Giveaway: The New Sunset Western Garden Book

We've got five copies of the The New Sunset Western Garden Book to give away to lucky readers. All you have to do is leave a comment here telling us where you live (not your address, but your city or region) and name your favorite tomato variety. This way we'll build a list of the best tomatoes to help everyone with their summer selections.

Tuesday, March 6th we'll announce the five winners here by the name they leave in the comments--so no anonymous entries, please. We'll work out delivery details from there.

Please be aware that this book is written for gardeners who live the western portion of North America: California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Alberta, Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, or New Mexico.

Book Review: The New Sunset Western Garden Book

The Sunset Western Garden Book was one of the first gardening books we picked up when we bought our house back in 1998. A new version is out this month, now dubbed The New Sunset Western Garden Book, and it's a significant improvement over our old copy.

Lavish photos have replaced the drawings of my 1998 copy. The new edition has significantly more coverage of edibles, including a vegetable planting schedule as well as nice photographs of veggies worked into ornamental landscaping schemes.  One of the improvements I'm most pleased to see are lists of plants for attracting bees, butterflies, birds and beneficial insects. And Hawaii, Alaska southern British Columbia and Alberta residents will be happy to find their states and provinces included.  I also find Sunset's zone system more useful than USDA zones.

I have a few minor quibbles with some of the advice. Adding compost when planting trees is not a good idea. Neither is solarizing. And, speaking as a beekeeper, I would never recommend using imidacloprid under any circumstances. I am happy to see invasive pampas grass moved from "maybe don't grow" to "definitely don't grow."

But it's the plant list that forms the heart of this book. Even though much of this information on the internet now, I still prefer to get it in book form. I trust the curatorial expertise of Sunset's editors and the climate specific advice for those of us in the Western US. And the plant lists are still extremely valuable when planning a new garden or remodeling an old one.

ETA: Check out Sunset's handy online plant finder.

We'll be giving away six copies of the The New Sunset Western Garden Book tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Huntington Ranch Workshop: Foraging and the Living Kitchen

This Saturday March 3 from 9 a.m.-1 p.m, our friend Nancy Klehm will be leading a workshop at the Huntington Ranch entitled Foraging and the Natural Kitchen. So you've got two reasons to go--Nancy and the Ranch are truly amazing. Here's the details:

Living Kitchen is a series of informal foraging and cooking workshops that aims to reorganize our connection to land, ourselves and our communities through the awareness of the spontaneous and cultivated plants around us. Led by Nance Klehm, this workshop will walk participants through the Huntington Ranch and discuss the strategy of food foresting that specifically incorporates or allows for spontaneous vegetation to build soil health, create habitat, and provide food and medicine for humans. During the tour, participants will explore the web of relationships of these plants as well as taste, smell and gather wild plant material to prepare a light foraged meal. This workshop is about direct experience, new tastes, and sharing with others.

Members: $60. Non Members: $70.
Registration: 626-405-2128

Insect Hotel

This is old news, but we thought it worth repeating in light of last week's review of Attracting Native Pollinators.

Above is a picture of the winning design of a native pollinator habitat built by Arup Associates in response to the Beyond the Hive competition put on by the City of London.  The Core77 post we're linking to has more views and also some pics of the runners up. It might give you some ideas for building your own habitats at home.

Picture Sundays: Beer and Motherhood

"A case of Blatz Beer in your home means much to the young mother, and obviously baby participates in its benefits. The malt in the beer supplies nourishing qualities that are essential at this time and the hops act as an appetizing, stimulating tonic." -Blatz Beer ad, 1916.

Saturday's Quote: Spring

 

NOTHING is so beautiful as spring—   
  When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;   
  Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush   
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring   
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;         
  The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush   
  The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush   
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.   

     --Beginning of the poem, Spring, by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

Help Us Find the Ideal Urban Chicken Breed

Townes Van Zandt with chicken

We are in the market for new hens and lately it has occurred to us that the best breed criteria for our situation is not a breed which lays most frequently, but a breed which maintains its egg production as it matures--even if that means that it doesn't produce as many eggs per week as a typical high production hen.

Does that make sense? Because Erik is such a soft touch, we have to maintain a nursing home for hens. It would be great if our ladies would continue to contribute eggs into their dotage. It is less important that they are daily producers in their youth, because the two of us can't eat that many eggs.

This is not what hens are bred for--I understand that. Laying hens are bred to give as much as they can for two years, after which they are usually culled. Long term laying isn't much of a consideration. But I thought this trait might be more apparent in some of the heritage breeds.

Let me know if you have an old hen still laying, and what kind of hen she is.

Erik adds this: In The One-Straw Revolution Masanobu Fukuoka mentions he has just such a hen--but he doesn't go on to tell us the name. Anyone know about Fukuoka's chickens?

Compost pail failure

We have one of those standard, stainless steel compost pails--the kind you keep on your countertop to collect scraps. It's a couple of years old. Last week, it began to leak from the bottom. This mystified me because a) it's stainless steel and seemed a quality item and b) it had no seams on the bottom. For a while I wondered if there was a miracle at work--you know, sort of the composting version of a weeping Virgin Mary. But today I took it into strong light and found one teeny tiny hole and pits that look like they soon will be holes, too. I assume the pitting is a caused by the acidity of the compost juice?

Has anyone had something similar happen?

Our consultants agree it smells fascinating.

