Black Widow or False Black Widow?

...e kind of dangerous, either. This is not reassuring. But then on the handy page Frequently Encountered Spiders in California, I learned about the False black widow. Another European invasive, this spider seems to be displacing our native black widows in urban areas. This spider is roughly the same size and shape as a black widow, but is brown with a faint purple sheen. I like this false black widow option a lot. The false widows don’t have a dange...

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I Deleted my Facebook Account

...n-target information. Facebook knows that I’m an epee fencer who practices urban homesteading, reads Rowan Williams and goes to Nick Cave concerts (damn, that’s all pretentious!). But it also seems to think that I’m an African-American who grows with hydroponics, rocks out to the Queens of the Stone Age and loves Honey Baked Ham. I suspect much of the data Cambridge Analytica gathered was, similarly, off-target and useless. How to #DeleteFacebook...

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Aerated Compost Tea: Does it Work?

...e’s a lot aerated compost tea brewers on the interwebs! I’ve been asked by Urban Farm Magazine to write a short piece on the pros and cons of aerated compost tea (ACT for short). I’ve been sifting through the peer reviewed literature on the subject. Most of the studies show, at best, mixed results. And, honestly, my bias is against gardening techniques that require gadgets or novel techniques with no analog in nature. I’ve also tried it myself and...

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Talkin’ Chicken

...today “clucking” about chickens. We share mention with fellow Los Angeles urban homesteading bloggists Dakota Witzenburg and Audrey Diehl, who write Green Frieda. Witzenburg designed an amazing coop, complete with a green roof planted with succulents that you can see on Green Frieda here. In other chicken related news, the December/January issue of Backyard Poultry Magazine is hot off the presses with a provocative article by permaculturist Harve...

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