Watering 101

...swer will vary, depending on your soil, the weather, the method you use to water, how often you water, and what you’re growing. In the end, you just have to use your hands and your common sense to figure it out. There is no formula. In the picture above, you see the surface of the soil in one of our raised beds. This is imported soil, the kind that comes in bags. It doesn’t hold water in pools like clay soil does, it doesn’t sink in fast as it wou...

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Why You Should Have a Cat Fountain

...rts say they perceive it as fresher and more likely to be a safe source of water. Some cats, apparently, won’t drink anything but water flowing from a tap. While cats are desert creatures they still need water. For our cat’s wild ancestors rodent blood (yum!) provided supplemental hydration. The ideal diet for a cat would be a mouse a day, but we’d get in trouble with the PETA folks if we started a mouse farm at the Root Simple compound. So we’ve...

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Lady Urine, Water Conservation and Halfway Humanure

...he toilet so much. And if all our pee went outside, it would not only save water, but it also would add water and nitrogen to the soil. Win-win. Now, I imagine our more feisty readers will ask, why stop at pee? We’re big supporters of the humanure concept and have kept a dry toilet in the past. It’s not difficult to compost human waste , but you do have to be careful, and you need a dedicated humanure pile–more than one, really. More like three. W...

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Make Your Own Chalkboard Paint II

...ely where it is. The recipe I used is: 1 cup latex paint 1 tablespoon cool water 2 tablespoons unsanded grout Making your own chalkboard paint is a lot cheaper than buying the pre-made stuff. Plus you can use any color of latex paint. The paint has stood up to repeated erasing and re-chalking. Eric of Garden Fork just did a video where he made a chalkboard/pallet wood frame. In the video he uses an adhesive chalkboard film. https://www.youtube.com...

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Moonshine

...Daniels-Midlands turns out. Here’s some excerpts from an interview of ex-moonshiner John Bowman conducted by the Coal River Folklife Project from “Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia”: Making whisky at night (mp3) Telling the difference between good moonshine and bad (mp3) Good water for moonshine (mp3 with rooster!) Signalling the presence of the federal man (mp3) More of this interview here....

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