Saturday Linkages: Now With Catagories (and Skateboarding Goats)

....net/2012/08/10/ska teboarding-goat-wins-guinne.html  …   Road rage against cyclist–by an elephant. I reiterate my call for separated elephant lanes, preferably buffered. http:// ow.ly/cO6HX via @dudeonabike Slicing vegetables with thrown playing cards: http:// boingboing.net/2012/08/06/sil cing-vegetables-with-thrown.html  … Miami restaurant serves up (Salmonella) sushi, sashimi on naked models | barfblog: http:// barfblog.foodsafety...

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Stella Natura: Planting by the Signs

...in our lives today. In other words, it’s already well represented in everything around us, including agriculture.” I put the calendar up by the stove. When I’m cooking (often during the past few months with vegetables from our winter garden) I look at the calendar. It’s a nice prompt that it’s time to plan for the next planting of vegetables. Would I use this system if I lived in a cold climate and had a very tigh...

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Back to the Ranch

...teps. You can read some of Nabhan’s articles on his website at http://garynabhan.com/. Dr. Susan Mulley of Cal Poly Pomona presented the results of her research in a surprisingly engaging and amusing lecture, “Are Vegetables Private?” and Other Questions: Belief and Perception and Their Impacts on Urban Agriculture.” Mulley’s work involves surveying the general public and landscaping professionals on their aesthetic...

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Our Holiday Gift Suggestions

That dreaded holiday seasons is just around the corner. With unemployment still high we hope that many of you have negotiated a family gift truce to limit tedious shopping. Or perhaps you’re making things to give away. But if you still need to get a little something for that special homesteader on your shopping list, we’ve got a few suggestions from our Homegrown Evolution Amazon Store. Even if you just click through the store and b...

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Vegetable Gardening in the Shade

New Zealand spinach in partial shade Inspired by Scott Kleinrock’s work at the Huntington Ranch, I’ve been experimenting with growing vegetables in partial shade. Two of our vegetable beds sit under two large deciduous trees. In the winter these beds get full sun, but in the summer they might get as a little as four or five hours of direct sun. Now my shade gardening experiment may not be applicable to northern climates. In...

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Let’s Get Biointensive

I picked up a handy tip on plant spacing from John Jeavons’ book How to Grow More Vegetables. Jeavons dislikes rows and instead uses the triangular spacing of the French biointensive method. You can view a nice diagram of biointensive spacing on the LandShare Colorado website. And see some images of the way Jeavons’ spaces his garden on This Girl’s Gone Green. Triangular plantings squeeze more veggies into small spaces. The tig...

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Roasted Asparagus

...asparagus cookers they sell, and associations with silver tongs and Hollandaise sauce and hotel brunches. Yet the truth is all you have to do is roast it. Here’s a universal rule: everything tastes better roasted. Even vegetables. I can’t think of one vegetable that doesn’t roast nicely, and asparagus is one of my favorites. All vegetables are roasted the same way, basically, but here’s an asparagus specific recipe. Roast...

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Happy Thanksgiving, Now Go Buy Something

...17;s involved in the activities profiled on this blog will love this book. The concluding section, where Carpenter describes raising two enormous pigs in the ghetto is both amusing and profound. John Jeavons How To Grow More Vegetables It’s the vegetable gardening bible around here. Since we started using Jeavons’ methods this fall I’ve noticed a significant improvement in the health of our garden. The only book on vegetables y...

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A Review of Masanobu Fukuoka’s Sowing Seeds in the Desert

...vide everyday necessities through natural farming, that person is free from the drudgery of trying to understand nature, and is simply enjoying life. Paradoxically his natural farming method involves, on the one hand, letting vegetables reseed on their own and revert to their wild ancestry, while on the other avoiding the neglect that led to the loss of hundreds of trees at his parent’s farm when he first took it over. And in the second hal...

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Growing Artichokes on the Sly

Artichokes also provide shade for lazy cats It is possible to grow vegetables around the grounds of an apartment building, especially if the landlord is neglectful. Often the biggest challenge you’ll face is the gardeners, who will weedwack everything to lawn level. If you can negotiate with them, or somehow put a protective barrier between your plants and the whirling cord of death, you can grow stuff. Take this lovely artichoke....

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