Luddite’s Moonshot: Dealing With Leafy Green Pests

June 8, 2018

...this year because it is so demoralizing.” Then he linked to the Wikipedia article for the banana slug. While we have no banana slugs down here in the southern reaches of California we have plenty of other brassica and leafy green pests, principally the cabbage leaf worm. I’ve come to much the same conclusion as Kyle and grow only arugula and lettuce during our cool winter season. I leave the kale cultivation to the professionals. There’s nothing...

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How much time do you spend cycling in the city?

Mr. Homegrown

June 18, 2018

Bikes, Transportation

7 Comments

...tize walking and cycling over driving. This involves slowing down traffic, making parking expensive and difficult, installing bike and bus only lanes and heavily penalizing anyone who texts and drives. Unfortunately, these are unpalatable and career ending policies for our council members and mayor. But we can’t give up hope. I was a small part of the push, ten years ago, to make things better for cycling in Los Angeles. I feel like contributing t...

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A Question About Freezing and Canning Home Grown Vegetables

Mr. Homegrown

June 22, 2018

Food, Food Preservation

12 Comments

...s sort of preservation. Frozen berries, for example, are fantastic for jam making. If I need to make some peach jam out of season, I head straight to the frozen fruit section of the grocery store. Your caller was asking about vegetables, of course, and there would be some nuances. First, they will want to be sure to freeze the vegetables properly, such as blanching certain veggies to set color and stop enzymatic reactions. Following the guidelines...

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Saturday Tweets: Spiders, Boomerangs and a New HGTV

Mr. Homegrown

July 7, 2018

Saturday Linkages

4 Comments

Spiders Use Earth’s Electric Field to Fly Hundreds of Miles – The Atlantic https://t.co/Doy3LLVc9t — Root Simple (@rootsimple) July 5, 2018 I just published “Survival of the Richest” https://t.co/T4BwQyZn6p — douglas rushkoff (@rushkoff) July 5, 2018 Dear Los Angeles: LeBron James is an avid cyclist. Please don’t run him over https://t.co/eFnlCXSFSV — Root Simple (@rootsimple) July 2, 2018 We need a new kind of HGTV https://t.co/D113QxPmzo via @C...

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Make Your Own Molding With a Table Saw

Mr. Homegrown

July 13, 2018

Design

11 Comments

...n I thought it would be (once you figure out the right angle–the not easy part). Since you raise the blade just 1/16th of in inch at a time, it can take a long time to spit out 100 feet of molding, as I discovered. And you’ll need to sand away the blade marks. I also took some Home Depot door casing molding and cut a groove on the back with a dado stack on the table saw to make an improvised picture rail. I’m not sure why picture rail fell out of...

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