. Community building is something we consider essential for this, as of now, no-named movement. And yet, it seems we are better at meeting online than in person. Danah Boyd has an interesting article, “Why Youth Heart Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.” (26 page pdf) about wh...

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Saturday Linkages: Bus Offices and Secret Doors

...ex  Thanks, Davis! Gardening grounded design by Thomas Rainer: No They Didn’t!: A Gallery of Mockable Landscapes http://landscapeofmeaning.blogspot.com/p/no-they-didnt-gallery-of-mockable.html?spref=tw … Ancient wheat: making a comeback http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Artisanal-Wheat-On-the-Rise.html#.UQM4YKWpmhs.twitter … Soul Searching The secret to feeling like you have more time available – Boing Boing http://boingbo...

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About Us

Root Simple is Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen, authors of The Urban Homestead (Expanded and Revised Edition): Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City (2008) and Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World (2011).  They live in the heart of Los Angeles, in a little bungalow set on a 1/12 acre lot where almost all of their land is devoted to growing edible or otherwise useful plants and trees. Their obsessions include...

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Saturday Linkages: Cave Living, Chocolate Sourdough, Persian Marmalade and Much More . . .

@ericmiller built the native pollinator house from Making It and tweeted the result! Farine: Chocolate and Currant Sourdough recipe http://www.farine-mc.com/2012/04/chocolate-and-currant-sourdough.html?spref=tw The American who quit money to live in a cave: http://boingboing.net/2012/04/26/the-american-who-quit-money-to.html A Place for Old Chickens, Outside the Pot http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/us/new-homes-beckon-for-city-chick...

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