118 Eric of Garden Fork on Old Houses, Queen Bees and Ramps

May 23, 2018

Animals, Bees, Food, Podcasts, Water and Power

...ow Eric mentions: His live question and answer session Will of the Weekend Homestead New York City water tower video Raising queen bees Better Bee Pacific Ready Cut catalog New York Times article on the over harvesting of ramps Growing your own ramps Eric’s cornpone disaster If you’d like to leave a question for the Root Simple Podcast please call (213) 537-2591 or send an email to rootsimple@gmail.com. You can subscribe to our podcast in the iTun...

Read…

Plastic or Wood?

Mr. Homegrown

June 7, 2007

Thoughtstylings

4 Comments

...e made almost entirely of plastic. Steve Jobs has yet to come out with an iBook made from bamboo and corn husks. That being said, this haunting video about the impact of plastic on the ocean drives home the point that we need to drastically cut back our consumption of plastics and only use them for essentials] Okay, these are the new rules. We are going to phase as many plastics out of the homestead as we can. We won’t toss what we have in the lan...

Read…

Build a Ghetto Solar Cooker

Mr. Homegrown

September 29, 2006

Preparedness, Solar, Water and Power

Using crap we had laying around the homestead, SurviveLA fashioned a solar cooker based on plans from Backwoods Home Magazine, the Dwell of the Ted Kaczynski set. We just substituted an old cooler for the cardboard boxes, and we finished it off by using one of Los Angeles’ ubiquitous abandoned car tires as a cradle to keep the cooker oriented towards the sun. It ain’t pretty but it works. In our first test we reached 160º inside the oven, but we...

Read…

That ain’t a bowl full of larvae, it’s crosne!

Mr. Homegrown

January 21, 2010

Gardening, Self Watering Containers, Vegetable Gardening

22 Comments

...n, justifiably, gives me a hard time for growing strange things around the homestead. This week I just completed the world’s smallest harvest of a root vegetable popularly known as crosne (Stachys affinis). Crosne, also known as Chinese artichoke, chorogi, knotroot and artichoke betony is a member of the mint family that produces a tiny edible tuber. While looking like any other mint plant, the leaves have no smell. The tubers look all too much li...

Read…

When the Cat’s Away the Mice Will Play

Mr. Homegrown

May 22, 2014

Thoughtstylings

8 Comments

...mple compound. I took the opportunity to make a slight modification to the homestead. I don’t think she’s noticed yet. Consider this post an inside challenge. Kelly–I dare you to find what I did. No hints yet. Readers–have you done any projects while your significant other is out of town? Kelly’s Response: So no, I did not notice his “intervention.” Worse, I didn’t even see this post. Bad blogger, bad. He had to call my attention to it. Then I sea...

Read…