Picture Sunday: Images of Detroit

...s week I discovered that regular reader Jill Nienhuis is not only an urban homesteader, but a talented artist, too. Her paintings and other projects are wonderful – -you can see more at her website : Jill Nienhuis Jill lives in a neighborhood in NW Detroit called Brightmoor. It’s a neighborhood which has fallen on hard times, but is being revitalized, largely through gardening. She and her boyfriend, Michael, are growing a large garden on several...

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How to Deal with Extremely Root Bound Plants

...is case, you have to be ruthless. Get yourself a sharp knife and make long vertical cuts down the sides of the root ball–how many depends on the size of plant, and what you think is best, but I find I usually make 3 to 5 cuts. These cuts do violence to the roots, but will allow new root growth at the cut sites, giving the plant a chance to spread its roots out in your garden’s soil, instead of trying to live within its own, self-made prison. In th...

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L’hamd markad – Preserved Salted Lemons

...sized piece from both ends of each lemon. Set each lemon on end and make a vertical cut three quarters of the way through, so halves remain attached at the base – do not cut all the way through. Turn lemon upside down and make a similar cut through at a 90 degree angle to the first. Fill each cut with as much salt as it will hold. Place lemons carefully in a sterilized wide-mouth glass quart jar. Compress lemons while adding them until no space is...

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Dome Building

...t, stand and lay down–for the most part all 90º activities. Our square and vertical beds, chairs and tables reflect this reality. Square people with their square furniture tend not to fit well in the round shape of your typical hippie dome. This is not to mention all those complex angles involved in building the damn things, and the fact that all of these intersecting angles will someday leak. And we can’t also forget the embarrassing possibilitie...

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