Campfire Cooking: Fish in Clay (& Vegetarian Options!)

...als. Pascal also recommended trying fruit, like pears. He likes pears with native California black sage. Better still, you can skip the clay and use grass instead, which is much easier for impromptu cooking. Grass is good insulator, maybe not good enough for a delicate trout, but plenty good for carrots. Just gather yourself a bundle of green grass. Pascal likes some fallen leaves mixed in with the grass, for the earthy aroma that adds. Do be care...

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A Review of Masanobu Fukuoka’s Sowing Seeds in the Desert

...tate the landscape most effectively regardless of whether those plants are native or not in order to achieve what Fukuoka calls a “second Genesis.” As he puts it, I would mix the seeds of all plants–forest trees, fruit trees, perennials, vegetables, grasses and legumes–as well as ferns, osses, and lichens, and sow them all at once across the desert. Nativists will cringe at this suggestion but to me it makes a lot of sense. Fukuoka says that these...

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069 Understanding Roots with Robert Kourik

...lant fruit trees and the intricacies of how to water trees, vegetables and native plants. Then we delve deep into drip irrigation, dynamic accumulators and phytoremediation. If you’d like to pick up a copy of one of Robert’s books visit robertkourik.com. If you want 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 Stitche...

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Our Disastrous Summer Garden

...ad to water our already alkaline soil with alkaline water. Only the native plants and what we call the Biblical plants seem happy (e.g. the fig and the pomegranate). The drought and an extreme heat wave pushed everything in the garden to the edge–and a few over the edge: in the last month we abruptly lost some garden stalwarts, including a rosemary bush and a culinary sage. Despite all these disasters, I came back from the Heirloom Expo with some...

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Rain- The Best Gift of All

...into a detention basin instead. It will be a small depression planted with native plants adapted to our weather patterns. More water for me, less water wasted! Directing rainwater from your roof into the landscape is often simpler and lower in cost that harvesting in a barrel or cistern. The small 55 gallon barrels I have are great, but they fill up very quickly even in a light rain. You would be amazed at how much water you can collect. There are...

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