Los Angeles Earthen Oven Class – May 25-27, 2012

We're very pleased to announce that adobe master Kurt Gardella will be leading an earthen oven building class at the Root Simple compound. We've both taken classes with Kurt and he's an amazing instructor. Details and registration information:

Earthen ovens are inexpensive to build, fun to use, and provide baking environment impossible to recreate in the kitchen.  This May, Kurt Gardella returns to California for three days to teach you how to make your own earthen oven.  Kurt has built dozens of these ovens in New Mexico, and has great expertise in both adobe construction and earthen plasters and finishes. Attendees will leave the class with the knowledge necessary to built an oven of their own, with materials that you may already have in your yard.

The class is suitable for bakers, building professionals and do-it-your-selfers, and is a great introduction to adobe construction and earthen plasters covered in more depth in adobeisnotsoftware’s other classes.

Topics Include:

• Local considerations and the siting your earthen oven
• Soil and material selection, sourcing and testing
• Foundations and oven base design and materials
• Sizing
• Sand Form and Oven Domes
• Natural oven plasters and finishes
• Firing and baking in your oven.

Instruction Type:

This is a hands-on class. Attendees will have the opportunity to get dirty and use tools and equipment typical of adobe construction and earthen finishing. Due to the course format, enrollment will be limited to 10 individuals.  In the unlikely event of inclement weather, instruction will occur indoors.

Instructors:

Kurt Gardella teaches adobe construction at Northern New Mexico College, is Director of Education for Adobe in Action, and is certified as an earth-building specialist by the German Dachverband Lehm.

Ben Loescher is a licensed architect, founder of adobeisnotsoftware and principal of golem|la, an architecture firm specializing in adobe construction.

Location:

The class will be conducted in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles, and hosted by Root Simple.  Coffee and nibbles will be provided at the beginning of the day; lunch is included.

Registration:

Click here to register.  Early bird tuition is $190/person for registrations before April 20th, standard price registrations will be $220 after that date.

Questions?:

Please do not hesitate to contact Ben by email at office@g-o-l-e-m.com or by phone at (760) 278-1134.

Cheap and Natural Handsoap--and a rant

 

This is just a quick tip. If your family prefers liquid soap to bar soap, one easy way to avoid all the creepy, expensive, colored, perfumed, anti-bacterial liquid soaps on the market  (and all the plastic they come in) is to just use liquid castile soap to wash your hands.  Ah, but yes--liquid castile soap is runny. Indeed. I can hear the complaints already. 

The way around that problem is to use one of them fancy-schmancy foaming soap pumps. You can buy them at specialty retailers, but it's probably cheaper to buy one at the supermarket, use up the soap and then start refilling with liquid castile soap. The one in our bathroom is an old Method pump and is still working fine after three years.

The secret of the soap formula used in foaming pumps is that it's super-diluted. It has to to diluted because full strength soap clogs the pump.  It's kind of a scam, when you think about it, that when you buy a foaming pump you pay as much or more for diluted soap than regular liquid soap. However, the dilution factor works perfectly with castile soap. As Dr. Bronner says:  Dilute! Dilute! Dilute!

Dilute your castile soap quite a bit for use in a foam pump. Start by filling the dispenser no more than 1/4 full of soap and then filling it the rest of the way with water. See how that works for you. You may prefer it a little stronger or a little weaker. 

In any case, you'll pay less for each full dispenser of soap, and you'll have the comfort of knowing your soap is all-natural, safe and free of additives.

***

Rant Warning:

Speaking of which, I saw the most appalling thing in the grocery store today and I had to rant about it: The Lysol® Healthy Touch® No-Touch Hand Soap System.

This is a twelve dollar, battery operated (4 AA) soap pump fitted with an electric eye, so it spits out soap when you pass your hand under the nozzle. It dispenses Lysol anti-bacterial soap, which comes packed into special cartridges--meaning you can't fill the dispenser with whatever soap you like. The tagline for this product is, "Never touch a germy soap pump again!" 

I love the double-speak of Healthy Touch/No-Touch. Is the underlying logic that no touch is healthy? Time to evacuate to our plastic bubbles!

Three cranky thoughts on this product:

1) First, the obvious. When you touch a soap dispenser, you are about to wash your hands. When you wash you hands, you kill all the germs. It doesn't matter how "germy" the dispenser is--unless you plan to suck on it. This device is about as needful as evening wear for hogs.

2) In 2002, at the urging of the AMA, the FDA evaluated anti-bacterial soaps. The AMA was concerned that these anti-bacterial soaps (i.e. Triclosan-based products*) may be breeding super-bacteria which are resistant to antibiotics. The FDA's findings were, as reported at American Medical News:

"Soaps and lotions that include antibacterial agents have no benefit over ordinary soap and water, but more research is needed to allay or substantiate concern that these substances may be leading to increased rates of antibiotic resistance."

So anti-bacterial soaps are proven to be no better than regular soap and water and maybe, just maybe--there's still research to be done--they could be disastrously worse. Why roll the dice on this one? It just doesn't make any sense. For me, this makes anti-bacterial soaps about as needful as evening wear for hogs accessorized with a doomsday device.

3) And finally, the wastefulness of it all makes me cry. Note the the cheap plastic shell and electronic innards assembled in Chinese factories--not to mention the big-ass clamshell package it all comes in. How long will the average unit be employed? A year? If does last more than a year, how long will Lysol keep making those plastic cartridges?  Oh, and joy! We'll have more toxic batteries to figure out how to dispose of--all so we can wash our hands.

Arggghhhh! I've got to go visit the chickens or something. My knickers are all in a twist.

