Ways to Critter Proof Your Vegetable Beds: A Competition

...and design critic around our little homestead. Participants can leave a comment on this post linking to an image, or send us an email at rootsimple@gmail.com. The winner will get a package of our newest publication–a series of booklets we wrote in collaboration with the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano. I will also be participating in this competition which does seem unfair, but we’ll let Mrs. Homegrown be the judge....

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The Survivor

We interrupt this dull series of articles about rainwater harvesting for important breaking news at our urban homestead–the development of the SurviveLA signature cocktail–the Survivor. For a long time we’ve cursed the previous owners of our compound for their useless, inedible landscaping. One of the plants they left us that we’ve lived with for all these years is an ornamental pomegranate tree (Punica granatum) that, while attractive, we had pr...

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025 Bees and Home Ec Disasters

...linators such as the Sunflower Project. We conclude with a discussion of a series of household disasters, including breaking a precious tool, the Silent Paint Remover and burning a batch of spicy maricopa beans. Make sure to listen until the end for Kelly’s eloquent addendum on the discussion. If you want 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 po...

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Be Idle!

...Black Friday, a day celebrated in the US with an orgy of consumerism and deadly Walmart stampedes, seems like a good day to repeat the Idler’s Freedom Manifesto. Named for a series of essays by Samuel Johnson, the UK based Idler publishes a magazine, holds online classes and puts out some beautiful hardback books....

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More Thoughts on Thinning the Library

The books on our shelf we want you to see. Kelly’s series of posts on the KonMari tidying method and my post on thinning out the our books, have thrown an ugly spotlight on the inner hoarder in all of us. I don’t think any other posts on this blog has been rewteeted as much as these tidying rants. Mark Frauenfelder linked to the book post on BoingBoing and the resulting comment thread contained a lot of great ideas and resources (and some awesome...

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