Selfsufficientish.com

In our area we have an email list called "Freecycle" We built five large raised beds (too large really should have only gone 4 feet wide) all from recycled wood and got freecycled straw after Fall decorating season ended to mulch the paths! Amazing how many people bought straw bales and pu...

Lady Willow, I for one, would love to see your Black Pepper Tofu recipe. Somewhere around here I have one for DIY tofu I want to try. We got it from the Hodo Tofu guy at Makers Faire.

If I could get my er "stuff" together I could be magnificent

DeneciePie

Well, I turned here in hopes one of you would know how to cure olives. My little tree doesn't produce many so I have pierced them with a blunt fork and popped them into brine in a quart jar. My internet info says to change brine weekly. We'll see. We have a lot of olive trees in the neighborhood and...

We opted for the Warre hive and got our first bees April 10. About 6 weeks later they swarmed and DH caught them and we put them into our second Warre hive. 19 days later...you guessed it...swarmed again, this time disappearing over the back fence. We would have pursued and corralled those bees but ...

I see, so by planting in October I dwarfed the poor things. OK try try again. Next time up, plant very early Spring and probably transplant into one of our less sunny beds. It was 93F today and only getting warmer. Hopefully shade and lots of mulch and water will get them thru our summer scorching t...

Oh boy, did your post ever bring back memories! Believe it or not, you will someday look back and feel a twinge of loss for these days of tiny tots and their foibles. Not that it isnt exhausting now. If worst comes to worst, put up some wire mesh to prevent window tragedies and just get on with life...

Hi All, I am hoping not to sound too foolish here, but I am growing leeks for the first time. Here in California we usually plant onions from seed in late Summer or early Fall and harvest early Summer the next year before it gets too hot. I didn't get them thinned out like I should have so they are ...

We are having some success using Diatomaceous Earth. Prior to that we were just setting a buffet for the slimy little things! I have heard of using little beer tubs, but we seem to have a crop of tee-totalling slugs. My sympathies. I have been told that it becomes less of a problem over time as the ...

I have no personal experience with it but just read an article at the Dave's Garden website about it. ( davesgarden.com) It sounds like much more of a sure thing than the way we have been trying in the garden. We are in California so don't get flatworm but I think we have grown enough giant garden r...

On a related note; you can download a program like "diskdigger" for free and look for the rest of your novel. I accidently reformatted a USB drive with ten years of digital photos and that little program found them when "they' (the experts) said they were gone. The labelling was not i...

I had the same problem this year . Plants over eight feet tall and no fruit...UNTIL we slacked off watering in the Fall. Try letting them get dry between waterings. We had a pretty hard frost the first week of December or we'd finally be getting lots of toms now. Stupid plants were covered in green ...

59. A rainy winter here in California. 60. An end to the H1N1 flu. 61. An overwhelming plague of Ishness worldwide. 62. Bareroot fruit trees in just the right varieties for our tiny orchard. 63. Politicians to come to their senses worldwide. DeneciePie :santa:

Save your sisters from the giant parsnip, or failing that, at least save the video camera . Rugged ran out to whack the parsnip with the shovel and was taken unawares by...

I started out with straight lines in our raised beds last season but found things did better planted in 'patches'. If carrots are to be thinned to 3" and a foot between rows I just did a foot wide band of thinly sown seeds. For one example. Also mixed flowers in here and there. By Fall it was a...

I would be sure to do three things: 1. Absolutely sterilize the holy hockeysticks out of the jars. 2. Pour the preserves straight in so there is no food "drooling" down the inside of the jar. 3. Add 1/8 inch of melted parrafin. Let cool. Add a second thin layer and swirl it up the glass a ...