Planting a Mini-Orchard
...g our way from the prickly pear plants. For more information on these simple, water saving strategies see Brad Lancaster’s excellent book Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands....
Search Results for: label/book%20reviews/2010/06/the-urban-homestead
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Out Of The In Box
...available as a pdf for free here along with a couple of other interesting books from the period. Above is Isaac’s clever cube crapper. Not much headroom in the head, but what a nice view. Isaac’s work has a playful plywood-meets-the-moon lander vibe. I think I would have loved this modular bunk bed as a kid. Dwell Magazine did an interview with Isaacs recently: After I complained about hippie aesthetics in a previous post, an astute reader counte...
Make an Aluminum Can Lamp
...do this by taping a razor blade to a piece of metal and inserting it in a book. Simply rotate the can against the blade a few times and you will get a nice even cut. Precision isn’t necessary for this project (unlike the Pepsi can stove) so you can also do this step with a pair of scissors. 4. Punch out a 1/4 inch hole in the bottom of the can for the wick. 5. Cut a 1/2 inch by 3 inch piece of cotton from an old shirt for the wick. 6. Cut out a 2...
Let’s Get Biointensive
I picked up a handy tip on plant spacing from John Jeavons’ book How to Grow More Vegetables. Jeavons dislikes rows and instead uses the triangular spacing of the French biointensive method. You can view a nice diagram of biointensive spacing on the LandShare Colorado website. And see some images of the way Jeavons’ spaces his garden on This Girl’s Gone Green. Triangular plantings squeeze more veggies into small spaces. The tight spacing, with le...
Favorite Plants- New Zealand Spinach
...en growing it for many years and find it a reliable plant. In The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping, Rosalind Creasy writes, “New Zealand spinach makes a marvelous temporary ground cover, is good in hanging baskets, and will cascade over the sides of planter boxes. Grow it on the patio so it will be close at hand to add to your morning scrambled eggs along with dill and cheese.” I have so much in my garden right now that I may do a big harvest a...