Saturday Linkages: Beetle Party, Floating Homes and Cilantro

Mr. Homegrown
Saturday Linkages
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Wiener Werkstätte Jewelry. The jewelry of the Wiener Werkstätte blurs the lines between gorgeous ornament and miniature sculpture. The Wiener Werkstätte, or Vienna Workshops, was founded in 1903. The firm’s artistic cofounders, Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser, subscribed to the English Arts and Crafts ideal of exceptionally well-made objects designed by artists and executed by specialized craftsmen. Following the example of near contemporaries René Lalique and Louis Comfort Tiffany, Hoffmann and Moser shared the belief that jewelry should be valued for its artistic merit and not simply for its monetary value.

Luddite’s Moonshot: Dealing With Leafy Green Pests

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening
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In my post soliciting “Luddite moonshots” Kyle replied, “How to grow any sort of brassica or leafy green without having to constantly poison these jerks. I opted for none of the above this year because it is so demoralizing.” Then he linked to the Wikipedia article for the banana slug.

While we have no banana slugs down here in the southern reaches of California we have plenty of other brassica and leafy green pests, principally the cabbage leaf worm. I’ve come to much the same conclusion as Kyle and grow only arugula and lettuce during our cool winter season. I leave the kale cultivation to the professionals. There’s nothing wrong with growing the crops that do best in your climate and passing on the rest. The nicest brassicas I’ve ever seen were on a farm in perpetually foggy and cool Bolinas, California.

That said, I had one season of flawless leafy greens through the combination of rich compost and row cover, specifically Agribon 15. The row cover thickness you use will depend on your climate. I opted for the lightest available as we often have freak heat waves in the winter here.

But I haven’t deployed any row cover in years. It’s a pain to use. You have to be diligent in making sure the whole bed gets covered and it’s hard to see the plants under the cover without having to pull it on and off. And row cover won’t prevent slugs. Here’s UC Davis’ advice for dealing with slugs and snails. LA’s abundant mouse and rat population keep our snails and slugs in check. We can send you some if you’d like.

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Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. You might have trouble imagining life without your social media accounts, but virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier insists that we’re better off without them. In Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Lanier, who participates in no social media, offers powerful and personal reasons for all of us to leave these dangerous online platforms.

119 A Chat With the Gardenerd

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Podcasts
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Christy “Garden Nerd” Wilhelmi dropped by the Root Simple compound to talk to Kelly and I about everything from loquats to bees to climate change. You can find her blog posts, podcast, YouTube at Gardenerd.com. She is the author of two books, Gardening for Geeks: DIY Tests, Gadgets, and Techniques That Utilize Microbiology, Mathematics, and Ecology to Exponentially Maximize the Yield of Your Garden and 400+ Tips for Organic Gardening Success: A Decade of Tricks, Tools, Recipes, and Resources from Gardenerd.com. During the podcast we discuss:

If you’d like to leave a question for the Root Simple Podcast please call (213) 537-2591 or send an email to [email protected]. You can subscribe to our podcast in the iTunes store and on Stitcher. Closing theme music by Dr. Frankenstein. A downloadable version of this podcast is here.

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400+ Tips for Organic Gardening Success: A Decade of Tricks, Tools, Recipes, and Resources from Gardenerd.com. Gardeners are always on the lookout for the best advice to increase yields, reduce pests, and to achieve success in the garden. Organic vegetable gardening expert and founder of Gardenerd, Christy Wilhelmi, satisfies a gardener’s thirst for knowledge in her new book 400+ Tips for Organic Gardening Success: A Decade of Tricks, Tools, Recipes, and Resources from Gardenerd.com.

The Luddite’s Moonshot

Mr. Homegrown
Thoughtstylings
24 Comments

Charles C. Mann’s article in the Atlantic, “Can Planet Earth Feed 10 Billion People?” contrasts the differences between an environmentalism of limits, as extolled by plant pathologist and Rachel Carson buddy William Vogt versus the techo-optimism of the architect of the Green Revolution, Norman Borlaug. Mann calls these two opposing camps “prophets” and “wizards.” It should be no surprise that Root Simple falls into the prophetic tribe. I believe we need to reduce our consumption and learn to live within the carrying capacity (a phrase coined by Vogt) of our finite planet. The wizards of this world simply do not consider the unintended consequences of their technological solutions nor the destruction brought by the rapacious greed of their Wall Street backers.

In the Atlantic article Mann speculates about a “Luddite’s Moonshot,” a way to feed the growing population of this planet without resorting to GMOs or synthetic fertilizers. It certainly won’t be easy. But it got me thinking about the other Luddite Moonshots we need to work on. I should note that the Luddites were a movement of people attempting to maintain control over their craft and not be exploited by a bunch of factory owning tech bros. Sound familiar? But I digress.

I keep a private list of Luddite Moonshots that, had I the means of B.S. vendors such as Elon Musk or Chris Sacca, I’d throw a ton of money at. Thankfully, this list consists of things humans have done before and that could be done right here and right now. Once the tech bros realize that Mars is a barren and inhospitable wasteland, here’s a list of things they can help with:

  • Mediterranean gardening with perennial food crops.
  • Mammalian garden invasions, i.e. those infernal squirrels/raccoons/skunks.
  • Meal preparation for busy people. I realize the tech bros have taken up this problem with services such as Blue Apron and Hello Fresh. But I think there’s a better way we can do this at home without the shipping and packaging.
  • Preventing food waste in the home.
  • Internet distraction/news addiction.
  • Garden design for small spaces.
  • Getting neoliberal Democratic Los Angeles politicians to back progressive transportation projects that benefit pedestrians/cyclists/users of public transit. This is the most frustrating problem on my list. With just some paint a few concrete barriers we’d have a bike and pedestrian friendly Los Angeles today. No need to wait for those Musk tunnels.
  • Reuniting art and craft.
  • Clutter. Ugh. Clutter.
  • Cleaning for the cleaning challenged.
  • Bringing back shop class.
  • Philosophical/theological literacy in our schools.
  • How to gather people. Kelly cringes when people talk about “community” because it’s one of those words overused to the point of meaninglessness. Nevertheless, we seem to be really bad at getting together and there’s a real plague of loneliness in this country.
  • Memory training.
  • My Generation X postmodern ironic distancing approach to everything.
  • Reviving traditional design without the icky far right politics.
  • The Jurgen Habermas problem.

I’d like to throw open this list to you, my dear Root Simple readers. Please feel free to add some moonshots of your own or comment on the ones I’ve included.

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The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World. From the best-selling, award-winning author of 1491 and 1493–an incisive portrait of the two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt, whose diametrically opposed views shaped our ideas about the environment, laying the groundwork for how people in the twenty-first century will choose to live in tomorrow’s world.

Saturday Tweets: Weeds, Bees and General Crankiness

Mr. Homegrown
Saturday Linkages
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Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley. A scathing, sardonic exploration of Silicon Valley tech culture, laying bare the greed, hubris, and retrograde politics of an industry that aspires to radically transform society for its own benefit.