Seedling Disaster!

“No one talks of failure as anything but shameful; this is wrongheaded and foolish . . . Mistakes are synonymous with learning. Failing is unavoidable. Making is a process, not an end. It is true that deep experience helps avoid problems, but mainly it gives you mental tools with which to solve inevitable problems when they come up.” -Tom Jennings, as quoted in Mark Frauenfelder’s excellent new book, Made by Hand: Searching f...

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Come see us at the fair!

Photo simulation of Feral House booth by euthman We’ll be at the West Hollywood Book Fair tomorrow, Sunday 9/28. It’s free, and fun, and star-studded. Please stop by and say hi! 12:00- 12:55: We’ll be doing a panel discussion titled “Sustainable LA” with Ed Begley Jr. (!) and Thomas Kostigen. Location: The Open Book Pavillion, on the San Vicente side of the park. 1:oo-2:00 : We’ll be signing The Urba...

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Saturday Linkages: Alphabet Birdhouses, Ancient Cheese and the World’s Worst Cookbooks

Aviary Alphabet: Birdhouses Shaped Like Letters http://dornob.com/aviary-alphabet-birdhouses-shaped-like-letters/ … How much does it cost to decorate your house with Christmas lights?: http://boingboing.net/2012/12/10/how-much-does-it-cost-to-decor.html … Archaeologists Find Ancient Evidence Of Cheese-Making http://n.pr/TUyVLZ New Research Links Pesticides in Tap Water to Rise in Food Allergies http://inhabitat.com/new-research-links-pesticides...

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Peat-free Planting Mix Recipe With Coconut Coir

Nancy’s coconut coir-based planting mix. Here she’s doing the squeeze test, which we talk about below. From an environmental perspective peat moss is a nightmare. Mining of this material is unsustainable, contributes to global warming and destroys habitat for many plants and animals. But, for starting seeds, we’ve used it for years. Our friend Nancy Klehm taught us recently how to make a seed starting mix with coconut...

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Yucca!

“Now on the western side of the First World, in a place that later was to become the Land of Sunset, there appeared the Blue Cloud, and opposite it there appeared the Yellow Cloud. Where they came together First Woman was formed, and with her the yellow corn. This ear of corn was also perfect. With First Woman there came the white shell and the turquoise and the yucca.” -The Origin Myths of the Navajo Indians The Creation or Age of...

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Weedeater Street Medicine in Los Angeles

...ays; $90 a day Learn to prepare and use the vast amount of medicinal plants that grow in the street and city lots. We will be exploring the cultivated and the wild plants of our surroundings that are readily available for the making of place based medicines. Each day will be rich with hands-on gathering and preparations, tastings and samplings and grounded with an urbanforage walk. A light foraged lunch and teas will be provided. Day OneIntroduct...

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Media Fasting

Ant Farm’s Media Burn For the last year I’ve been trying, as an experiment, to see what it would be like to cut off the news. That means no newspaper, no Google news, no NPR, no broadcast television of any kind. At the beginning of my media fast, I was concerned that I would somehow lose touch with reality, with important details of what’s going on in the world. In fact, some news does reach me, filtered through conve...

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How to start a chicken retirement community

Mrs. Homegrown here: So–here’s the story of another mistake we made. When Erik and I first got chickens we didn’t lay out a plan for dealing with the chickens as they aged. That was the mistake. Simple as that. Make your plans, people! We learned how to slaughter chickens–we knew we could do it if we needed to–but we never really sat down and decided what would happen to our ladies when they stopped laying. We̵...

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Build a Solar Dehydrator

Like many of you, I suspect, we’ve got a few too many tomatoes at this time of the year. One of our favorite ways to preserve our modest harvest is with our solar dehydrator. There’s nothing like the taste of sun dried tomatoes, but unless you live in a very dry desert climate like Phoenix, Arizona you can’t just set fruit out in the sun and expect it to do anything but go moldy. In most places in the world, including here in...

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Homegrown Evolution Visits the Los Angeles County Fair

...the return of draft horses to Los Angeles. To preview that possibility and experience the fading agricultural glory of Los Angeles County we headed to the Los Angeles County Fair this past week. Here’s a pictorial tour: It was a real pleasure to view the elegant moves of the draft horses and their handlers. The competition we watched involved maneuvering a carriage around obstacles, backing up into a tight space, stopping at a mail box and...

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