Thanks for listening.

*I know I have alcohol gel fans in the readership and I don't believe those were part of the AMA's concerns. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Book Review: Attracting Native Pollinators: The Xerces Society Guide to Conserving North American Bees and Butterflies and Their Habitat

How can we save the world? Simple. Get everyone to read and understand the contents of a new book, Attracting Native Pollinators: The Xerces Society Guide to Conserving North American Bees and Butterflies and Their Habitat. Why? There's the obvious--pollinating insects provide a huge amount of our food--but they also have a few unappreciated roles.

Without pollinators, plant communities that stabilize river banks disappear. Mammals and birds that eat pollinated fruits perish. But perhaps most importantly, by raising awareness of the needs of pollinating insects we can better appreciate the damage we cause through the use of pesticides. Do we really want to live in a toxic world? A world, like China's Sichuan Province, so choked with poison that apple farmers have to climb ladders to hand pollinate trees?

And we're not just talking about honeybees. Attracting Native Pollinators delves into the fascinating world of native bees, bumblebees, wasps, moths and flies, providing a detailed guide on how to tell these species apart, what their nests look like and, most importantly, practical steps that everyone from a homeowner to a golf course manager can take to improve habitat. For instance, one of the most important things we can all do is simply to provide areas of open, sunny ground for pollinating species, such as bumblebees, that nest underground.

You'll also find instructions for building nesting blocks for native bees and subterranean boxes for bumblebees. There's also extensive plant lists for North America including both native and common non-native garden plants such as rosemary.

In our own garden we've planted a lot more flowering native perennials this year. But I'm also inspired to get a conversation going about creating more habitat for pollinators in public spaces. Los Angeles is full of space that could be planted with drought tolerant, flowering plants to replace the thousands of acres of lawn (mowed weeds, really) and Home Depot hedges. Think about the habitat we could create with all those barren parkways. Who's in to help? Let's pollinate a revolution.

Foraging Class with Nancy Klehm, Sunday February 26th in Silver Lake

Join Nancy Klehm for a foraging class in the wilds of LA's urban landscape on Sunday February 26th from 3 to 5 pm at the Micheltorena School and Community Garden (at the corner of Micheltorena and Sunset Blvd.--map). All for $20! Sign up soon as there's only 25 spots. To register email nettlesting@yahoo.com.

Large Tree Supported by Palm Trunk

Photo by Anne Hars. Click to bigify.

This is the stuff of arborist's nightmares. I've been walking by this house for years and never noticed that it has a large tree entirely supported by the base of an 80 foot palm tree. Thankfully Los Angeles' distinctive palms (Washingtonia robusta) can, obviously, hold a lot of weight.

Thanks to HaFoSaFo blogger Anne Hars for the photo. Extra points for finding Anne's husband Bill, their Chihuahuas and the house one of our neighbors decided to paint the colors of my alma mater, UCLA. 

Picture Sundays: The Dapper Beekeeper

From The United States Department of Agriculture Farmer's Bulletin #397, a well dressed beekeeper circa 1910.

Saturday's Quote: Goethe

This one strikes me as particularly pertinent after all the head-scratching about cleaning products and GMO'd cat litter this week:

Doubt grows with knowledge.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

    Proverbs in Prose, 1819

How to Make a Mosaic Stepping Stone

Not liking the pre-fab stepping stone options out there, I decided to take matters into my own hands and make one with glass mosaic tile. It's easy to do using what's called the "indirect method" in which you press the tiles onto a piece of contact paper. You then use that sheet of tile to cast your new, custom stepping stone.

The first step is to come up with a design, either hand drawn or printed out from the computer. Since you'll be working in reverse, you flip your design left-right. I chose the mercury, the symbol of transformation (it seemed like a good metaphor for a garden). No need to flip this particular image, of course. When sizing the design I like to keep in mind the size of the tiles I'll be using so that any lines are about one tile wide.

I transferred the design to a piece of clear contact paper. Next, I taped the contact paper, with the sticky side up. to a piece of melamine coated fiberboard. Melamine is a good material to use because it helps it has a very smooth, even surface and is unlikely to warp. In addition, using melamine for the sides of the mold helps it release more easily. I built this mold out a piece of a discarded Ikea bookshelf.

While I was cutting the bottom piece, I cut four additional small pieces of the bookshelf to form the sides of the mold.The dimensions of these pieces determine the size of your stepping stone. I made a simple box by joining the pieces with screws at the corners. If you wish, you can spray the sides of the mold with WD-40 to help release the mold later. I forgot to do this, but it released fine anyway

For the mosaic itself, I used glass mosaic tile leftover from an old project. The glass picks up reflections and shimmers on a sunny day. The drawback is that it's pretty expensive. The brand we've used in the past is Bisazza. You can also, of course, use broken plates, pebbles, pieces of metal or tile left over from other jobs.

To cut glass tile I use a pair of tile nippers. I like to break the square tiles into four small pieces to simulate the irregular look of ancient mosaics. I wear a pair of safety glasses and do the cutting in a box to keep shards of glass from flying around. I also do this outside or in the garage so little shards of glass don't end up in our house. Once cut, I press the little tile pieces against the sticky side of the contact paper--face down, or "good side" down.  The sticky paper holds them in place.

When you're finished sticking all the tiles down, it's time to mix up some concrete. I used one part Portland cement to three parts builder's sand. I poured my concrete into the mold and used some chicken wire as reinforcement. I just cut the wire into a rough square that would fit in the mold, poured half the concrete, placed the wire in the mold, then finished the pour. 

