Greywater Guerrillas in LA this Weekend

...he construction of a greywater system from the washing machine to ornamental of plants. Activities will involve digging, measuring, cutting pipes, observing, and more! Sunday July 20th: Presentation: How to Disengage from the Water Grid: With Greywater, Rainwater, and Composting Toilets. Time: 7:30- 9:00Location: LA Ecovillage 117 Bimini Place, Los Angeles, 90004Cost: $10 (no one turned away)For more info contact Lois at the LA Ecovillage 213/738...

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Interview With Apartment Gardener Helen Kim

...ection except north). It takes a little doing, and I’ve lost a few here and there. I started years ago with French breakfast radish seeds, which didn’t go so well–they needed too much attention and too much water–and the few small radishes I ended up with a few months later were eaten and gone in a few seconds! Then I planted mint because I felt increasingly silly buying plastic packets of it in the supermarket, only to...

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Behold the Glassy Winged Sharpshooter (Homalodisca coagulata)

...he GWS’s built-in hypodermic syringe! The discovery of a GWS in our yard has solved a mystery that has puzzled us for years. When sitting under the grape vine covering our arbor we’ve often felt little droplets of water, highly unusual in a place where it never rains past April. Turns out it was sharpshooter pee. Sharpshooters feed on the xylem, the water bearing veins of plants. As the xylem contains mostly water, the sharpshooter mu...

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Bean Fest, Episode 6: Walton’s Serbian Lima Beans

...ns in oil stirring frequently til very limp/well cooked (think near mush)     * add spices to onions, mix thoroughly. Taste and adjust according to taste.     * add well drained lima beans to onion mix (reserve some lima bean water)     * pour into 9 x 13 baking dish; you want there to be some fluid (to bake in); if dry add some reserved lima bean water     * insert bay leaves into beans in dish     * bake, covered, at 375 for 30 minutes     * ba...

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Our favorite way to cook zucchini

...s not.” All you’ve got to do is shred your zucchini up on the large holes of your kitchen grater. Saute the shreds in an uncovered skillet with lots of olive oil and some chopped up garlic, until there’s no water in the pan, and the volume of the zucchini is reduced by about half. This transforms the zukes into a savory, glossy, succulent mush. Maybe that’s not the most elegant way to phrase it, but it’s the best I...

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Disconnect to Reconnect: Ditching the “Flushie” for a Composting Toilet

...le system. And, when I sat with cup of tea to write this, I had just snaked the toilet for the 6th time in three days. Sure I was glad to learn a new tool and this skill, as well as earn some more insight into the workings of water toilets and yet, snaking a toilet is one of the more compelling arguments for why I ‘go dry’. Considerations for abandoning your flushie (and switching over to the bucket): Your body’s nutrient should be returned to t...

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The High Cost of Golf

...can use the course at any given time. I also believe in democracy. I say let’s put it to a vote: should the city fund golf courses or soccer fields? I suspect, in Los Angeles, soccer fields would win by a landslide. 3. Water. We’ve got a many year long draught here in the southwestern U.S. that shows no signs of letting up soon. Modest water rationing requirements are in effect, but that municipal golf course green I was forced to vi...

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How to Make Amazake

...r local Japanese supermarket. Koji can also be found at some health food stores or you can mail order it from G.E.M cultures. We used a brand called Cold Mountain. 2. Bring 1 cup of white or brown rice to a boil in 2 cups of water. Turn down the heat and simmer for 50 minutes. We used sweet rice, but any kind of rice and if fact almost any grain will work. 3. Cool the rice down to 140º F (60º C). Mix in 2 cups of koji and put it in a sterili...

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Mead!

...ng that we’ll experiment with a few different small batches rather than taking a chance on one big batch. Here’s how we did it after first sanitizing everything with Idophor sanitizer: 1. Boil 1/5th of a gallon of water (we used bottled water since our tap water is a bit on the heavy side). 2. Add one teaspoon of Fermax (this is a yeast nutrient available at home brew shops). 3. Take the water off the heat and add 3 pounds of honey (w...

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Emergency Supplies: It’s all about the lids

...e on composting toilets, see this post of ours  or go straight to the source, The Humanure Handbook.) The green bucket holds enough preservative-filled, ready-to-eat food to hold her for a day or two without access to cooking water or a stove. I deliberately chose foods that she wouldn’t be tempted to eat prior to the natural disaster/zombie attack. Not gross things–you don’t want to be challenging your stomach in an emergency&#...

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