The Wonder of Worms

...if we can manage that, we want more. More vegetables. Bigger flowers. More fruit. Now. And to do that, we construct artificial, hyper-productive systems–like garden beds. To support these systems, we also construct artificial systems in which to raise worms, so we can harvest their castings and put them where we want them, when we need them. These are worm bins. What exactly do you do with worm castings? Worm castings are often referred to as fert...

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2018: The Year Squirrels Discovered our Pomegranate Tree

...ss the squirrel issue this morning beginning with a year end review of our fruit harvest totals: Fuji apples: 0 Winter banana apples: 0 Fuyu persimmons: 0 Hachiya persimmons: 0 Peaches: 0 Pomegranates: 6 Figs: 20? Avocados: 20? but with a few bite marks So not a total loss in the pom department but a long ways from my days of thinking that the hard skin of pomegranates are squirrel proof. This is the point in my squirrel complaint blog post where...

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Picture Sunday: Amazon’s “Rasta Imposta” Squirrel Costume

...nd run around the yard would squirrels be so confused that they’d leave my fruit trees alone? From the Amazon reviews: it even comes with nuts By squirrelman When I first saw this squirrel costume, I went a little nuts (pun intended đŸ™‚ ). I starting buying one for everyone I knew. My wife, kids, lawyer, dentist, family practitioner, our local barista, and even my boss. Needless to say, we all suited up for halloween and went out as a dray (for thos...

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Return of the Egg

...ith the blending of green egg and brown egg genes. Happy as I am about the eggs, their re-appearance means our too-short winter is closing fast, and that our fruit trees need to be pruned, asap. When do hens start laying in your part of the world?...

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Book Review: A Feast of Weeds by Luigi Ballerini

...o peel the pads to eat them. This is an understandable mistake for an Italian to make. For some odd reason only the people of the New World eat the pads of prickly pear–in the Mediterranean and Middle-East, where the plant has been imported, only the fruit is consumed. I’m looking forward to cooking up some of the recipes, which were contributed by Ada De Santis, who runs a farm on the Salentine peninsula of southern Puglia. Thanks to A Feast of W...

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