Bad Forager: Mistaking Hemlock for Fennel

...I was not worried about two or three maybe-swallowed-maybe-chewed-and-spit seeds. Especially not dried up, sun baked seeds. Pascal wasn’t worried either, and waved away all the concern, distracting us with the tale of how he ate some fresh hemlock leaves in a an early foraging error and spent hours vomiting. And yes, I was just fine. It got me to thinking how vitally important taste and smell are to a forager. Looks can be deceiving, but scent and...

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Making It

...ctions for a wide range of projects, from building a 99-cent solar oven to making your own laundry soap to instructions for brewing beer. Making It is the go-to source for post-consumer living activities that are fun, inexpensive and eminently doable. Our goal in this book was to provide really stripped down, simple projects that use only inexpensive, easy to source materials. We also tried to use the same materials and ingredients over and over a...

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Grow Italian!

...ke plant. We’re also jumping on the permaculture bandwagon this year with an experiment in the backyard. And look for more root vegetables in our illegal parkway garden. Lest we come across as Eurotrashy, here’s two domestic seed companies that have interesting varieties: Seeds of change. Native Seeds which sells Native American seeds By the way, for us in L.A. the back of the seed packages have no connection with our climate. You need a book like...

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Spreadin’ Seed

...aintains a seed bank of over 25,000 varieties of vegetables. You can order seeds from them at www.seedsavers.org. Catalogs We’ve been obsessed with the Italian seed company Franchi for almost ten years now. Meeting the west coast distributor Craig Ruggless at the seed swap and seeing his display racks of seeds was the horticultural geek equivalent of bumping into a rock star. Craig’s got a blog here and, in addition to distributing seeds at local...

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Seeds the Game

...lter and share your attention to your real garden. Find neighbors to trade seeds with and share activities related to gardening and local food systems. Get climate and map updates for weather patterns relevant to your area and garden needs. Seed points redeem for real prizes like seeds and coupons for garden equipment. Grow your own food and learn practices for permaculture and self-sustaining food systems at home! If you want to support the proje...

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