I am forever indebted to Storey’s Basic Country Skills. It is, itself, a perfectly comprehensive and useful book but of no remarkable distinction compared to the numerous all-in-one homesteading, country skills and home how-to encyclopedias also available for sale. Personally, I am more inclined to reach for The Encyclopedia of Country Living, which is similar…
Designing and Building
Urbanite (Broken Concrete) Retaining Wall As A Garden Feature
For New Year’s Eve, Homebrew Husband and I had dinner and hung out with good friends (sans children) at a local, casual, historic hotel. It’s a bit hard to describe this place. Local Pacific Northwest folks, it was one of the McMenamins properties called The Anderson School. The hotel is a converted High School with kitchy rooms…
Urban Composting Complaints & How to Avoid Them
There’s so many great reasons to compost! But nosy, disapproving neighbors and code violations can make your life a living hell. Avoid urban composting complaint frustrations – without giving up your composting!
Build A Super Simple Tool Rack From A Pallet
Step-by-step photos show how I turned a pair of pallets into an easy storage solution for garden tools. This is a fun and simple garden DIY!
5 Must-See Permaculture and Agroforestry Videos
I shared a video called Life in Syntropy on my Facebook page a few days ago, but it’s so good I wanted to share it with folks who don’t do The Facebook, and also “tuck it away” for me to watch again later. You know how easy it is to lose something on the internet. If…
Lawn To Garden In A Single Weekend: 6 Easy Steps
Just because gardening is an exercise in patience doesn’t mean gardeners are patient. If you want to join the grow-it-yourself club, and you don’t want to wait, you can turn your unproductive, resource intensive lawn into a ready-to-thrive vegetable garden this weekend. It’ll take some work, but probably less than you think. It’ll take money…
How And Why To Make An Eco-Lawn
I’ve talked before about how “right sizing” my patch of grass really changed my perspective on “evil, non productive lawn” to something almost like fondness. Well, my thinking on lawn has shifted yet again, and again for the better. We recently converted to an eco-lawn mixture and these days I find myself downright loving my…
Homestead Collage: An Overview of My Garden
I have had several readers say they need an overview to get themselves kinda settled in to where everything is in my yard. I went up on the roof and took some photos, but that didn’t quite explain how all the various components work. So I turned to the lazy garden planner’s best friend, Google…
The Time In The Garden Formula
I have developed a formula which I think allows us to estimate how much time and labor a food growing piece of land will take. Size of Land x Diversity of Plantings x Intensity of Management = Time and Labor required! Now, there are no units associated with this formula, so it’s not going to…
Bee Friendly Gardening In The Pacific Northwest
Seems like some people insist on not knowing what they’ve got till it’s gone. And that’s kinda how it is with bees, and pollinators in general. Most of what we think of as food is highly dependant on our pollinating insect friends.* All fruit, tree nuts, squash, seeds for most vegetables, chocolate… Oh, never mind, I don’t…
Understand Thermal Mass To Be A Climate Zone Hacker!
Picture yourself on a beach. It’s late August and you’re sinking your bare feet into the sand. You can feel the warmth of the sand on your toes. It’s not just warm, it’s downright hot. It’s starting to be uncomfortable, so you wiggle your feet a few inches down into the sand where it is…
If You Give A Gardener A Book, She'll Wonder About A Swale
It’s really amazing how quickly a week can slip by with barely a post written. It’s not that there isn’t anything to write about. Au contraire. There is so much to write about, I don’t even know where to start. Let’s start with my shoulders. Cause, damn, they are sore. I’m no stranger to a…