Searching for Energy Vampires

April 27, 2017

...ould discover any hidden energy vampires. Unsurprisingly, the refrigerator uses the most power and costs around $81.67 a year to operate. At the risk of turning this blog post into an exercise in appliance virtue signalling, that’s not too bad. We keep the freezer full which helps conserve a small amount of power (empty space in the freezer or fridge takes more energy to cool). The fridge is often full of way too many condiments on their way to be...

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Surface Walk with Nance Klehm Saturday February 11th

Mr. Homegrown

February 9, 2017

Events

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...ger Nance Klehm will lead a walk at the Bowtie Project exploring the human uses and ecological functions of the native and spontaneous vegetation at the site. On this walk we will investigate how the vegetation relates to the ecology and vitality of the soil that supports it. Surface Walk is part of Nance Klehm’s Bowtie residency titled Double Pairing. Nance Klehm has been an ecological systems designer, landscaper, horticultural consultant, and p...

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Three California Natives that Double as Culinary Herbs

Mr. Homegrown

January 16, 2017

Gardening

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...in a microwave by putting the leaves in one layer between two paper towels. Microwave for one minute and let the leaves cool. If they aren’t brittle, microwave for another minute. Pascal Baudar (a guest on episode 89 of the Root Simple Podcast) has a phenomenal herb blend that uses all three of these herbs combined with some garlic salt. I made a batch last week and have already used it on salmon and popcorn. You can find that recipe on page 158...

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The Primitive Technology Guy

Mr. Homegrown

December 27, 2016

Appropriate Technology, Water and Power

7 Comments

...e these wordless videos, shot in northern extreme of Queensland, Australia uses a “show me don’t tell me” philosophy of film making that I greatly admire. No long, babbling intros! Kelly was especially impressed with his pump drill fire starting technique: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEl-Y1NvBVI He has a blog that describes the content of his videos in more detail. People like John Townsend and the Primitive Technology guy are the good side of...

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Pl@ntNet: “Shazam” for Plants

Mr. Homegrown

March 1, 2016

Gardening

5 Comments

...e.com/watch?v=W_cBqaPfRFE Pl@ntNet is an iPhone and Android phone app that uses image recognition and crowd-sourcing to recognize plants. It’s free, so I downloaded a copy yesterday and ran around the yard to see how it works. You take a closeup of a leaf, flower, fruit or bark and the app takes a guess on an identification. My first attempt was Nasturtium, which the app immediately identified despite my bad photo. It also correctly identified daf...

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