Picture Sunday: A Winter Harvest in Florida

January 20, 2013

...rter acre city lot. In the picture: Canistel, Rollinia, red navels, Ruby Red Grapefruit, Carambola, pineapple, sapodilla, sugar apple, dwarf Cavendish bananas, ambarella, jaboticaba, jackfruit flowers, papaya, lemon and red palm fruits (inedible). Amazing. If you’ve got a picture to share, send it along to us at rootsimple@gmail.com....

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Picture Sundays: Root Simple Compound Caught On Google Street View

Mr. Homegrown

September 14, 2014

Picture Sundays

9 Comments

...that Google Street View, back in April, caught me in the act of contemplating cleaning the garage. You can tell from my posture that I’m in the intellectual rather than the physical stage of garage sorting. In the front yard the fruit trees have leafed out, clarkia is blooming in the sparse parkway, the nopal is loaded with immature fruit and the roses have yet to climb the entrance arbor. If only I had a Root Simple banner and and an alpaca to t...

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Should I Try Tomato Grafting?

Mr. Homegrown

January 18, 2016

Gardening, Tomatoes

15 Comments

...graft tomatoes onto potato plants (two crops in one!) as well as graft tomatoes onto eggplants for plants that are more hardy in soggy soils. In the bad idea department, you can graft tomatoes onto tobacco (for nicotine laden fruit) and jimsonweed (for poisonous fruit–note this strange incindent). The Illinois Extension service has detailed tomato grafting instructions and notes on root stock selection here. So what do you think? Intrigued? Comme...

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Behind the Scenes at Root Simple is a World of Big Pumpkins, Pomegranate Catapults and Man Crates

Mr. Homegrown

October 7, 2014

Thoughtstylings

7 Comments

...Wilson Band, plus everything pomegranate. “We’ll have vendors selling the fruit itself, plus pomegranate trees, pomegranate-scented candles, jellies and anything else you could think of involving pomegranate, and probably some things you didn’t know could incorporate the fruit,” Bray mentions. Will they aim the pomegranate trébuchet at the skydivers? Or does the Geneva Convention prohibit that? Hello Kelly and Erik! My name is Alexandra, and I’m...

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The Fine Art of Determining Peach Ripeness

Mr. Homegrown

June 6, 2016

Fruit Trees, Gardening

4 Comments

...ess to a few tools that can make ripeness determination easier such as this expensive gadget that measures firmness or a brix meter for determining sugar content. These tools could only be justified if you were planning on growing, shipping and selling fruit. More useful for us backyard growers is this gallery of peach fruit color stages. I’ve been picking them a little on the green side and letting them ripen inside in order to stay ahead of the...

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