A Bridge to Nature: Barreau & Charbonnet's "Volet Vegetal" Urban Gardening Concept. Posted by Ray | 27 Aug 2012 | Comments (3) All images courtesy of Barreau & Carbonnet; 'gif' it a second to load We're always curious to see new developments in urban gardening trend as it grows parallel to broader interest in sustainable foodways, from reclaimed spaces to apartment-friendly planters to conceptual experiments. French designers Nicolas Barreau and Jules Charbonnet, based in Paris and Nantes respectively, recently created an innovative urban gardening apparatus that lies at the intersection of all three.
Earlier this summer, their eponymous design studio presented "Volet Végétal" at the Jardin des Tuileries as a finalist in the Jardins Jardin design contest. The window-mounted chassis, which holds three planters, is operated via pulley, as a sort of drawbridge outfitted with houseplants and herbs: It looks like the "Volet Végétal" might include 'feet' so that it can be removed from the window as a freestanding, tiered planter. Hat-tip to Sarah. Spread the love: heart pattern friendship bracelets | la manufacture. Growing up, I spent countless hours making colorful friendship bracelets. Their resurgence prompted me to rediscover this summer pastime. Here are instructions for one of my favorite patterns – hearts! You will need embroidery thread in two colors. Measure the thread using twice the length of your arm (from your fingertips to your shoulder and then back to your fingertips) for each string.
Cut it. Do this two times for each color, fold them in half and knot them to form a loop. The basics: Hold the second string with your left hand as you use your right hand to take the first string over and then under the second string. Hold the seventh string with your right hand as you use your left hand to take the eighth string over and then under the seventh string. The pattern: 1: Lay your strings out as shown. 2: Make your first row by following the instructions for making a row of knots going right and then left. 3: Make a second row of knots in the same way, this time with the second color.
How to Turn a Pallet into a Garden. Good news and bad news. I had planned to film a short video showing you how to make a pallet garden, but the weather didn’t cooperate. I was stapling the landscape fabric onto the pallet when it started drizzling and got really windy. That’s the bad news. But I know I promised a tutorial today, so I took photos and have kept my word to share how to make the pallet garden. I tried to be as detailed as possible. That’s the good news. So keep reading my pallet loving friends, instructions on how to make your own pallet garden are just a few lines away… Find a Pallet The first thing you need to do is–obviously–find a pallet.
Don’t just take the first pallet you find. Collect Your Supplies Get Your Pallet into Shape Once you’ve dragged your pallet home, give it a once over. Let the Stapling Begin! Decide which side of the pallet will be the bottom when the pallet garden is completed and leaning against the wall. Lay the pallet face down. Now for the sides. Now for the Fun Part–Planting! Build Your Own $20 Outdoor Cob Oven | Outdoor Pizza Oven | Cob Ovens. (The following entry is all about making a cob oven, a lovely and inexpensive outdoor pizza oven. The construction details have been trimmed back a bit, but this article should still give you a full idea of necessary materials and the building process for making your own oven!) I must admit, I’m a bit of a breadhead. Few things are as exciting to me as freshly baked bread with a dab of butter, or hot and greasy scallion pancakes, or fluffy and airy naan, or a pizza fresh from the hearth of a wood-fired oven.
(That last one trumps all the others.) Earlier in the year, the idea of baking in the outdoors in a wood fired oven became something of a romanticized (in every positive sense of the word) notion to me. So I picked up a copy of Kiko Denzer’s Build Your Own Earth Oven, a little gem of a book covering the construction of cob ovens from the ground up. The Foundation The Fire Brick Oven Hearth (Laying out the beer bottles, and later, filling in with sawdust/clay mortar) Sizing the Cob Oven. Shaping Traditional Oral knowledge: Humidity of Fruit Vegetables. Why Pallets Are Great for DIYing (When You Pick Out the Right Ones) The Easiest Indoor Plants That Won't Die On You.
Don't let anyone fool you — indoor gardening is just as fun as having an outdoor garden. In fact, indoor plants not only help clean the environment around them, but they act as a quick decorating tool. We found 15 hardy indoor house plants that anyone can keep alive and thriving. If you've got kids or pets, do note before you buy: some may be toxic. Check out expert tips on how to keep fresh cut flowers fresh. Pothos C.O.T/a.collectionRF/amana images/Getty Images Why you want it: First of all, this indoor plant has an air-purifying quality that can absorb and strip toxins like formaldehyde from materials in the home like carpet.
How to care for it: This indoor house plant can produce stems that trail eight feet or longer, so just cut them back when they get too long and your plant will continue to look full and healthy. Aloe Jeremy Hopley/Dorling Kindersley/Getty Images How to care for it: Aloe likes room temperatures around 70 degrees and a lot of sunlight. Spider Plant English Ivy Jade Plant. Saving Food From The Fridge: It Will Taste Better, May Even Last Longer And Reduce Your Energy Bills. © jihyun ryou Fridges are a recent invention; for thousands of years, people lived without them, but had many low-tech ways of making food last. Today most fridges are filled with stuff that would last just as long and probably would taste a lot better if it was never lost in the back of the fridge. They are expensive air conditioned parking lots for what Shay Salomon called "compost and condiments. " Some are looking at alternatives to such an expensive and wasteful model. Kris De Decker of No Tech Magazine "refuses to assume that every problem has a high-tech solution," and shows the work of Korean designer Jihyun Ryou, who says "we hand over the responsibility of taking care of food to the technology, the refrigerator.
We don’t observe the food any more and we don’t understand how to treat it. " © Jihyun Ryou Here is an interesting and complicated example. Apples emit a lot of ethylene gas. . © Jihyun Ryou The designer writes about the Verticality of Root Vegetables: © Jihyun Ryou. Practical Ways to Store Food without a Fridge | The Lazy Homesteader. Over the last couple of weeks there has been an article from treehugger.com floating around Facebook, Reddit, and Pinterest highlighting Korean designer, Jihyun Ryou’s five creative ways to store food without a fridge. The designer’s goal was “re-introducing and re-evaluating traditional oral knowledge of food, which is closer to nature,” by using objects to make this knowledge visible.
The designs are super modern looking with clean lines and things like sand and water mounted to your wall. And, I have to admit, they do look cool, despite being kind of impractical. In light of their impracticality, and because we’ve lived without a fridge for the last 9 months, I’m offering up some practical answers to Ryou’s modern artworks; while less artistic, everyday homesteaders can apply them to their own kitchens. Symbiosis of apple and potato: Most fruits don’t need to be stored in the refrigerator. The taste of tomatoes will rapidly deteriorate in the fridge. Verticality of Root Vegetables: