What are trees worth?

August 20, 2015

Fruit Trees, Gardening, Nature Awareness, Permaculture, Thoughtstylings, Trees

...ich cools the ground, which cools the environment at large, countering the urban heat island effect. They also cool the air by passing water through their leaves. A healthy urban forest makes for a much more liveable city for us all. (The city of Melbourne understands this.) And trees clustered around your own house make your home cooler in the summer, reducing your energy bills. Low lying cactus and succulent plants do little or nothing nothing t...

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Ill advised grafting projects

Mr. Homegrown

January 21, 2016

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

4 Comments

...grafting tomatoes to tobacco root stock (though it seems Homer crossed the seeds) and the technique shows some promise. According to this study, Tobacco grafting had a positive effect on the tomato plant cultivation performance; the onset of flowering was almost 15 days earlier and the tomato flower and fruit yields increased in both tomato cultivars. Tobacco grafting resulted in 5.0% and 30.1% increase in total fruit weight for cv. Sweet and cv....

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Weekend Linkages: Of Conceptual Coffee Grinders, Hidden Letters and Witches

Mr. Homegrown

October 22, 2023

Saturday Linkages

...Alexander Shayle’s coffee grinders Raspberry Pi All Sky Camera Stop obsessing over heirloom seeds and let plants change A Letter from an 18th-century Journeyman Cabinetmaker You are not, in fact, the granddaughter of the witches they couldn’t burn...

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Thyrsus: the new hipster accessory

Mr. Homegrown

August 29, 2009

Thoughtstylings

16 Comments

...n to grasp, shall we say, the meaning of a long shaft topped by a bunch of seeds. Roman homes and gardens were, in fact, full of phallic fertility symbols that seem crass to our modern eyes. Exhibitions like Pompeii and the Roman Villa, sadly, censor this imagery. You’ve got to visit the secret cabinet in Naples to see this stuff (way not safe for work!). Censorship of these ancient fertility symbols is related in my mind to modern fears of the fe...

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Helping the Bees with Science in your Backyard

Mr. Homegrown

September 7, 2008

Animals, Bees

1 Comment

...a set period of time. We participated this summer, planting the sunflower seeds provided by the project. It’s too late to start this year, but you can sign up for next year’s project here. When we last did an observation, we counted five bees within ten minutes visiting the flower we chose to watch. See the video above for an instant replay. This project is very important, and participation and support of it is a way we can all help out with what...

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