Seedbombs

Mycoremediation of Weapons: Shrooms that Eat Explosives?

2008-05-16T16:39:00.000-07:00

Hell yeah. Via Subtopia, one of the most interesting blogs I found this year:

"Basically, Robert Triggs patented some little mushies that like to eat bombs for breakfast. I call it a kind of fungoidal bomb-hacking, or harvesting an atomic landscape metabolism with a secret empire of nuke-hungry shrooms. A different type of seeding for the apocalypse.

Anyway, perhaps this defusing technique should apply to bombing ranges and test sites, too, or other spoilt landscapes where regular blasts pummel the earth, or hold vast swaths of it hostage.

I mean, until we figure out a wholly new approach to managing weapons and their waste, in the mean time we could be, instead, producing this stuff more responsibly. Like self-destructing landmines, self-cannibalizing bombshells, or auto-bioremediating warheads. Green grenades. It may sound ridiculous, but at the very least, environmental-friendly ordnance that cleans up after itself."

ALSO EXCELLENT AND RELEVANT: "Where Truces and Cease-Fires Grow on Trees"

Tree Wishes

2008-04-30T08:54:00.000-07:00

I found the Forestry Library Databases, today, and I wanted to post it for people who were interested in urban forestry topics. It looks pretty nice. The list of topics is impressive, including histories, plans, and statistical information. You can order books and documents through interlibrary loan or you can buy hard or electronic copies from them.

In the same vein but with more flash and less inventory is TreeLink.
From the site:

Trees are a key indicator species of a healthy urban environment, but most communities are struggling to keep up with growth and essential services, and lack funds for trees. So we (TreeLink) use technology to help. Our goal is longterm impact in cities and towns, where the great majority of people live.

You can do a state-by-state search to find community tree details (treetails?) in your area.

I like trees.

BookMooch Plug

2008-04-15T20:57:00.000-07:00

Firstly, if you aren't on this site, yet, I think you should stop wasting time. It's a good thing. If you want to understand and take advantage of the following, you will have to do it.

BookMooch got involved with some authors and Eco-Libris for a cross-promotional deal for Earth Day. For each day until that special trashpicking extravaganza, a different author (rather, their publishers) will offer five copies of one of their books to the site's community. In summary, five moochers will have made available to them a free book every day for the next week. Today's title was a trendy little children's book about Santa coming to terms with global warming.

Yeah. I don't know what to think of it, either. But, hey, free book.

Also, I was looking over the Africa reforestation post by Justin and it suddenly reminded me of Afrigadget, which I learned about almost a year ago but I figured would have been BoingBoing'ed to death by now, like a Steampunk Warren Ellis robot, so I was hesitant to give this blog's few, faithful readers sloppy seconds. Now, I see those wily third-world-watchers have gotten a sharper image and were picked up by the BBC for some PRI broadcasts, last month. I have got to pay more attention. Afrigadget is really one of the more inspiring things on the Internet. When DIY isn't just a fashionable hobby, when it's a way of life, that gets my attention. A lot of these people are poorer than me by a nearly immeasurable factor and yet they seem to revel in their survival instincts, making heavy use of those first and best heirloom technologies, their hands and feet.

The soil is warm and I have a fridge full of seeds. I'm even starting to see some moss. Stay with me, here. I might have something to show you.

Weeded-out

2008-04-11T13:40:00.000-07:00

Plants used to stop graffiti artists.

Huh.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing for GG? It seems like it's just using one tag against another.

The Tammany Hall bosses should be so lucky.

Food Library

2008-04-01T07:30:00.000-07:00

As I was reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I paused on the chapter about Spring planting and seed heritage. It got me thinking that if what large corporate entities like Monsanto want is to literally own life-forms and monopolize evolution, then someone who uses any effectively public domain heirloom seeds as a means of bypassing their control is technically a socialist-anarchist. Your stash of last season's Amish pie squash is like a copy of the Little Red Book, in terms of how it is viewed by established agro-industries. The more varieties you have, the more dangerous you are, you see.

I went looking for heirloom seed suppliers on the Internets and I was amazed at how many I found. I honestly expected to find just a few but it has apparently turned into quite a cottage industry. I don't know how many are really just subsidiary fronts for Big Bad (except Seeds of Change, which M&M's/Mars bought out several years ago) but, really, stolen genes taste just as good as bought genes, if not just a little sweeter. For you purists, I found this, a forum thread which trails on for a bit but hosts some interesting links for the high-wire acrobatics stunt that is green consumerism.

