Go Plant a Million Trees

...getable garden I blogged about? My heretical thinking is to give up annual vegetables entirely and use the space to plant two small citrus trees. If I want vegetables I’ll put in artichokes which grow well here and return every year without any effort. We’ll outsource the misery of growing annual vegetables to the vendors of the farmer’s market. Watch for our interview with Silver next Wednesday. In the meantime read his book and then go plant som...

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Dry Climate Vegetables

...of a terrible drought. And unfortunately, most of the seeds we buy for our vegetable gardens are adapted to require lots of water. One solution is to find veggies that have reseeded accidentally without supplemental irrigation. Here’s a short list of reseeding rogue veggies from our garden that have thrived with just the small burst of rain we got last month. New Zealand Spinach The one I’m most excited about is New Zealand spinach (Tetragonia tet...

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Saturday Tweets: Eating Ants, Bikes and LA as Heat Island

...Anywhere in the State http://t.co/PU9msfbCRb via @CurbedLA — Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 23, 2015 Dan Price’s underground home, art & philosophy on $5,000year – videos – *faircompanies http://t.co/B9DJHXQj7e via @faircompanies — Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 23, 2015 The Vegetable Detective, Take Two http://t.co/TIStMrDQml — Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 22, 2015 Rowan Williams on Laudato Si http://t.co/JrUZJ1Rv3i — Root Simpl...

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Natural Products Expo West: The Good and the Ugly

...the expo are highly processed and high in sugar. Just because something is labeled “gluten free” or “GMO free” does not make it healthy. Getting beyond the nutrition issues most of these “natural” processed foods also taste, frankly, terrible. Out of the hundreds of products I tasted and reviewed at the expo there were a only a few interesting items–literally one out of a thousand. Most were made by small independent entrepreneurs willing to take...

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Getting Hardscaping Right

...tain. Every home needs a “hide the s@#t fence.” There needs to be a place to put potting soils, shovels, compost piles etc. I’m just about to embark on a couple of building projects–extending the back patio deck, building permanent vegetable beds and the aforementioned hide the s@#t fence. This time I’m going to get it right! How have your hardscaping endeavors gone? What have you done right and wrong? Have you found hardscaping solutions that did...

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