City of Angels Permaculture Academy Design Course Series

...eing some of you there. Here’s the 411: One weekend a month for 6 months. World-class education for less than $12 an hour! Discounts, Payment Plans and up to 50% Work-Trade Still Available You can drop in for one day- or for the whole series. Elegant Home and Gardens- DIY Design & Build Learn Urban Homesteading Skills Community Projects Starting a Neighborhood Business Hands-On Natural Building / Sustainable Landscaping Permaculture in Schools and...

Read…

Moringa!

...by Harvey McDaniel One of the big inspirations for starting our front yard urban farming efforts at the SurviveLA compound is a Philippino neighbor of ours who has turned his entire front yard and even the parkway into an edible garden featuring fruits and vegetables from his native land, most of which we have never seen before. This morning, while walking the dog, I found him cutting hundreds of long seed pods off of a small attractive tree. He d...

Read…

Bee Trellis

...rellis to surround the hive boxes that reside next to her shed. In a small urban yard a trellis around your bees will keep everyone happy. Bees naturally tend to fly upwards after leaving the hive but the addition of a fence keeps the few sideways stragglers from negative canine and homo sapiens interactions. As usual, the design process around Root Simple begins with the realization that our 1920s house looks best when surrounded by fuddy-duddy l...

Read…

An Echo Park Weed Salad

There’s nothing like a little urban blight to produce an excellent salad. While not impoverished (not unless you consider dilapidated $600,000 bungalows a sign of destitution), our neighborhood ain’t exactly Beverly Hills, meaning that in terms of landscaping it’s a little rough around the edges. And the edges–parkways, cracks in the asphalt, neglected plantings were, on this warm February day, overflowing with weeds. Edible weeds. We explored th...

Read…

Saturday Linkages: Modem Sounds, HOAs, and Hand Counting

Homeowners' associations are not allowed to ban drought-tolerant landscaping https://t.co/9N5urhdqyX — Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 9, 2016 Things I Miss: Modem handshake sounds https://t.co/9s6lQIQc6a — Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 9, 2016 5 Make-Shift Urban Survival Lights When the Electricity Goes Down https://t.co/kSgRehCXAw via @sharethis — Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 5, 2016 Well said, Carol! It's 90 degrees in...

Read…