The granddaddy of them all is Seed Savers Exchange. I remember first hearing about them in a David Suzuki special for public television. They seem legit and their catalog is like some bizarre cross of the X-Men comics and gardening. Some of those fruits are just fucking strange, like the peppers. And I always thought huckleberries were a myth created to generate awe and appreciation of the wild, like werewolves and sustainable investment.

Heritage Harvest Seed is a smaller operation than SoC or SSE but it still offers some beautiful varieties of beans and cabbages. I wish they had more pictures, though. I'm gonna git you, Zucca.

Hell, here's the list I'm using. I could just keep sticking up links for a while but I'm not here to be a switchboard operator. And I realize that this tacit endorsement of buying seeds does seem to contradict another post I did, earlier. That's very true. I'm not going to resolve it, either. The point is, even if you have no intention of or ability to feed yourself by growing things, you can still engage in the genetic equivalent of rescuing the library of Alexandria by growing these lovely, antique plants for the simple sake of keeping them alive. Even if they aren't tasty or nice-looking, every one of them that makes it to fruition is another chance that life will somehow survive the serious beating that techno-capitalism is administering to the world.

Hello - Worms

2008-03-30T05:33:00.000-07:00

Hi.
I'm new here.
My name is Peter.
About myself?
I'm Big.
I charge into this wall.
Leave my impression.
I turn and charge into another.
Again my impression.
I rest.
Got to find a way out.
Got to make sense of it all.

I'm a middle class socialist who longs for classlessness.
A university professor who can see through the layers of BS.
Slightly out of step.
The only view that makes sense is astronomical,
when atoms no longer interact.
The local view only confuses me.
How can we live without regard
to the soil,
to the water,
to the air,
to our planet?
How can we live without regard to each other?

I have some ideas to share and I hope to do that here.
They're not great, but down-to-earth tidbits.
I hope to give and to take, to vent and to dream.

But no more of this.

Let me first tell you about my pets:

The Worms

They live quietly underneath me, in my basement, wiggling and winding their way through my scraps. Recycling quantities of waste. Turning it back into soil. Even as I type this they are eating, sleeping, making wormy love in the thousands. I started with a hundred purchased one cold January day years ago in a bait shop. Rescued from a cold impalement.

When I sat out in the sunshine last summer sorting the worms from the humus, I thought of the 20 pound plastic encased soil I used to purchase at the garden center. This humus was so much richer. So full of life.

I like to recycle and reuse. We have but a finite number of atoms. As civilization progresses, infinity moves farther and farther from us. My great grandfather, in the late 1800's, burned the Minnesota prairie to the east of his farm and for weeks the glow from the fire could be seen in the night sky as it burnt the open prairies. Now the world is much smaller. We are packed together. There is still a farm where my great grandfather lived, but it is not alone. As we have less, we must be more careful with it.

I had (and have) a big compost bin. But the winters were rough. We would trudge through the snow to pile potato peelings on a frozen heap. The bin began to overflow. There has got to be a better way. And so this project started in the cold of January with a frozen compost bin.

It's called vermicomposting. Composting with worms is one of the easiest, most fulfilling projects that you'll do. You don't need expensive equipment. You don't need space, you can do this in a small apartment. And it is not really time consuming.

Go get a container that you can use for keeping moderately wet materials in. It can be relatively small (like a gallon container) depending on what you have and your space requirements. Worms are easy to transfer to bigger containers or divide into multiple small containers; so don't worry about it, just get started.

Put some holes near the bottom of the container to let out extra water. Don't worry. The worms are not going to escape, they like it where they are. Now half-fill the containers with shredded paper that has been soaked wet and squeezed to remove excess water, and then loosened up a little so that a worm could craw through.

Now add the worms. I got mine at a bait shop. You can do that also or you can order them from an Internet distributor. You probably can't use the worms that you find on your lawn, these species mostly have different feeding patterns, requiring food to decay partially before eating it, and need more room. You want red worms. You can start with 50 to 200 worms, depending on your setup.

Dump your worms in on top of the shredded paper. Give them some fruits or veggies to eat. Cover with a little more damp shredded paper and cover with a lid to prevent dehydration. The first night or so leave the container somewhere where it can drain the excess water out. Then just feed it when they look like they need it. The worms will gradually increase to keep up with your output, but may need more containers.

Now after a few months, you will discover a transformation. The paper and table scraps will become a dark moist rich soil - well just humus really, suitable for seed bombs. And mixing with depleted soil will give it the mineral content to be true soil, rich and ready for a new life cycle. When it's time to make room you have a chance to go through this new humus, sorting out the worms (and their eggs) and enjoying the richness they've created.

