Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Gardening Wisdom

August 18, 2015

...at a garden should express moods and ideas and not be just a collection of plants or a collection of objects set amidst plants. Finlay’s garden is a poem. While it has a lot of sculpture in it, it’s not what you would call a “sculpture garden” which Finlay speaks despairingly of as little more than an “outdoor art gallery.” A liberal’s compost heap is his castle. Garden centres must become the Jacobin Clubs of the new Revolution. Certain gardens a...

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Build a Solar Dehydrator

Mr. Homegrown

October 1, 2008

Appropriate Technology, Preparedness, Solar

22 Comments

...ct, we’ve got a few too many tomatoes at this time of the year. One of our favorite ways to preserve our modest harvest is with our solar dehydrator. There’s nothing like the taste of sun dried tomatoes, but unless you live in a very dry desert climate like Phoenix, Arizona you can’t just set fruit out in the sun and expect it to do anything but go moldy. In most places in the world, including here in Los Angeles, the relative humidity is too high...

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What to do with all those hot peppers: Harissa!

Mr. Homegrown

August 30, 2008

Food, Gardening, Recipes, Vegetable Gardening

14 Comments

...as this is a low-acid food (even though it’s fiery). And speaking of fiery, though we should know better (having once accidentally inhaled hot pepper seeds), we disregarded warnings about wearing rubber gloves when slicing the peppers. At the risk of providing too much information, a post Harissa making trip to the bathroom led to, shall we say, burning sensations for Señor Homegrown Evolution! Burning sensations aside, Harissa is a very tasty an...

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End of Season Tomato Review

Mr. Homegrown

November 26, 2008

Gardening, Tomatoes, Vegetable Gardening

7 Comments

...s were grown in cages made from concrete reinforcing wire (instructions on making tomato cages here) in raised beds with a drip irrigation system as pictured above. As an experiment for folks in apartments or with limited space, we grew a bunch of tomatoes in self watering containers on a strip of concrete next to the back wall of our garage (note crappy picture below). You’ll see that we were too lazy to put the container tomatoes in cages–don’t...

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C-Realm Podcast on the Age of Limits

Mr. Homegrown

May 16, 2014

Age of Limits

4 Comments

...cast. If you’re not familiar with the C-Realm you should be–it’s one of my favorite podcasts and covers a difficult to summarize array of subjects that will interest readers of Root Simple. After our interview, KMO talks to Archdruid John Michael Greer who had a similar reaction to the conference’s mashup of drum circles and near term extinction enthusiasts. One of the many things Kelly and I neglected to mention during the interview is that we th...

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