The Fine Art of Worm Grunting

October 15, 2012

...panicked worms crawl to the surface of the soil. (The high population of earthworms in the area profiled, upwards of 1 million per acre, makes grunting a sustainable practice.) In England, grunting is called “worm charming”. And yes, there are competitions–in Sopchoppy, Florida, Shelburne, Ontario, and South Devon, England. Kelly adds: Attn: geeks! After viewing, shall we discuss whether Dune author Frank Herbert knew about grunting…er…thumping?...

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Food Storage as Art

Mr. Homegrown

January 7, 2013

Design, Food, Food Preservation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mG9xYVyAnuc Artist Jihyun Ryou’s work uses food storage techniques from the pre-refrigerator era in a way that’s both useful and beautiful. Her goal is to, “Try to bring your food in front of your 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 d...

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Stencils as Garden Art

Mr. Homegrown

August 7, 2013

Garden Design, Gardening

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...ers alerted me to the far more impressive stencils of San Francisco street artist Jeremy Novy: Photo by Dawn Endico. Green Roof Grower Bruce was inspired by Novy’s work to make his own koi stencils on the sidewalk in front of his house. Now if enough of us adorn these edge spaces (in a neighborly fashion, of course) perhaps we’ll be able to reclaim our streets from the distant bureaucrats who hassle us over our parkway gardens. It’s precisely the...

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The Fine Art of Determining Peach Ripeness

Mr. Homegrown

June 6, 2016

Fruit Trees, Gardening

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How do you know when your peaces are ready to pick? For home growers it’s all about color. According to the University of Georgia, Ground color is the best field indicator of peach maturity. . . The ground color of a peach approaching maturity is light green. A break in color toward yellow is the first definite indication of maturity. Brightening of the red over-color of the skin is another, though less reliable, index of maturity. Red color is t...

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Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up

Mrs. Homegrown

February 26, 2016

Domesticus, Tidying up

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I figure by now that there are few of you, at least those of you who have de-cluttering on your radar, who don’t know that Marie Kondo, author of Tidying Up, has a new book: Spark Joy. We’ve been shamelessly selling it in our margins here on the blog for a good while, but I’m just now getting around to reviewing it. Of course, we wrote extensively about our journey with Tidying Up here last year. If you’ve read Tiding Up, your first question woul...

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