But it is most important to get started now. You may have problems; fruit flies and other flies often find a home in your little ecosystem, but sitting it outside during the summer and using netting or ingenuity helps. Of course the Internet has a lot of info on the subject. Start with the vermicompost article at Wikipedia. Then branch out. It is a step that is so simple, yet so fulfilling.

The rest of this story is of a dark nature. If you are not one of the intrepid, you should stop reading, ending with thoughts of wormy love.

As I'm not of such strong stuff (and a vegetarian), this is not first hand knowledge. But after seeing thousands of worms overpopulate their wormy world, one wonders how one can alleviate their overpopulation problem. Remove a few hundred (or measure by the pound, if it makes you feel better). Wash them off and put them in dampened corn meal. They must purge themselves of grit and compost, stuffing themselves with something more palatable to you. This process takes a couple of days and you may want to replace the corn meal. You end up with some very fine protein, I'm told. You can read more on this subject in the book The Worm Book by Loren Nancarrow and Janet Hogan Taylor. Yum?

Tape Source

2008-03-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

Just something floating in the breeze, today. The sound of sap dripping into the bucket is like the metronome of Spring. One, two, three, go.

Jeff Cox of HGTV shows us how to make a seed tape, courtesy of the DIY Network. It's a simple idea that can keep you in the spirit without requiring that you actually be able to plant anything. You can set them in their precious, perfect row, stash them, and then roll them out as the ground warms up. I haven't thought of any significant possibilities this might grant to a graffitist but for a guerilla gardener, it could certainly shave some time off of what's necessary to plant and run. You could keep them in a baggie and tear open a strip of earth with your heel to dig out a planting row. Then, drop a seedstrip in and cover it up with the other shoe/filthy hobbit-foot. The whole thing, if you became well-practiced, might only take a few seconds and could be done before anyone realizes what you are doing. That will be important. There is also some similar information about preparation on This Garden Is Illegal but I found Cox's stuff first. TGII's technique is vegan, however, for those purists out there.

Also, I got a book in the mail, written by the genii at Rodale, which claims to contain many valid and interesting details of gardening and growing shit from the turn of the previous century (no, the other one). There are some fun anecdotes and nicknames for things we, as technocrats, have culturally reabsorbed in a completely different way. It's really amazing how many "weeds" people ate, even among the culinary elite. Among the more bizarre factoids I read about was the successful grafting of tomato scions to potato stock. They're both Solanaceae, as best I can recall, so I'm not thinking it's incredulous. However, I've never, ever heard of this before. I know it works with drupes and apple trees but it just seems like a risky maneuver for edible annuals. Plus, both plants are geared to produce completely different vegetables, though they are both technically seed parts, as potatoes almost always must be regrown from tuber pieces in order to recover viability. That would seem to indicate that they would not interfere in one another's affairs, in terms of reproduction. It's hard saying, not knowing. If I get a chance, I'll try it for myself.

This is an equation representing my hypothesis about the results. I know you all love Paint.

Bitter Harvest

2008-03-13T17:48:00.000-07:00

One of the things I love the most about the Internet is the way it standardizes obsession. Like, you can't just kinda appreciate something, you have to start a MySpace, and then a WordPress blog, then you add a forum space, and then you buy a server farm for your fetish, and you start a society or a council or something with 501 Non-profit status that allows you to travel across the globe talking to the weirdos who fill out the subculture you invented.
I'm not exactly sure what a Bitter Melon is but if I found one as I was cleaning my car, my first reaction would not be, "I wonder if the National Bitter Melon Council has heard about this?", though I would probably get to that eventually. I would most likely freak out a little, at first, simply because the fruit appears to be a nuclear dinosaur churro and that very idea puts me in a delirium state.

And what does any of this have to do with a seedbombing blog, you ask? Actually, I expect you don't ask that. I think we all understand this blog's authors to be trivia sluts and pretty well prone to posting about anything. The purpose of writing here is to focus the dilettantism for just a second, like a refractive lens changes a beam of light into a wall-melting, space-obliterating laser. Simply put, we can do more damage when we have a specific task, instead of just fucking around. I expect this is true of the whole human race, which is why there are so many items on fast-food menus.

