Pakistan Mulberry Fever

...” variety: It has totally thrived and become huge. I have to top back huge vertical branches every year after harvest season and tie limbs down laterally. And the harvest goes on and on and is not easy, you cannot shake the tree without bringing down loads of green fruit and stubborn ripe berries won’t fall. You have to hand pick and it takes about 2-3 hours of combing over the tree from all the different angles with the orchard ladder. Then I soa...

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Straw Bale Garden Part IV: Almost Ready to Plant?

...traw on most of my bales was oriented with the stem sides facing the wide (vertical) side of the bale. This made it difficult to get the blood meal into the bales. One or two of the bales had the straw oriented with the stems facing up and these bales seemed to heat up faster. Another problem was keeping the bales moist in our hot and dry climate. Tarps may have helped. The next step will be to plant seedlings and add a balanced fertilizer (fish e...

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Food Storage as Art

...eyes” to counteract that tendency we all have to make our refrigerators unintentional composters. The techniques she demonstrates include: Evaporation Sand, both to keep vegetables vertical and to decrease humidity Using the ethylene gas in apples to keep potatoes fresh Ryou’s website is: www.savefoodfromthefridge.com...

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Dome Building

...t, stand and lay down–for the most part all 90º activities. Our square and vertical beds, chairs and tables reflect this reality. Square people with their square furniture tend not to fit well in the round shape of your typical hippie dome. This is not to mention all those complex angles involved in building the damn things, and the fact that all of these intersecting angles will someday leak. And we can’t also forget the embarrassing possibilitie...

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Quince: the “Poster Child of Slowness”

...bor was nice enough to pop by with some she bought local Asian market. The label must have lost something in translation, but refers to a variety called “Pineapple quince”. Karp points out in his article that this is the most prevalent commercial variety. When picked fresh it could conceivably be eaten raw, though the commercial stuff ain’t fresh. Quince is indeed, as one of Karp’s sources notes, “the poster child of slowness.” I tried to make som...

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