How to Deal with Extremely Root Bound Plants

...d may look like they have more promise. They’d don’t. They’re flowering or fruiting out of desperation to spread their seed before they expire in their pot prisons. But sometimes we end up with a root bound plant. This week, in a fit of madness which doesn’t make a lot of sense in retrospect, Erik and I broke our own rules, doing two things we never do: We 1) bought a couple of plants at The Home Despot and 2) we bought these plants in gallon-size...

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Online Adobe Classes With Kurt Gardella

...ils for use in adobe construction and also take you through the process of making your own adobe bricks: Class: History & Basics of Adobe Construction (8-Week Online Class) Dates: March 17 to May 11, 2014 Credits: 2 Location: Online Instruction via Minigroup Instructor: Kurt Gardella Fee: $250 The Foundations class covers detailed design and construction techniques of foundations that work well for adobe structures and meet code in New Mexico: Cla...

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2013 in Review Part I

...it should rain. It didn’t. The year was the driest on record: 3.6 inches, making it a desert not the Mediterranean climate it should be. It seems to be a dry winter again this year and I’m worried. March A texting music video producer totaled our car and thus began a six month experiment in living without a car in Los Angeles. That experiment ended in September when we bought a car. Living in LA without a car was easier than I thought it would be...

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What the Internet Will Look Like After the Zombie Apocalypse

...of off the shelf wireless routers overlaps with amateur radio frequencies making it legal for Hams to boost the range of these devices. That and the fact that several models of ubiquitous Linksys routers are cheap and easy to hack. Photo: Texas Ham Radio All you do is take your Linksys router, screw in a better antenna (note the one above made with a tin can), load some open source software on to it, scatter them around town and you’ve got a wire...

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How to Search for Science-Based Gardening Advice

...ave access to tools beyond Google. Hot Topics To that end, I’m thinking of making the trek to UCLA this year to look into a number of controversial horticultural and homesteading questions that have come up in the course of writing posts on Root Simple. Some topics I’m interested in: The effect of chloramine on soil health/human health. The temperament of Africanized bees. Hugelkultur in dry climates. Compost tea. Phytoremediation of lead and/or z...

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