Anyway, Bitter Melons caught my attention because of the bulk of utility found not only in the fruit but on the NBMC website. Merch? Manual? Sightings? Yeah, they've got a subheading for it all. Not only that, but their organization's clever riff on seedbombing. Check it:

"Instruction: how to make a Bitter Melon Seed Bomb
1. Mix Bitter Melon seeds, manure, earth and fertilizer.
2. Write a personal event, memory, or idea that makes you feel bitter on a 5"x5" sheet of rice paper
3. Roll seeds, manure, fertilizer and earth in a ball and wrap in the rice paper. Secure it with string.
4. Throw, toss, lay, or bury Seed Bomb in a neglected part of your neighborhood or location that you would like to bring more attention to. Cultivate it as you would a home garden or house plant. See what happens!"

Maybe I will, strange melon person! Maybe I will! Turns out, their interpretation of the seedbomb involves a symbolic acknowledgment of how homeopathy works. Basically, you "embitter" the already unhealthy target space with the Bitter Melon, resulting in a cure, at least in perception.

I'm fond of the micro-graffiti feature, particularly. For Christmas, I went around the mall, depositing notes in the stores on shelves, each with a single-sentence admonition of holiday consumerism or a reflective passage about the meaning of a "gift." Again, this ties in with my oft-mentioned botanical graffiti idea, wherein messages are planted, literally, and allowed to come to fruition as the biological side of the thing springs to life. Rice paper, being a very basic, organic (and potentially sticky) medium, offers an opportunity to invest further irony and ecological value into the "tag." It could, possibly, take the form of the suggested "bitter" notice, which eventually develops into the growing medium for a "bitter" fruit (in this case, an actual Bitter Melon), which ironically becomes physically nutritive, in addition to being a necessary and Constitutionally-protected expression of social and/or psychological grief. It's like you can have the cake that they let you eat and then you really can eat it! Unless this vegetable turns out be foul, but I generally respect Thai cuisine and now feel as though I can give them the benefit of the doubt.

Seeds for this wise and magical fruit are here.

Media Resources

2008-03-10T10:23:00.000-07:00

I found out that NPR did a segment on guerilla gardening in London back in 2006. This makes it both cool and uncool, in a very paradoxical way, something I call, "The NPR Effect." While you feel that you're privy to all sorts of slightly subversive, smarter-than-your-average-FOX-News-audience information, you ultimately have to reconcile this with the fact you're probably enjoying it as much as the rest of NPR's listeners, who don't regard Paula Poundstone's presence on Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! as ironic and who never bat an eardrum when they hear Garrison Keillor expound Pillsbury's wheat slurry.

Tell me, has your family tried powdered milk?

The UK gardeners all sound very excited and happy, as they should in a nation that allows nudity on prime-time television. They also talk about their own seedbombing activities. I wonder if they can still get away with this, after all the bomb scare craziness from this summer. At one point, you could be a deviant without being put on a "low-priority" watchlist. I wonder if that's still possible. But it's nice to have horticultural accompaniment to Banksy's urban commentary. He revivifies hideous architecture, the GG's keep the bawns productive.

And there's a book! Actually, there are a couple. And several more on related topics. Again, the sound of one hand clapping. I know the revolution won't be televised but I think Amazon's offer to include free two-day shipping is overly generous. But I'm not immune to it, either. I just started reading Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and, against my better judgment, I am liking it. I've stated my love of the Old Left's Back-to-the-Earth idealism and this book tickles me in all the right ways. I won't go so far as to say it's fascinating but it does espouse the kinds of determination and food defensiveness I respect about guerilla gardening. The main difference is that Kingsolver isn't reclaiming anything, since it's her farm. I'd like to read a Bradford Angier/Tom Brown Jr.-influenced sort of story about urban minimalist survival from the ground up. I guess Jim Merkel's narrative, Radical Simplicity, sort of fits the bill, but he makes it a point to walk softly. I would write a book, as I may have to, unless the CrimethInc kids have already done it, about enjoying the audacity of hugeness of life as a means of protest, rather than a transformation parable in which the author makes it his goal to disappear himself (or rather, his derived guilt) from his own mind. You shouldn't be ashamed to live.

Anyway, sorry for the delay. I'm trying to move and get a new job.

Lead Poisoning: Perfectly Legal Business

2008-02-22T11:56:00.000-08:00

LEAD POISONING and the bioremediation thereof is going to be a focus of mine in the next three weeks. A quick look at the gravity of the situation, stolen from Slate:

But the bad news about lead keeps coming. In 2003, Bruce Lanphear and colleagues wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that kids with lead levels less than 10 mcg/dl lost roughly 7 IQ points. (Though the average IQ is 100, a populationwide average loss of 7 points makes tens of thousands of children fall below 70, the general threshold for mental retardation.) Using independent data, David Bellinger of Harvard and Needleman later confirmed these findings, which were novel but not unexpected: Serious damage happens at levels now considered safe for millions of American kids. The data should have galvanized public-health authorities to pursue zero-tolerance lead policies, which would mean nationwide de-leading of unsafe homes. After all, the New England Journal of Medicine reported in 2001 that medicines can't recover lost IQ points from lead poisoning. Once gone, they're gone forever.

