The Miraculous Lavender

...for months now. I don’t water it. I don’t send water down the stairs. The soil off the stairs is dry, because that slope is planted with natives, which are getting no irrigation. There’s no plumbing beneath the staircase, either. Yet the lavender keeps getting bigger. I’m going to have to pull it soon, before it ruins our stairs. But I don’t want to, because it’s so determined to live. And this goes to show that when a plant wants to grow somewhe...

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Hügelkultur in dry climates?

...the logs break down they add organic matter and create, in theory, a rich soil full of air gaps, fungal and microbial life. But the thought of mounding anything in our dry climate doesn’t make sense to me. As I said in my post about the pros and cons of raised beds, if I didn’t have contaminated soil I’d grow my veggies in the ground. A Root Simple reader from Cyprus, which has a very similar climate as ours, said that Hügelkultur experiments the...

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Straw Bale Gardening Update

...least ten spindly, diseased specimens hiding in backyards. Without careful soil stewardship, just the right amount of water and diligence about not growing tomatoes in the same place every year TDS will visit your household. Since I’ve had tomato disease problems for years I decided to grow them in straw bales this season as I did, successfully, back in 2013. Unfortunately, my straw bale tomatoes succumbed to one of three possible problems: Improp...

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Fifty Shades of Gray Water

...“probably from Anglo-French *sollage, *suillage, from suiller, soiller to soil.” While I like the link with soil, “sullage” appears to be used interchangeably with “sewage.” There is, of course the confusing problem of “gray” vs. “grey” with “gray” being more common in American English. “Greywater” is used by two out of the three American experts: Brad Lancaster and Greywater Action (the artists formerly known as the Guerrilla Graywater Girls). A...

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077 Radical Mycology

...t we discuss: What are fungi? How to cultivate edible and medicinal mushrooms How to establish a mushroom bed in your garden Tempeh Peter’s cultivation how-to videos Growing mushrooms in an apartment Easy to grow mushroom: King Stropharia Source for spawn: Field and Forest Plugs Improving soil with fungi Remediating soil Peter’s new book Radical Mycology If you want to leave a question for the Root Simple Podcast please call (213) 537-2591 or send...

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