Bird Netting as a Cabbage Leaf Caterpillar Barrier

...s can’t lay eggs through it. The best way to do this is by planting arches of wire or tubing over your garden bed, and stretching the cover material over those arches– like a covered wagon. Netting has advantages over row cover: you can see and water through it and it’s more readily available. I’m curious what you, our dear readers, think of the idea? Mrs. Homegrown chimes in: I’ll add that in the past readers have said they use tulle material as...

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How to Cook Perfect Scrambled Eggs

...enty: 20 Techniques 100 Recipes A Cook’s Manifesto . I can’t say that I read the rest of the book, but the double boiler egg method sure works well. You melt some butter in a double boiler first to help keep the eggs from sticking. You can also use a pan held over (but not in) a pot of boiling water if you don’t have a double boiler (and I don’t have a double boiler). It takes longer to cook eggs this way, of course, but you get nice soft and fluf...

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Garden Design: Quantity vs. Quality

...we certainly could have done more–I’d say 20 minimum. Part of what we learn by focusing on quantity is about making mistakes and learning from them. But I think there’s more to it than that. A gifted high school English teacher of mined likened our creativity to a tank of water. Sometimes you have to drain off the not so great ideas at the top in order to get to the good stuff that lies deep in our unconscious. Letting go of stifling perfectionism...

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Warning: This Blog is Based in a Mediterranean Climate

...all as do deserts. But like deserts, we have to be frugal when it comes to water. All the rain we get comes at one time. Between the late spring and early fall there is no rain at all. Those of us who live here ought to concentrate on plants adapted to long dry periods. And because of our climate I have a house rule at Root Simple about not talking about the weather on our blog. Why? Because it’s really, really boring. Nothing ever happens. Most o...

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My Favorite Lettuce Mix

...st where we live, they are easy to grow. We just sow the seed directly and water them in. We thin by eating the seedlings. Judging from the crowding in the photo above, we need to eat some more salads soon. There’s never been pest problems save for the edible, and aggressive, fennel seedlings you can see amongst the lettuce (memo to self: cut down fennel before it goes to seed this year!). And, at the risk of repeating myself, I pretty much grow F...

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