Yet no de-leading program happened. Instead, opponents of comprehensive lead removal blatantly politicized the latest science and hatched an economic justification for inaction.

Just before the CDC considered lowering lead limits once again in 2003, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson removed a qualified scientist, Michael Weitzman, from the CDC's lead advisory committee and then rejected the appointments of Bruce Lanphear and Susan Klitzman, the researchers who found toxic effects of lead at low levels. Instead, Thompson moved to appoint Joyce Tsuji, who worked for two companies that represented lead firms, and William Banner, who has stated publicly that 70 mcg/dl of lead is safe for children's brains—a view not shared by any respectable scientists. (The Union of Concerned Scientists and Rep. Henry Waxman publicized Thompson's abuses [subscription required].) But the political message had already been sent, and no lowered limit resulted. Today, all those parents whose children will be tested in the wake of the Mattel scandal continue to be falsely reassured that all is well, even if the kids have lead levels of 5 to 10 mcg/dl, which may cost them 7 IQ points.

From this Slate article

City Repair

2008-02-18T08:57:00.000-08:00

This will be quick.
Portland is pretty cool, I suppose. It isn't seedbomb, freecology, or GG-specific but I think it outlines a very comprehensive plan for urban convalescence which, used in conjunction with the above measures, should be strong enough medicine.
Take with two frothy moss-shakes and call me in the morning.

Keep the Ball Rolling

2008-02-16T09:21:00.000-08:00

When I look out at the wintry landscape around me, I like to think in Lovecraftian terms. You know, "not dead but dreaming." Outside, I see a slow-burning attack, good to shoot as soon as the weather's ready. When the snow is drawn back like a bed-sheet and the world smells of dogshit, I will begin gathering my forces in the snow-puddles and at the ends of tree branches.

But right now, it is still cold enough to frost my breath. So, I must be contented with the dreams of what is to come. I read, mostly, since a move in the near future to an unknown residence makes it difficult to draw plots and do seed counts for a place that may not even have open ground. The thing about guerilla gardening is that it's more about knowing what to do with what you have when you have it than anything else. If I have a lonely box-elder springing from the basement window in whatever apartment I move into, I will tend it and watch it as it grows to be a mighty, foundation-shredding force of nature. I will be wary of oyster-plants and violets, popping through holes in the asphalt, and later may harvest their blooms for decoctions and their seeds for my artillery. If I live near to a greenhouse or farm, I will keep a close eye on their compost heaps and garbage bins, always ready to snatch out an unhealthy perennial or usable tray.

This is all in the offing. Currently, and for the past couple of months, I sit in front of a computer, every day, breaking long enough to do a few dishes or stare blankly at my gourds, waiting for some design to arise from their shapes, that I may carve them from inspiration and not boredom. This is how I am able to find the time to discover nice things like Kathryn Miller's work. Her "Lawns in the Desert" project is especially funny for me. I'm reminded of a summer in Indiana when the rain just wouldn't come and, taking a walk through the scorched neighborhood, I came upon a pathetic sprinkler waving to-and-fro over a burned-out yard. The arc of its droplets was mapped onto the grass by the barest swath of green. To this day, that image is a primary symbolic motivation for why I do what I do.

Also, to riff on my last post, I found this site, called either Plant the Piece or Swords Into Plowshares. Anyway, I like it. I still think buying seedbombs is silly (especially when it costs $75) but for the purposes of symbolism and as a gallery show, I suppose it's pretty cool.

The novelty of molding seedbombs hasn't worn off for me, yet, and I'm still thinking of ways to make something terrific, sculpture-wise, using the mix as a medium. It would have to be accounted for that the whole thing would eventually fall apart, adding another dimension/complication to the end product. I used to love modeling clay when I was a younger person and my hands are still pretty good for that sort of thing. I'll post here, first, when I have any ideas I'm excited about. I'd appreciate it if you'd do the same.

For Great Justice

2008-02-09T09:18:00.000-08:00

A gun-shaped seedbomb.

And the crowd goes wild. I recommend every guerilla gardener carry one in plain sight and when the cops show up with their tasers, just start screaming that you've come "to make the world a more beautiful place." They should understand what you're talking about.

