Saturday Linkages: Chicken Hot Dogs and Toilet Museums

...How to Build a Gypsy Caravan from Recycled Materials… http://bit.ly/S8pABN Gardening Home Depot’s Leaf Bags and their Eco-Terrible “Tips” | Garden Rant http://gardenrant.com/2012/12/home-depots-leaf-bags-and-their-eco-terrible-tips.html … Design High-Hanging Tea House Offers Suspended Getaway | Designs & Ideas on Dornob http://dornob.com/high-hanging-tea-house-offers-suspended-getaway/ … ??? South Korea’s toilet culture museum: http://boingboing.n...

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Are Rubber Mulches or Tires in the Garden a Good Idea?

...nings blowing around and settling on the soil). I suspect that many of our gardening frustrations are related to our zinc problem. What about the use of whole tires in the garden, such as for planters or compost bins? According to a report by an environmental consultant sent to me by Mark, a Root Simple reader, whole tires do not seem to be a problem (at least in aquatic contexts). So it seems that we should keep those tires whole rather than shre...

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What does the loving landscape look like?

...u can see the garden in all seasons. As a start, check out these images at Gardening Gone Wild. *** Okay, so that’s all very well for the professionals and for big parks, but how does this work in smaller spaces? I think it can work very well. We just have to cast our imaginations back in time before the invention cheap artificial fertilizers and weed killers–not to me the lawn mower–made a carpet of turf the universal default setting in home gard...

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Saturday Tweets: Dubious Tips, Growing Furniture and So Much More

Gardening in the Age of Pinterest: Dubious Online Garden Tips http://t.co/Fm48N2bfiP via @WVgardenguru — Root Simple (@rootsimple) April 17, 2015 Skyglow: Timelapse film dedicated to the need for light-pollution-free skies for stargazing via @BoingBoing http://t.co/SBBVj0q9Tx — Root Simple (@rootsimple) April 17, 2015 If homeless people can’t sleep outside, Apple customers shouldn’t either http://t.co/Mh3sDHRZYk via @dailydot — Root Simple (@root...

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In Defense of the Paper Wasp

Paper wasp building a nest. Image: Wikimedia. I really don’t like gardening advice that divides the natural world into lists of good and bad bugs. From nature’s perspective all creatures have a role, even the much despised paper wasp. Paper Wasp Biology 101 Wasps perform important duties: some wasps eat other insects, other wasps are scavengers, acting as nature’s garbage disposers. That’s not to say that wasps don’t earn some of their bad reputa...

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