Once cast, I put the stepping stone in a garbage bag to slow down the curing process. After a couple of days I carefully removed the mold. One advantage of this technique is that it's "self-grouting": the concrete should flow between the tiles during the pour. It worked well, but I will have to do a small amount of grouting to fix a few spots the concrete did not reach.  

You could also use this same reverse method to make designs that could be pressed into a mortar bed when tiling, say, a kitchen or bathroom.

For more garden mosaic ideas see a previous post we did on the subject that includes a link to the stunning pebble mosaic work of Jeffery Bale.

Cat Poop Compost Installment #2

Drum full o' cat litter

WARNING: Human waste and cat waste contain dangerous bacteria.  I fully believe that composting is a safe and sane solution to a waste stream problem--that's why I'm writing about it, after all-- I also know that it can be handled badly. (The stories we hear!) So please, read up on the subject before starting. You should have a solid foundation in regular compost to begin with, because all the basics apply. Take a good composting class or find a compost mentor. Read the Humanure Handbook. For complete safety, all cat/human waste compost should be allowed to sit for two years, and it should not be applied to food crops (but it can go around fruit trees).

***

Last year at the end of July I posted about our experimental cat litter composting solution in The Cat Poop Portal post. It's been a while since we reported in, and I've received some gentle pokes from readers, so this is an update.

Long story short, it's going slowly. At the time of the last post we'd installed a 50 gallon drum in our side yard. That drum filled up fast. We have two indoor cats now (I think we only had one when this started) and they are slinky little poo machines. Also, we were using pine pellets which require a complete change-out more often than clumping litters, so we managed to fill the drum in about four months. That was faster than I expected, and a little disappointing, but there are two ways to ease this problem.

1) Changing litter, so we use less. Most clumping litters are either clay-based, which is not good for compost, or have sketchy chemicals in them. We've recently found World's Best Cat Litter, which is a clumping litter made of corn. I called World's Best to make sure there was nothing added to the corn, and they promised me that there's nothing added to the standard formula--the magic is all in the way the corn is processed. So yes, we're supporting Big Corn...but what are you going to do? The stuff works really well and is compostable. Now that we're using it we'll reduce our overall litter waste volume.  (Of note: our friend John, a madman with six cats, swears by Swheat Scoop, which is wheat based. I don't find it works for me, but he blames my litter management skills. It's an alternative.)

2) We're offloading half-finished cat compost to My Big Fat Worm Bin. Regular readers (and Vermicomposting workshop participants) might remember that composting expert Nancy Klehm had us add a good amount of mature cat litter compost to the mix when we built up the bedding material for the worms. She said she wouldn't want to foist raw cat litter on the worms, but when it was well broken down they could handle it.

The drum has been, shall we say, resting productively over the winter. Today I went and dug it up to see how it was doing. As with any pile, the stuff on top was less finished--it looked pretty much like a cat box. It isn't stinky, though, as long as I make sure all the cat poo is buried.

Down lower the material was more broken down. It's an interesting rusty orange color. But I didn't get the sense of lots of activity going on. It was a cool pile, and it showed very little insect life. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The pile is decomposing, just on a long timeline. But at this rate of decomposition I suspected it would need at least another year of sitting to be fully broken down, and then it would need to rest even longer for safety. Compost made from carnivore and omnivore poop needs a two year cycle to allow the pathogens to die off.

Digging down all I see is decomposing red sawdust

Wanting to move it along faster, I did what I'd do for any compost pile that was a little pokey: I turned it, and added nitrogen and water.* Shoveling 50 gallons of kitty litter is exactly what I want to be doing on any given Saturday! As I shoveled, I decided that if I didn't already have Mad Kitty Disease, I'd have it by the end of the day. As if to confirm this, Trout sat in the bedroom window over the poo-bin, wearing a peculiar, self-satisfied expression while he watched me slave away over his waste. (Phoebe didn't join in, because she doesn't admit to creating waste at all.)

Okay, he doesn't look smug here because he's wondering what I'm doing with the camera. Prior to this I assure you he he looked very smug.

But back to business. For those of you who are new to composting, turning a pile stirs everything up, increasing bacterial activity, making the materials hotter. This speeds decomposition. There's much debate over whether to turn or not to turn and how often to turn, and I'm not going into any of that right now, except to say that humanure piles are not usually turned, and I'd hoped not to do so with this catmanure pile, either, but necessity drives.

Just like turning, adding a nitrogen source to the pile heats it up. All compost piles are a balance between carbon and nitrogen sources, aka "greens and browns." Too much carbon and your pile is cool and slow. Too much nitrogen and its slimy and stinky. But if you get the balance right, you end up with lovely compost.

In kitty litter composting, the litter is the carbon and the urine and poo deliver the nitrogen. Starting out on this path, I had no idea how the natural carbon to nitrogen ratio in a cat box would play out. Now it seems to me that the ratio is carbon heavy. Cat litter materials, such as compressed sawdust, are really dense carbon sources and need tons of nitrogen to balance them.

So my preliminary finding on this point is that it might be help to add extra nitrogen when you add a new layer of litter. Extra nitrogen could come in the form of green yard trimmings, veg scraps, urine, fresh horse manure, etc. Today, though, I decided to add alfalfa meal because we had some wasting away in the garage. Alfalfa meal is ground up alfalfa. It's used as a natural fertilizer and top dressing, and is high in nitrogen. Generally speaking, I think nitrogen should be free, but if you don't have a lot of scraps/trimmings/spare urine around, you could do worse than to have some alfalfa meal on hand to perk up your compost pile if it's gone carbon heavy.

Mixing in the alfalfa meal and water

When it was all done, I thought my pile looked a little more loved, and I think it's going to heat up nicely. I was able to move ten gallons of the more mature compost over to the worm bin, but the barrel is still pretty close to full.

Adding the kitty compost to the worm bin

For the near future we'll probably be able to send about half our litter to the barrel, and the other half will have to go to the landfill. Eventually we'll get rid of this big mass of pine litter, and I hope that by using the clumping litter will keep the bin from filling up quite so fast, and will somehow reach cat:compost equilibrium.




*To be clear, I added water because the pile was dryish, not because water in itself is a magic activator to be used in all circumstances. If a pile is too wet, I'd blend in dry stuff while turning. The goal is for the materials in the pile to be about as wet as a wrung out sponge.

Tree Care Disasters

Photo from Weeding Wild Suburbia

A fierce windstorm on the night of November 20 of last year left in its wake the evidence of years of negligent tree care in Southern California. A good arborist and crew cost money, and too many homeowners, landlords and municipalities go the cheap route and hire the first idiot with a chainsaw they can find.

A local blog I just discovered Weeding Wild Suburbia, has a nice summary of things you can do to prevent trees from falling down in the next storm. See her posts, Cleaning Up After the Storm, Tree Care Part 2, and Selecting and Planting Trees for Long Term Success.

One things I noticed after the storm were huge trees with shallow root systems that topled over. It's the result of combining trees and lawns--keeping the lawn green with frequent light waterings results in trees with shallow root systems. Yet another reason, if there weren't enough already, to ditch the lawn in a dry climate!

Extra bragging rights if you can name the problem in the picture above.

Thanks to Ari Kletzky for the link.

Heavy-duty disinfecting the non-toxic way with hydrogen peroxide and vinegar

Color-enhanced scanning electron micrograph showing Salmonella typhimurium (red) invading cultured human cells
Credit: Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID, NIH

The comments on yesterday's post indicated some general interest in strong disinfectants, and questions as to whether vinegar really was a good disinfectant. Vinegar is an acid and as such it does kill wee beasties, though not as many wee beasties as the nuclear options such as bleach or Lysol will. For everyday use, I think vinegar does a fine job. But I admit there are times, like when you're cleaning chicken juice off a cutting board, where you might want something stronger.

Here's a safe, super-strong way to disinfect. We covered it in The Urban Homestead, and it floats around the interwebs, too, so it may be review for some of you.

1) Take a bottle of hydrogen peroxide (3% solution, the kind you buy in the drugstore). Leave it in the  brown bottle it comes in because hydrogen peroxide is light sensitive. Screw a spray bottle nozzle onto the brown bottle.

2) Fill another spray bottle with undiluted white vinegar.

3) Mist the surface you wish to disinfect with one spray bottle first, and then the other, immediately after, like a one-two punch. Do not combine the two liquids in one bottle for the sake of efficiency. That doesn't work. It makes a new chemical altogether which is not effective for this. Keep them separate. Always apply in the form of mist.

This methodology was developed in the mid-90's by Susan Sumner a food scientist at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. She actually developed this technique to remove salmonella from the surface of meat and vegetables. Yes, it can be applied directly to the food! I gather you rinse it off after application. It is said not to leave lingering flavors, but I haven't tried it.

This combo works like gangbusters at killing salmonella. Nothing else works better. The magic is in the mix, somehow. As Sumner told Science News Online,

"If the acetic acid got rid of 100 organisms, the hydrogen peroxide would get rid of 10,000, and the two together would get rid of 100,000." 

This one-two punch spray is very effective at killing germs of all sorts wherever it meets them, not just on food, so you can use it in on your cutting boards, in the bathroom, in garbage cans...wherever you need the extra assurance. And it's so safe, it's edible.

So no more excuses for clinging to your bleach, people. Ditch the poison!

Ficus valentinius romantica

Photo by Root Simple. We're not saying who made the eyes.

A Parkway Passion

In the wake of a bad pruning, new love blossoms on the glittering streets of Los Angeles. Will our lovers be able to overcome the palm tree which stands between them? And what shocking secrets will the cactus reveal?

Clean your bathroom without resorting to Poison

We talk about non-toxic housecleaning in almost every lecture we do, and we cover it in both books, but I can't remember if we've talked about cleaning the bathroom on this blog. We did cover how to clean kitchen sink fairly recently, but I'm not sure what else we've done.  Of course, I know my regular Root Simple readers are so hardcore they could give me tips in this area, but I thought it would be good to cover non-toxic cleaning for new readers and folks crawling the interwebs for information.

It's a really, really important topic. There's no simpler way to remove toxins from your immediate environment than switching out your cleaning supplies. We call this "low hanging fruit." There's lots of things in this world that you may not like, but which you can't control. Housecleaning, however, is totally within your power to change. Cleaning this way also saves you money and cabinet space, reduces plastic waste and not least of all, protects our waters from chemical contamination.

Just say no to chemical warfare in your home.


It all starts with the Holy Trinity of Non Toxic Household Cleaning:

1. White vinegar*
2. Baking soda (sodium carbonate)
3. Liquid castile soap, such as Dr. Bronner's

Get yourself these things, some empty spray bottles and rags, and you're in business. You don't need anything else.