Or how about this: "The neighbors saw him throw a gun into the bushes-wait, those bushes weren't there before!"

This is either incredibly awesome in a Michael-Moore-post-modern-hoax-protest sort of way or it's the stupidest fucking trip that nearsighted guerillas have yet devised. Or both. But if you're actually buying seedbombs, I'd have to say you're only getting what you deserve. Green consumerism normally just irritates me but this is too much. It's simply a matter of time before you see these things in Hot Topic. On the flip side, seedbomb sculpture does fit well with my other ideas about botanical graffiti.

At least they tailor the seeds to your bioregion. Maybe they include Kudzu.

Balls to the Walls

2008-02-04T06:47:00.000-08:00

I learned last week that this seedbombing idea goes back a little further than guerilla gardening. In fact, it goes back a lot further than "a little further." Our comrades at Path to Freedom claim that the people who were watching this great country of ours while we waited for the equity to build (i.e., Amerindians) practiced some form of ballistical broadcasting. I haven't found anything yet to corroborate that but if and when I do, I will write about it. The notion that seedbombs might be an heirloom technology appeals to me in a big, dirty way. It makes it feel authentic, like it's not just a bunch of Indigo Children throwing dirt around.

More recently, but not as recently as the Internet's spin on it, "seedballs" were an innovation/inspiration from a very nice man named Masanobu Fukuoka (shown), who is referenced on PTF, Heavy Petal, and a few other sites as an early vanguard of permaculture and no-till farming. A farmer friend of mine is experimenting with the latter practice. It's supposed to retain soil integrity, in terms of nutrients, density, and ecological life-webs. In my friend's case, he runs down cover crops like rye and alfalfa and then drags a blade behind a tractor (or horse...or dog-team) to cut little trenches in the mulch and earth, which become the planting rows. If anyone has ever seen or done the conventional method of vegetable farming, you will understand how radically different this is. In some applications, Masanobu's techniques could be maintained without machines, at all, if I understand them correctly.

In reading about his experiments with "seedballs", I notice a very different perspective on the how's and why's of guerilla gardening. Masanobu's method is less focused on the item's viability as a missile, instead training on the necessity of the ball to the seeds, themselves. As I postulated before in my first post, moisture and minerals are of vital importance to the little plant germs but the ball also acts as insulation from inclement growing weather and hungry birds. And it saves time spent in the hot, hot sun, digging holes, stuffing seeds into them, and irrigating with an uneven mix of doped water and hope. The seed/plant return ratio probably doesn't come out as well but it's a good plan if you don't have the ability or incentive to work a field mechanically. In keeping with the theme, I guess we could call them "seed-time-bombs" but that doesn't flow as well. Also: it doesn't matter what we call them. You put the seeds outside and you wait. Anything beyond that is mere ideology.

For further reading on his ideas, stop on by the Soil and Health Library for copies of his texts. You'll have to request them but they are free, though the librarian would really appreciate your contribution.

In an unrelated note, if any of you out there are amateur biodieselers, don't get caught up in the hype about using the leftover glycerol slop as a soap base. I personally have seen this fail, epically. There is almost always residual lye in the fat, which is impossible to boil out. Plus, unless you have some kind of wild industrial kitchen, you will probably end up breathing in some pretty toxic shit. A chemist I spoke with about it later mentioned that the process required to properly solidify the glycerine involves hydrochloric acid (I assume to nullify the caustic nature of the lye), which I don't have access to and really wouldn't want to play with, anyhow. When I was done, after boiling the first of two batches for a few hours, what I had was a fudgy fat-block which began to slowly leak brown oil everywhere. I also burned my throat pretty badly when I poured it into the pans to cool. The product lathered acceptably but for all the work it took, I'd say you should just save your energy, buy a bottle of Dr. Bronner's, and run SVO. Those cars will all be as obsolete as VHS in a few years, anyway; you might as well just have a good, smelly time with your old Golfs and Benzos while it's still legal to drive a car without a computer.

Wild Idea: Re-Forest Africa, Reverse Global Warming

2008-01-31T03:23:00.000-08:00

I just came across 10 Billion Acres via the random magic of Google Ads. Not only is this graphic amazing, but it's also a very thought-provoking thesis: our climate problems are probably due to the fact we've deforested 10 billion acres of planet Earth since 1492.

I leave it to the reader to determine the validity of that claim, but the vision of re-foresting Africa is both beautiful and nescessary.

