It’s Elementary

another interview or two, though I can’t guarantee I’ll talk to everyone. I took the picture above at a volunteer work day at the 24th Street Elementary School in the West Adams district of Los Angeles yesterday. It’s run by the Garden School Foundation. I can’t tell you how amazing this garden is, but I think the picture above says it all. It’s about the future, and that future is going to have more mulch and a lot...

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Moringa!

from more mature pods and eaten like peas or roasted like nuts. The flowers are edible when cooked, and are said to taste like mushrooms. The roots are shredded and used as a condiment in the same way as horseradish, however it contains the alkaloid spirochin, a potentially fatal nerve paralyzing agent, so such practices should be strongly discouraged. The leaves are highly nutritious, being a significant source of beta-carotene, Vitamin C, prot...

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Food and Flowers Freedom Act Update

Yesterday the Food and Flowers Freedom Act passed the city council and awaits the mayor’s expected signature. It goes to show that revising outdated codes pertaining to local agriculture can be, at least here in Los Angeles, non-controversial. In fact, those of us at the meeting to support the act left before the vote was taken. It tuned out the council was pre-occupied with a contentious debate over rent control that ended in a fight bre...

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Free Permaculture Class

pective for sustainable living and productivity. A Permaculture Design Course is a way to shareaccumulated information with others. This Introduction to Permaculture Class is an outline of the science and art of Permaculture. It will define the term and its history, its founders, the curriculum of the design course certificate, its ethics and foundations. It will describe the benefits and show some of the mostimportant work undertaken by permacul...

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Bee Fever in Los Angeles

beekeeper Kirk Anderson, Anderson learned from apiarist Charles Martin Simon, who invented the concept of “beekeeping backwards.” Simon’s approach was stupidly simple: Give the bees a clean box, put them in it and leave them alone. If they get sick? Don’t medicate them. Let them die. Then get some more bees. Amen. Selecting for strong bees is an approach that, in my opinion, holds the answers to colony collapse disorder....

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Emergency Toilet Sanitation

I was asked by our local neighborhood council to talk about emergency turlets for their public safety committee. Doing some preliminary research about what our government suggests concerns me. FEMA and, it seems, all the state and local agencies I looked into rely on a poop in a bag, throw in some enzymes or bleach and throw it into a pit approach. In a short term emergency, a day or two let’s say, this might work fine. But if the emerge...

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Mushrooms and Yard Sharing

grown oyster mushrooms from kits which, in my humble opinion, are not cost effective. If anyone knows of well written step by step directions somewhere on the interwebs, please let me know, or better yet if you’ve done it yourself send me an email. And yes, there is Paul Stamets, but some psilocybin freak stole all his books out of the LA library. Secondly, I’m writing another article for Urban Farm Magazine and I’d like to spe...

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Till vs. No-Till

duction with a more aggressive approach to soil amendment R11; a similar argument is often made in conventional agriculture (compared to organic agriculture) to till, use excessive fertilizers, pesticides, etc. I guess it depends on how you regard the soil R11; as a medium for growing vegetables or as an ecosystem (and I’m not being judgmental). It’s a philosophical choice. No-till agriculture advocates argue that tilling...

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Safety Films Night

Homegrown Revolution, in support of the ongoing two-wheeled revolution, is putting on an evening of vintage bicycle and traffic safety films at the Echo Park Film Center on Sunday November 4th. It’s a special benefit for the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. Watch as little Jane and Johnny take to the streets for the first time to learn the rules of the road. But bring your motoring friends as well, since we’ll also serve up a selectio...

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Root Simple and LA Bread Bakers at Artisinal LA

This Saturday Kelly and I will be joining a panel discussion on urban homesteading along with our good friends Craig Ruggless of Winnetka Farms and goat keepers and cheese makers Gloria Putnam and Stephen Rucidel. The panel will take place at Artisinal LA on Saturday April 16th at 2 pm in Santa Monica. I will also be taking part in a bread baking demo along with the LA Bread Bakers the same day at 1 pm. More information at artisinalla.com....

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