Prep:

Fill one spray bottle halfway full of white vinegar. Fill it the rest of the way with water. This is your all purpose wipe down spray, aka the 50/50 spray

Take another empty spray bottle and pour about a tablespoon of liquid soap into the bottom. Fill it up with water. This is called "soapy water."

Yep. This is why we make the big bucks.

That's it. You'll find other recipes which are more involved. Some people like to put a squirt of soap in their vinegar water. Sure, why not? Other people make rather elaborate concoctions of a little of this and a little of that. I've found that simple is best, because 1) I can't be bothered to do more and 2) I'm not sure any more elaboration is necessary.

Cleaning ain't rocket science, and it's not like I'm prepping my bathroom for surgery. Stuff just needs to be wiped down to remove dust and other surface dirt. Whatever I clean, however I clean it, will get dirty the next time it's used, so why all the struggle and germ phobia?

All cheap white vinegar is the same, but I like El Pato brand because of the duck on the label. Why doesn't El Pato make t-shirts?

The vinegar spray is great because it doesn't leave any residue behind (which soap does), shines up things fairly well, disinfects to some extent because it is an acid, and deodorizes as well. Yes, it smells like vinegar, but you get used to that. You begin to associate that smell with the idea of clean. The scent goes away when it dries, and it takes any lingering odors with it.

The bathroom sink

Work the right side, the left side is yet to be done. See the hard water deposits forming around the base of the faucet? That's on its way out.

The bathroom sink doesn't get nearly as dirty as the kitchen sink, at least not in our house. See my post on the kitchen sink* if you have a really grotty sink that needs bleaching. In the bathroom, all I do is spray down the sink with the vinegar/water spray. Generously. Regular use of it will help prevent hard water deposits from forming around the faucets. Spray and wipe. I find using a clean, dry rag gives the best polish to the sink.

If you already have hard water deposits around your faucets or elsewhere, apply full strength vinegar to that area. If it runs off (depends on how your sink is shaped) try soaking rags or paper towels with vinegar and lay those over the deposits. Let the vinegar work its magic for a half hour or so and come back. You should be able to scrub off the deposits now. If you still have trouble, trying applying the vinegar hot.

To clean scummy build-up out of the sink, follow your vinegar wipe-down with a generous sprinkle of baking soda. Scrub with a damp cloth or a nylon sponge. Rinse.

Bathtub/Shower

The advancing line of clean

Here I prefer to use soapy water spray instead of the vinegar spray, though you could try the vinegar. I find that soapy water cuts through soap-scum build up quite well, perhaps because like dissolves like?
To clean our clawfoot tub, what I always do first is spray the whole interior with soapy water, then sprinkle over that a generous coating of baking soda, focusing on the spots that look grungy. I scrub these areas first, using an old nylon net bath puff, which is my favorite tub cleaning tool. A nylon sponge or a rag would work fine, too, though. The secret here is to use not so much soapy water--just enough to wet the surface, not enough to puddle. The baking soda should be just damp when you're scrubbing with it. If it's too wet, it's not effective.

After I scrub the scummy parts, I wipe down the whole tub and rinse.

Note: I have no proof, but I do believe that big brand soaps (and their knockoffs) make more soap scum than natural soaps, and that scum is harder to remove than what's left behind by natural soaps. They are definitely not good for your skin. When you switch your cleaning products over, switch over your bar soap to a nice, natural soap. Maybe something from the farmers' market, or maybe even something you make yourself. Or yes, the ubiquitous Dr. Bronner's is fine, too.

Toilet

Plunging the bowl to reduce water level. Cat heads are not recommended for plunging, as they are not bristly enough.

First thing I do is start scrubbing the bowl with the toilet brush, just using the bowl water. It's amazing how much plain water and a scrub brush can do. I plunge as I scrub, with the goal of lowering the level of the water in the bowl down to a minimum. If you can't make this happen by scrubbing & plunging, then pour a bucket of water in the bowl--that will lower the water level, too.

That first scrub takes care of a lot of the basic build up. Next, soak the bottom of the bowl in straight vinegar to remove stains and the-lord-knows-what that collects down there. Take that big cheap gallon jug of vinegar and refill the bowl to the usual water line with a couple of cups of vinegar. I like to pour the vinegar all around the sides of bowl to give those surfaces a good antiseptic dousing. Then let the vinegar sit at the bottom of the bowl for about a half hour. When you come back, give a final swish and flush.

While the vinegar is doing its work in the bowl, spray the entire toilet from top to bottom--back, lid, seat, base-- with the 50/50 vinegar water, and then wipe it down with a rag. This is plenty sufficient to clean those parts, and if you have a seat/lid that shows water spots (like ours, because it's black) just be sure to wipe those parts dry and you'll have no spots.

If you have rust stains under the rim, pure vinegar (how did you guess I'd say that?) will help. Soak paper towels or rags in vinegar and plaster them under the rim and leave them as long as you can. When you come back, you should be able to scrub those stains away. Lemon juice would also work well.

Vinegar soaked rags under the rim, working on the rust stains. Apologies for the terrible picture!

Mirror

Because I'm way too lazy to make up a different formula or even pick up a different spray bottle, I use the 50/50 vinegar spray on the bathroom mirror. Spray on, buff off with a dry cloth. Works fine. Same goes for our mystery metal Ikea garbage can.

(Amendment as per Donna's comment below: I should say that you can clean your mirrors with water alone. Donna also recommends newspaper for polishing, which is a fine technique. All in all, you just need to get windows or mirrors slightly wet, then polish them with whatever you have on hand that is clean and dry. I use the vinegar spray because it is a handy moisture delivery device.)