Digging Deeper

2008-01-23T08:50:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, a few days go by without me seeing anything new on the topic of guerilla gardening and I wind up having to raid my Del.icio.us for pertinent articles. This is one of those times.
When this happens, I bushwhack through my bookmarks until something interesting comes up. Then I post about it. I would rather submit how-to photos and reports from actual gardeners but that is pretty close to impossible for me to accomplish, right now. I did make some spiles from sumac branches, in the event that I will be able to sugar in the spring but I haven't a camera and so cannot show you the process or product. Suffice to say, it is a simple procedure but, if you are new to whittling, you'll want to be careful of about cutting yourself and it's a hell on your hands. I think it may be worth posting about. There are lots of maple trees (Acer spp.) in many public places and you can get good sap out of all of them. No sense losing good tree-juice. I'll get you all updated when I find a way to visually reference my craft.
In the interim, there are some newer things.
Plants For a Future is the perfect resource for the wildcrafter or forager you just can't shop for! While it's oriented toward the reader with some knowledge of botany, I've found it to be great inspiration for potential plant uses, even inedibles and non-medicinal species.
Although I'm not big into technocratic solutions for ecological problems, visually, the Vertical Farm Project is stunning and clever. I like the idea behind the design but I come from a "less is more" background. Maybe there's a way to implement these scientific principles in the kitchen or on the edge of your lawn with salvaged PVC pipe and old compound buckets. And lots of branches.
Ooh! Ooh! The Survival Scrapbooks! It's just some old, Back-to-the-Land source material but that's what gets me going, ear-ly in the morning. Now, they're here, ready for perusal. It's pdf's or compressed files, I don't remember. I find that the hands-on approach our hippy parents espoused and lavishly consumed are free fun, at worst, and more often than not, stone cold nature wisdom when the author knows what they're talking about. Will you ever have to build a little cardboard geodesic dome? Probably not. Are you worse for the experience? I rest my case. There are relevant details to the cause, though.
Give the old dice a roll.

Cheap as Free

2008-01-20T15:57:00.000-08:00

Just a quickie today, flower children.
I find that grocery stores are excellent suppliers of free seeds. I poke around under the produce displays and find funky, forgotten fruits amidst dust bunnies and nutshells. I sweep them up real quick and pocket them without even a moral pinch, since common practice (reads: germophobic superstition) holds that contact with the floor makes them unfit for human consumption. If you can't get a fruit you'd like for absolutely free, one bought will often contain as many seeds as a packet from a display and will be a fresher source. Plus, the unit pricing can't be beaten. One tomato can contain dozens and dozens of seeds and can be had for a pittance. A packet of seeds can cost more than two dollars and may not even be of the same cultivar as the kinds you look for at market. I can't guarantee that hybrids or tropical species will breed true but I don't think anybody ever died trying to grow lychees on their kitchen table. I've even had success planting from culinary collections (celery, specifically). My grandmother looked at me mighty strangely when I first asked if I could raid her spice cabinet for seeds to plant. Well, I certainly showed her. I SHOWED ALL OF THEM!
Have you ever tried to buy cherimoya seeds, commercially? I've had no luck finding prepackaged options. But six years ago, I bought a fruit, ate it (not unpleasant), and dried the seeds on a windowsill. I planted the little bastards when I first found a pot and wet soil. I've got a small tree growing in my living room, now. It probably won't ever fruit but it looks nice and it's a trophy of resourcefulness.
The other day, the wife and I ordered lunch at an Eighties-themed restaurant near my residence. Her entree came with a side of boysenberries and lettuce leaves. Friggin' boysenberries! Guess what new, delicious, free fruit came home with me, swaddled in a napkin like a lumpy, purple Baby Jesus? I mashed it up and dried the seeds. Maybe the Spring will yield sweet treasure.
My point is, if you need seeds, don't get impatient and waste your precious consumer power on packets of over-dried, chemical-drenched, re-re-re-packaged envelopes of genetic dead-ends and crud-motes. That money just goes toward legitimizing an entrenched agribusiness which exterminates diversity and ecology where and whenever it fails to meet quota. I'm pretty sure that is evil, in some definition and that's not where I'm at. You, either, most likely.

White and Green

2008-01-16T08:25:00.000-08:00

I was exploring the previously mentioned Soil and Health Library, in Tasmania, and I wanted to make sure people had been taking advantage of it. Like, a whole huge lot. Of value to this blog's consumers are the many free e-texts of OOP and public domain literature on agriculture, health, spiritual exploration, and social critique made available. The Agriculture Library there has some really great selections for arming yourself with knowledge of ecology and soil management, for the more conscientious and detail-oriented guerillas. Stangely, or maybe not so much, the fantastic collection of books on homesteading is not located there but in the Personal Sovereignty Library.

