Gardening Mistakes: Six Ways We’ve Killed Plants

...stuff and see what takes off. 2. Soil compaction This is a big problem in urban areas and our yard is no exception. The parkway, which gets a lot of foot traffic, is very compacted. Very few plants do well with compacted soil, including natives. The best way to break up compacted soil is with a broadfork, a spendy item. We use a garden fork instead. 3. Soil fertility When it comes to growing vegetables, in particular, you need rich soil. Get a so...

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Journal of the New Alchemists

...) covers mostly their agricultural experiments, but occasionally dips into urban planning and other subjects. Biodome. Image: Journal of the New Alchemy. It’s interesting to look back at their work to see what ideas went mainstream and what faded away. What didn’t stick is what Nassim Taleb would call “top-down” approaches to design epitomized by the 70s fixation on geodesic domes and self contained ecosystems (though we’re starting to see a resur...

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A Year after The Age of Limits: 5 Responses to the End Times

...ple: Humans are destroying the planet. We are either inherently evil or an evolutionary mistake, a bug in the program. Therefore we will trigger an environmental cataclysm with will kill us all soon. This is the apocalypse meme of Near Term Extinction (NTE). What’s particularly disturbing about NTE is that it promises not only the demise of humans, but of all life on the planet, because, I suppose we think so much of ourselves that we imagine we c...

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Thursday Linkages: Mason Bees, Hawks and Robot Cars

....com/2014/05/where-do-rats-go-when-they-die … Boxwoods? Bah! by James Roush http://feedly.com/e/KZ4uAoLm Bikesnob on robot cars: http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/2014/05/its-end-of-world-as-we-know-it-and-i.html … Urban Beekeeping in San Francisco: http://wp.me/p4fosC-dQ Silent Watcher http://www.recyclart.org/2014/05/silent-watcher/ … For these links and more, follow Root Simple on Twitter: Follow @rootsimple...

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Saturday Linkages: Incas, Big Rocks and Cool Cucumbers

...m/e/pugEWv4Z Lost Crops of the Incas http://feedly.com/e/9GygG_Yc Reading: Urban Oasis on a Balcony: From Concrete Furnace to Edible Habitat… http://bit.ly/HSeQ6B Look at My Big Rock by Evelyn Hadden http://feedly.com/e/0gB_TOO6 The coolest cucumber you’ve never met: http://modernfarmer.com/2013/11/coolest-cucumber-never-met/ … Food issues Americans – why do you keep refrigerating your eggs? http://io9.com/americans-why-do-you-keep-refrigerating-y...

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