Floor

Again, all you need is vinegar--about a half cup in a bucket of hot water, or more like a full cup for a big bucket or a dirtier job. Mop. No rinsing required. I use this on tile, linoleum, vinyl flooring and even, with a barely damp mop, wood floors.

If I'm in an expansive mood I'll add a few drops of essential oil to the bucket so I can Sniff n' Mop.



* Warning Regarding Vinegar: Vinegar is apparently not recommended for use on stone surfaces--like granite countertops or stone composite floors. I don't have any personal experience with these surfaces, but I've read that this is so. Vinegar is a mild acid (5%), and acid can etch stone. It's hard to imagine vinegar etching stone, especially when diluted, but it's best to be cautious. The effects might build up over time. As always, ask the manufacturer of the stone surface, if you can.

* I just realized that I posted that "how to clean your sink" post exactly one year ago to the day. Something about Feb. 13th makes me think about cleaning, apparently. Must be my romantic nature.

Phoebe, the implacable bathroom supervisor, says "Scrub, you lazy swab! Damn your eyes!"

Foraging Walk in Los Angeles on February 25th

Our friend Nancy is back in town and offering this class. 

Heads up, you Westsidahz! It's in Culver City.

RSVP required.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Join radical ecologist Nance Klehm for :::
MEDICINAL EDIBLES WALK + FORAGE

Saturday, Feb 25th 11am-1pm Baldwin Park Scenic Overlook, Culver City

*meet at park entrance, by the sign, Jefferson and Hetzler, http://g.co/maps/vf2j5

This unique forage will be a two hour informally guided walk through the spontaneous and cultivated vegetation of our urbanscape. Along the walk, we will learn to identify plants and hear their botanical histories, stories of their cultural usages, animal usages, and human usages. Come share in the experiential, medicinal, magical, and uber-local properties of Los Angeles's native plants. 

$20/person: maximum 25 people/urbanforage so secure your spot now!

To register: $10 to paypal account: nettlesting@yahoo.com

Picture Sundays: Feral Chard

A two year old Swiss chard plant that never gets any water. It's growing in a bed I'm not using right now. It's huge, insect free, and growing better than the vegetables I pay attention to.

Saturday's Quote: Farmers, the Sexiest Men and Women Alive

Photo from the Library of Congress

"When the next batch of huricanes hits and the oil wells run dry, whom do you want to wake up next to?  Someone who can program HTML or someone who can help a cow give birth?  Do you want someone with Bluetooth or someone with a tractor?  How can someone who makes food out of dirt not impress you?"

-Lou Bendrick

Reasons and Resources for Growing Your Own Grains at Home

The world's smallest patch of Sonora wheat

Reasons to grow grain
Why grow some of your own grain? I can think of a bunch of reasons:

• You can plant unusual varieties
• The large amount of biomass for your compost pile
• Forage for livestock
• Easy to grow and maintain
• Part of a rotational strategy for maintaining healthy, disease free soil
• Know that your grain is not contaminated with pesticides

How to grow grain 
Growing grain is pretty much the same as growing a lawn (most grains are grasses, after all). The main problem, as with a lawn, is dealing with weeds. I can weed by hand the ridiculously small Sonora wheat patch I planted in January. When dealing with a bigger piece of land, the traditional, organic approach is to grow some sort of weed choking, nitrogen fixing plant such as cowpeas the season before planting grain. In Southern California, wheat is planted in January, as far as I can tell. In most other places it is planted in the fall.

Resources
I looked through a couple of books for growing grain at home and the best I could find is Small-Scale Grain Raising: An Organic Guide to Growing, Processing, and Using Nutritious Whole Grains, for Home Gardeners and Local Farmers by Gene Logsdon, originally published in 1977 but recently updated and re-released. Logsdon covers the full spectrum of grains as well as legumes. Included are instructions for harvesting, threshing and winnowing by hand. Logsdon is an entertaining and engaging writer who calls small backyard grain fields "pancake patches". My pancake patch will probably yield exactly one pancake, but I'm looking forward to the result. Logsdon was my guide.

How to winnow and thresh by hand
At a Grow Biointensive workshop in Willits last year they taught us how to thresh and winnow wheat with just hardware cloth and an electric fan:

Using your feet you rub the seed heads against a piece of 1/2 inch hardware cloth attached to a board. You then lift off the hardware cloth and sweep the grain into a kitchen trash can.

Then you dump the grain in front of a fan to separate the wheat from the chaff. Several passes are necessary.

An optional last step is to pass the grain through special seed cleaning screens. It works great, but the screens are expensive.The alternative is more passes in front of the fan. I've done this process with flax and it worked just fine.

If you've grown grain tell us how it went by leaving a comment!

On Monday the final post of Root Simple's grain week in which we will tackle why eating grains and other carbohydrates are so unpopular in the past decade.

Support AB 1616 To Make Bake Sales Legal in California

Photo from ebcaswaps.blogspot.com

From Mark Stambler of the Los Angeles Bread Bakers:

AB1616, the California Homemade Food Act, was introduced in the California State Assembly today by Assemblyman Mike Gatto (D-Los Angeles). This cottage food law will finally allow people in California to legally sell bread [and other "non-hazardous" food such as honey, jams and jellies] they bake at home!

The Los Angeles Bread Bakers helped draft the legislation and will be organizing community support for it over the next few months. If all goes well, the bill will be signed into law by the governor by the end of the summer. But, of course, it will take a lot of work to make sure this happens, including visits to elected representatives.

