Search Results for: label/book%20reviews/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

807 results

In Praise of Backward Compatibility

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Appropriate Technology
9 Comments
The garden of nerdiness has many flowers: comic book nerds, computer nerds, fantasy nerds, sci-fi nerds–too many to list. After fifty years I’ve finally recognized my own personal nerd category. I’m an electromechanical nerd. This tendency manifests in an obsession with old telephones, the ability to thread a 16mm projector, fantasizing about the mimeographed version of Root Simple and spending evenings watching films about old office equipment....

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Our new front yard: history

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Back to the Garden, front yard series, Garden Design, Gardening
19 Comments
...y Thomas Rainer and Claudia West. In it, I mentioned that I was using this book to help guide the redesign of our front yard, and promised to post about that process. In the hope that our process might be of some use to somebody considering their own landscaping, I’m following through on that promise. In a more selfish way, I like to have records like this of both our actions and our thought processes, because inevitably Erik and I will forget whe...

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Our new front yard, part 2: theory

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Back to the Garden, front yard series, Garden Design, Gardening
12 Comments
...picturesque trees– an aesthetic that has shaped what we think parks and suburban yards should look like–no matter where we live. Some people think this bias may even go back to our earliest ancestral memories–to the savannas, where we liked long, clear views so we could spot both dangers and opportunities easily–and handy trees to scramble into if we needed to get away from a predator. Whatever the reason, we like open spaces which are easily read...

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069 Understanding Roots with Robert Kourik

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Fruit Trees, Gardening, Podcasts, Vegetable Gardening
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...eered by Dr. John Weaver in the 1920s and 30s and featured in Kourik’s new book Understanding Roots. From there we touch on how to plant fruit trees and the intricacies of how to water trees, vegetables and native plants. Then we delve deep into drip irrigation, dynamic accumulators and phytoremediation. If you’d like to pick up a copy of one of Robert’s books visit robertkourik.com. If you want to leave a question for the Root Simple Podcast plea...

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