Help! Small birds are eating us out of house and home!

...re we sparking a goldfinch obesity crisis? Our yard does have more natural food sources, like native sunflowers and white sage gone to seed. Perhaps we should have left it at that? ( I suspect we’re not going to win any permaculture awards for our feeder.) Bird people, help! What are your thoughts on feeders? Is it okay to leave the feeder empty sometimes? Does that encourage foraging, or is it just not very nice to be random about the filling? Is...

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Saturday Linkages: Independence Day Weekend Edition

...hy Do We Refrigerate Eggs in the United States? http://www.kcet.org/living/food/the-nosh/why-do-we-refrigerate-eggs-in-the-united-states.html … Ash Forests After Emerald Ash Borers Destroy Them http://nyti.ms/1qs4kr1 German police apologize for fining one-armed cyclist for riding his bike with only one arm http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/german-police-apologise-for-fining-onearmed-cyclist-for-riding-his-bike-with-only-one-arm-957892...

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Can our landscapes model a vibrant future? Not according to the LA DWP.

...st not feeling it in the cities. Our water is cheap, the taps are running, food prices aren’t terribly affected– yet. So we keep washing our cars and hosing off the sidewalks and topping off our swimming pools and, of course, we water our lawns. Lawns are a big liability in this region. I think they may not be such a crime in milder, wetter places where they grow happily (though there’s no getting around the fact that they are a sterile monocultur...

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011 Cleaning, Long Crowing Roosters and Water Storage

...er Question: Water Storage for Emergencies A correction to the podcast–the Food Safety Advisor is not free to download, but the information on water storage that I reference can be found here. Amazon link to the water storage container we use. 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 podcast in the iTunes store and on Stitcher. The them...

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The Mystery of the Zero-Irrigation Squash

...s. The chairs in the picture above are holding over 100 lbs (45+ kilos) of food grown with zero water inputs! To top that, this was one of the healthiest squash plants we’ve ever “grown” or rather allowed to grow. How did that work? And more importantly, how can we make it happen again? I have three thoughts: 1) Perfect timing. Volunteers know exactly when to come up. They’re rarely wrong. We humans schedule planting by when we finally buy our see...

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