Olive Curing Update

...when the silvery underside of the leaves shimmer in a light breeze. Olive trees have deep symbolic associations in ancient Mediterranean cultures and the tree has an average lifespan of 500 years. There are a few trees, over 2,000 years old, that still produce fruit. If you live in the U.S. but not in a climate that supports olives, consider buying domestic olive oil and cured olives. Especially with olive oil, a lot of the imported stuff is adul...

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Saturday Tweets: Playing Chicken, Healthy Eating and Fixing Stuff

...World https://t.co/cORNiMpRrh — Root Simple (@rootsimple) November 9, 2016 Trees Please!! These sweltering cities could be much cooler and cleaner if they planted more trees https://t.co/rFJW8jtu0U via @voxdotcom — Root Simple (@rootsimple) November 4, 2016 Top Garden Trends for 2017 | Garden Design https://t.co/gLWfCUMCWl — Root Simple (@rootsimple) November 5, 2016 Huh. Kind of intriguing: Using jellyfish to make eco-friendly tampons, diapers an...

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Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Gardening Wisdom

...waters are continually flowing in.” Installing is the hard toil of garden making, placing is its pleasure. I think I’ve spent too much time in the installing and not enough time contemplating the placing. In so doing gardening has become more of a chore than a pleasure. Superior gardens are composed of Glooms and Solitudes and not of plants and trees. I take this to mean that a garden should express moods and ideas and not be just a collection of...

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Block Party Weekend

...f the block the smell of spray paint filled the air as kids got to go nuts making art on some old sheets of plywood. But what impressed us the most was the booth touting LAEV’s participation in plans to improve humble Bimini street with such things as trees, park benches, traffic calming measures and public art all made possible with a grant from the city and the MTA. Called SNAP, or Station Neighborhood Area Plan, this initiative provides grants...

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Rain Barrels

...nd very large and expensive tanks. We don’t want to discourage anyone from making an attempt at it, but for most urban homesteaders it won’t be economical or practical given the space requirements and weight of thousands of gallons of stored water. Thankfully, there are simpler strategies for harvesting rainwater. Rainwater used for irrigating plants does not need filtering or purification, and since outdoor watering accounts for the number one ho...

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