The Manzanita Miracle, or, why you should love native plants if you live in a dry climate

...reflection of our annual dry season in Southern California. And when that watering deadline rolls around, how much water does this particular manzanita need to recharge its water reserves? 4 inches. Even in our desperate drought, we’re getting that much rain annually. The moral here is that nature has provided us with everything we need. We have beautiful native plants which can thrive with no supplemental water whatsoever, even in drought, provi...

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“Urban Homesteading” belongs to us all

...r Urban Homesteading, for winning the right for all of us to use the term “urban homesteading” freely from now on out. Longtime readers may remember that back in 2011, the Dervaes Institute sent notices to a dozen or so organizations, informing them that they could no longer use the terms “urban homestead” and “urban homesteading” unless speaking about the work of the Dervaes Institute, as they had registered trademark on both terms. Beyond that,...

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Rain Barrels

...don’t want to discourage anyone from making an attempt at it, but for most urban homesteaders it won’t be economical or practical given the space requirements and weight of thousands of gallons of stored water. Thankfully, there are simpler strategies for harvesting rainwater. Rainwater used for irrigating plants does not need filtering or purification, and since outdoor watering accounts for the number one household water use, you’ll be using tha...

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My Fellow Californians, Please Water Your Trees

...will, instead, focus on the tiny amount of water that goes to maintaining urban and suburban landscapes and parks. In 2015, Donald R. Hodel and Dennis R. Pittenger of UC Riverside published a white paper, “9% The California Drought and Water Use,” challenging this sort of knee jerk water conservation. They said, Water the trees. Trees form the infrastructure of our landscapes and urban forest, and are their permanent or, at least, most long-lived...

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Gourmet Foraging and Advanced Acorn Processing

...ich one you choose depends on how you plan to use the acorns. You use cold water leaching to make acorn meal suitable for baking. The cold water preserves the starchiness of the acorn meal, which makes it work well in breads and pancakes and muffins and such. Hot water leaching removes the starch, but seems to bring out the nutty flavor more, which makes it better for using the acorns in savory foods, like acorn burgers, or, Pascal says, in sauces...

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