For those of you who need more info about it, please visit cottagefood.org.

Many states have cottage food bills already (see a pdf of those states and the laws they have on the books). Those that don't need one! In California, AB 1616 will help many people with home-based businesses in a time of economic uncertainty. Please consider making a donation to the Sustainable Economies Law Center to help pass AB 1616. See cottagefood.org for details of the bill and for a complete list of the foods that are covered under the legislation.

Cooking With Heritage Grains: Sonora Wheat Pasta

Once you start working with heritage grain varieties it's hard to go back to the few choices in the flour aisle we have at most supermarkets. I managed to get my hands on some Sonora wheat a few months back and have been experimenting with it ever since. Traditionally used for tortillas, it's also great for pancakes and bread. Yesterday I made pasta with Sonora wheat using a recipe by Whole Grain Connection founder Monica Spiller. You can find the recipe and others on sustainablegrains.org.

To make this eggless pasta, all you do is combine heated water, Sonora wheat and salt and run it through a pasta maker. The result? A pasta with a pleasing nutty flavor and a beautiful light brown color.

Rules for Eating Wheat

Antebellum-Style Graham Wheat Flour from the Anson Mills website

Much of the bad press surrounding wheat in recent years is well deserved. Wheat and grain allergies may be some of the most common allergies known to medicine. I strongly suspect that the cause for these allergies may be in the types of wheat we're growing.

Let's start with some history. Humans have eaten and tinkered with grain genetics for at least 30,000 years, well before the development of what we now call "agriculture".  But with each change in wheat genetics came new, unexpected outcomes. Those changes greatly accelerated in the last one hundred and fifty years.

• In the 19th century farmers moved away from growing soft wheat varieties and shifted to hard wheat, which performs better in mechanized roller mills. 

• In the mid 20th century Norman Borlaug launched the green revolution by developing new wheat varieties.

• And now, Monsanto and Bill Gates are anxious to bring us genetically modified wheat. 

The problem? When you make radical changes to a complex system such as wheat genetics you risk unforeseen consequences, what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls "black swans". The unforeseen consequences may be the large percentage of the population with wheat allergies. I'll admit that this is a hunch of mine not based on any peer reviewed study. But scientists have identified at least 27 potential allergens in modern wheat and researchers are looking at simpler forms of ancient wheat such as Einkorn to see if they have fewer allergens.

So what can we do to prevent wheat based black swans? I think we need a wheat equivalent of Michael Pollan's food rules, so here it goes:

• Acknowledge our ignorance in the face of the great complexity of nature. Thus, we should be conservative when it comes to plant breeding. Saving seed and developing local varieties are a good thing. Genetic modification is probably a huge risk. 

• Breed wheat for flavor and disease resistance not shipability and ease of mechanical harvesting.

• Our markets should have at least as many flour varieties as flavors of soda.

• We should be willing to pay a little more for a higher quality flour.

• Eat whole grains rather than refined grains whenever possible. The nutrients and substances we remove from whole grains to make refined white flour may contain substances that prevent allergic reactions.

• Support local farmers who are growing older forms of grain (soft wheat such as Sonora and ancient wheat such as Einkorn). If you can't find something local, mail order your flour. 

• Consider growing grain at home as part of a rotational strategy in your garden. See Lawns to Loaves for inspiration.

One source for interesting flour by mail order:

Anson Mills

If any of you know of other sources for heritage flours (either brick and mortar or mail order) please leave a comment.

Is Modern Wheat Killing Us?

Wheat field, Froid, Montana, 1941. (Library of Congress image)

It's been a bad decade for grains. Between publicity about grain allergies and fads such as the Atkins and paleo diets, a lot of people are shunning wheat, rye and barley. At a panel discussion this weekend sponsored by Common Grains I heard Monica Spiller of the Whole Grain Connection and Glenn Roberts of Anson Mills make some compelling arguments that will forever change the way I see grain. It was, no exaggeration here, a paradigm shifting discussion. Some of the questions Spiller and Roberts raised:

• Could modern hard wheat varieties, bred for the convenience of industrial agriculture, have the unintended consequence of increasing allergic reactions? Are older varieties healthier for us?

• What have we lost in terms of flavor when we decreased the diversity of grain varieties?

• Is sourdough bread a pro-biotic food? Could some of the allergy problems associated with bread be related to commercial yeast strains and the way commercial yeast processes sugar?

I'll spend the rest of this week taking a deeper look at these issues, including some practical suggestions about what we can do in our kitchens and gardens to bring back heritage grains.

Easy To Make Furniture: Sunset DIY Manual From the 1970s

PVC pipe and an avocado colored cushion? Instant outdoor furniture, or so this campy 1970s furniture manual, Easy-to-Make Furniture,from the editors of Sunset Magazine, would have you believe.

While I think DIY furniture books from this period are somewhat horrifying, I have a respect for their can-do attitude in the face of the era's declining wood shop skills. Then, WHAM, the global economy and Ikea came along and wiped out the last remaining economic reasons to try to make your own furniture.

That being said, I think some clever folks with time on their hands and an eye for discarded materials could make use of some of the concepts in this book.

So start dumpster diving! Let's take those scavenged materials and revisit the bean bag. Easy-to-Make furniture has its own unique twist on the concept. Say hello to the "Multiposition Tube Seat":

And yes you can have a particle board chair:

 

With a built-in magazine rack:

Scope out this book in its entirety here.