I made shoes!

October 21, 2014

...lar Root Simple readers know, I’ve been obsessing on making shoes for some time now, but was not able to wrap my mind around the process without help. Help arrived this weekend in the form of the wonderful–and wonderfully patient– Randy Fritz, who taught me and four other intrepid souls how to make turnshoes over the course of the last 4 days. Lesson 1: As we have all suspected, shoes are not easy to make. Seriously not easy. Four full days of wor...

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Watering 101

Mrs. Homegrown

July 2, 2013

Gardening, How-to, Vegetable Gardening

13 Comments

...ctually slows absorption. At any rate, I’d been watering this bed for some time with a sprinkler hose, waving it back and forth until I got bored. The water sunk in at first, then started to pool on the surface, and the pool lasted for a long time. At this point, a beginner might think she’d watered enough, but I’ve been fooled often enough before. I reached down into the bed and scraped at the soil. A fraction of an inch beneath the wettest area,...

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Polyculture

Mr. Homegrown

December 7, 2006

Permaculture

14 Comments

...fresh and tender–once you grow your own salad, you will feel cheated each time you have to eat salad from a bag. In the photo you will see how tight the planting is in the bed. It is perhaps a tad too tight. We are eating as fast as we can, pulling whole plants for the most part, shooting for the ideal of giving each remaining lettuce and chicory a space about the diameter of a cereal bowl for itself. When the lettuces are full grown, you can har...

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Picture Sundays: Doberman Chariots

Mr. Homegrown

March 31, 2013

Picture Sundays

6 Comments

...nts.” Photos via The Doberman Insider. Now that we are without a car, it’s time for us to figure out alternative forms of transportation. Our late dog was a Doberman and I remembered a book we used to have about the breed that showed some unusual events that used to be held in South Africa in the 1970s: harness racing with Dobermans and kid jockeys! Remembering just how powerful and fast our Doberman was, I imagine these races were quite a thrill...

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Growing Watermelons

Mr. Homegrown

September 4, 2008

Gardening

10 Comments

...uit, early watermelon varieties get you to harvest faster. This means less time for pest and disease problems to develop. While we’ve got a very long season here in Southern California for summer vegetables, with almost no chance of a fall freeze, I’ve begun in the past year to plant early varieties of most vegetables simply because there is less time for bad things to happen. 3. Watermelon is a living mulch. Watermelon, an enormous vine, makes an...

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