Category: unusual techniques
Posted on February 7, 2020
by John Jeavons
6 Comments
It’s winter here in the northern hemisphere, and farmers and gardeners everywhere are dreaming and planning about what to plant in the spring and summer! While all gardens have their challenges, those who grow food and flowers in warm and/or arid climates need a… Continue Reading “What to Read Now: Warm Climate Gardening”
Category: about farming, books, crops, farming, farming/gardening, fruits, GROW THE EARTH, interesting practices, plants, practical guides, sustainability, sustainable practices, unusual techniques, vegetables, warm climate, water conservation, water conservationTags: arid, Barbara Pleasant, book, dry, gardening, how-to, humid, warm climate, warm climate gardening
Posted on November 23, 2019
by John Jeavons
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Sometimes it’s easy to forget that everything we buy or grow to eat now was once a wild species. Our ancestors have done the bulk of the work identifying and domesticating the foods we now take for granted in our gardens and stores. But… Continue Reading “Foraged Flavor: Finding Our Culinary Roots in Wild Food”
Category: books, farming/gardening, foraged foods, foraging, foraging for wild plants, GROW THE EARTH, harvesting, inspiration, interesting practices, My favorite things, native plant, native plants, plants, practical guides, unusual techniquesTags: cooking, edible plants, foraged flavor, foraging, harvesting, recipes, sustainable, Tama Matsuoka Wong, wild food
Posted on June 17, 2019
by John Jeavons
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As a farmer and a researcher, I am constantly reminded that agriculturalists from earlier times are often the best teachers. Experiments with Plants (6th ed.) written in 1911 by Harvard Associate Professor of Botany Dr. W.J. V Osterhout, is a good example of this… Continue Reading “Maybe Read This: Experiments with Plants, 6th Edition”
Category: about crops, books, crops, farming/gardening, GROW THE EARTH, interesting practices, plants, plants and seeds, practical guides, unusual techniquesTags: Botany, Experiments with plants, Osterhout
Posted on May 28, 2019
by John Jeavons
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Or: How to feed an extra person and still save over 5,000 gallons per year. It may be a little late in the season for this post (at least in this hemisphere), but we just had a series of storms that would feel right… Continue Reading “Save Water! Use Seedling Flats!”
Category: Biointensive, farming/gardening, GROW THE EARTH, my writing, plant health, plants, pricking out/transplanting, roots and vigor, seedling flats, sustainability, sustainable practices, Transplanting, water conservation, water conservationTags: Biointensive, seedling flats, sustainable, transplanting, Water Conservation
Posted on April 15, 2019
by John Jeavons
6 Comments
Spring has sprung, and it’s time to get your seedlings in gear for a productive year! In keeping with the season, I thought that this would be a good time to discuss the benefits of pricking out your seedlings before you transplant them. Many… Continue Reading ““Pricking Out”: Greatly Increase Plant Health and Yields by Transferring Seedlings from Flat to Flat Before Final Transplanting”
Category: Biointensive, farming/gardening, GROW THE EARTH, nutrition, plant health, Pricking Out, pricking out/transplanting, roots and vigor, sustainability, sustainable practices, Transplanting, unusual techniquesTags: Biointensive, crops, farming, gardening, GROW BIOINTENSIVE, nutrition, plant health, pricking out, roots, transplanting, yields
Posted on March 25, 2019
by John Jeavons
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Sustainability isn’t a new concept. For almost 50 years I have worked to create a form of agriculture that helps all people grow abundant nutritious food and fertile soil, in harmony with this beautiful earth. I know that I have been helped and… Continue Reading “Old Ways, New Farmers: How Native Wisdom Can Help Us Create a Better Future”
Category: about crops, arid climate, books, ethnobotany, farming/gardening, GROW THE EARTH, history, history of agriculture, interesting practices, medicinal plants, My favorite things, Native American, Native American practices, native plant, native plants, plants, sustainability, unusual techniquesTags: Akta Lakota, Daniel Moerman, ethnobotany, first people, Handbook of Indian Foods and Fibers of Arid America, hopi, Medicinal plants, Native American Medicinal Plants—An Ethnobotanical Dictionary:, Native peoples, north america, The Hopi Survival Kit, Thomas Mails, tribes
Posted on March 18, 2019
by John Jeavons
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These days, everyone seems to have a slow cooker to make life easier. But guess what? There’s a simpler, less expensive alternative that’s been helping rural people cook food and conserve fuel for at least 200 years! According to Wikipedia, a haybox is a… Continue Reading “Haybox: The 18th Century Slow Cooker”
Category: books, cook stoves, cookstoves, energy conservation, farming/gardening, GROW THE EARTH, interesting practices, practical guides, sustainability, sustainable practices, unusual techniquesTags: cooking, Eleanour Sinclair Bohde, energy, energy conservation, haybox cookery, thermal cooker
Posted on January 30, 2019
by John Jeavons
4 Comments
Each year around this time, following months of freezing cold and heavy rain, Northern California experiences a “false spring” – the sun shines, the temperature is balmy and pleasant, and the grey and wintry landscape is suddenly covered in a bright green veil as… Continue Reading “Gardening is About Living Things!”
Category: biodynamic, biodynamic, books, farming/gardening, GROW THE EARTH, interesting practices, nutrition, philosophy, plant health, soil, sustainability, unusual techniquesTags: biodynamic, gardening, Gardening for Health and Nutrition, health, herbicides, nutrition, pesticides, Philbrick, philosophy, weeds
Posted on November 22, 2018
by John Jeavons
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A thanksgiving tradition at dinner tables across the country is to ask each person “What are you thankful for?” It’s an interesting question, because it is so vitally linked with the other fundamental questions we all ask ourselves in one way or another: What… Continue Reading “Quantum Level Transformation”
Posted on October 7, 2018
by John Jeavons
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With winter approaching, people in rural areas of the developed world are thinking about heating and cooking. And firewood. And stoves. Around the globe, in the developing world, it isn’t a seasonal thought – it’s a daily thought. “More than half of the world’s… Continue Reading “Cookstoves and Coppicing”
Category: cook stoves, cookstoves, coppicing, coppicing/pollarding, Ecology Action, GROW THE EARTH, interesting practices, practical guides, publications, sustainability, sustainable practices, unusual techniques, videosTags: Aprovecho, cookstoves, coppice, coppicing, Ecology Action, efficient, firewood, lorena, PCIA, rocket stove, sustainability, test results
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