Sit down while the Beardo fills your brains with timeless wisdom. I said sit.

Winter is a good time to do some planning for your garden(s). Do some siting. Then, go down to the town offices to see what, if any, lots are scheduled for construction in the Spring. Those notices are public information. You can also find out what sites in town are too polluted for edibles. On your way to and from town, dumpster dive some supplies and build cold frames so you can put plants out as soon as the days get warm but the nights are still frosty. If you are worried about planting somewhere with a lot of foot traffic, the snow will serve as a pretty good indicator of volume and direction of human highways (and where the dogs are shitting).

Also at about this time, your local garden store will be trying desperately to clear out last year's inventory of seed before the new stuff comes in (which will be very soon, if it hasn't already happened) so see if they won't cut you a deal. They may even let you pick through their trash, if you give them pudding cup. However, in those cases where they ship unsold seeds back for a refund, find out if it's a local producer, since smaller operations just have to give the seeds away or dispose of them at cost, anyhow. For a short time, I worked at an organic seed farm and I was invited, daily, to take home as many past-date seeds as I could carry. It's possible that, due to their age, these seeds could be less than viable. But if only one seed in ten sprouts and I get a thousand of them for free, it isn't like I'm getting ripped off.

On the topic of seeds, in about three weeks, you'll want to start your eggplants and peppers, indoors. These are plants that desire a long growing season so, to help ensure that you'll get some tasty fruits, you should give them a head start. Grow some stupid-hot nightmare peppers so you can show your friends that God is real and He hates tongues.

And This Garden is Illegal turned up in another search I did, last night. It's a fun read and a well-connected blog. The author doesn't stand out as a guerilla gardener or freecologist but every revolution has its moderates. C'est la vie.

The Wild Hunt

2008-01-13T19:27:00.000-08:00

Make sure that you go all the way into the GuerrillaGardening.org page, to the links. It would be ridiculous to re-post all of the useful materials located there into this blog. Go to it, yourself, and see if there isn't some little thing that gets you moving. And here is a video of a seedbombing in action, in case you were worried about it being too XTREME.
It's neat to think that this blog is like a metaphor of its content. These posts are little information seedbombs, about seedbombs, which we launch into the fertile public space of the reader's imagination. And vegetables are like email, sending otherwise inedible messages of nutrient amalgamations to our bodies--the ultimate middlemen.
If I have not moved too late this Spring, I will experiment with some new greenhouse tricks and post anything relevant, here. Also, if you are new gardeners/foragers/Vikings, please feel free to ask of me anything you might need help with in your efforts. This is something where I can actually "do" about as much as I "know." I'll give you all the best answers I can.
I really enjoyed this video, essentially a tour of some of Berlin, Germany's cultivated places. For anyone who is a little too hip to just run with it, this is a good look at what modern civil service could be. No gimmicks or edgy marketing. Just some people who like beer, dirt, and sunshine, with a few hours to spend de-uglifying their neighborhood.
Also, this.

Staying Motivated

2008-01-11T09:26:00.000-08:00

In any revolutionary mindset, it is important to have a balance of technique and theory. Ideas need testing, else they drift into the fairy tale land of abstraction and, thus, near-total uselessness. Conversely, without motive, and without adaptive meaning, operation stands to dissolve into pure functionality. It's the old "cogs in the machine" issue, again, though it hasn't ever been stripped of its validity. Fighting the good fight is always a yin-yang of ethos and method. If done correctly, even if unsuccessful, it will never really have been all for nothing.

It is with this in mind that I would like to direct those unfamiliar with it to Nordhaus and Schellenberger's The Death of Environmentalism. It is a well-written, brisk, though somewhat tunnel-visioned perspective on what I feel to be the closest thing to a freecologist's manifesto. Although they don't call for seedbombing, as such, they make a strong argument about the practical and ideological self-attenuation of traditional environmental action groups (NRDC, Sierra Club, et al.), brought about by these groups' swapping efficacy for expediency. Basically, the authors advocate a new kind of environmentalism, though, as is common with this kind of thing, they fail to capture exactly what would or should be done. I won't say too much more about it, except that the link I've provided to Grist, another great environmental website, also features a section for Grist contributors' comments on the essay, some of which are almost as good as the topic material.

Not motivated enough? What am I, some energy drink? Fine, be a dick about it. Here's a story about a very nice person who fights whaling ships for a living...by harpooning them with his boat. Nautical ecotage. Nice. In a way, this Paul Watson fellow represents one logical extreme of the Nordhaus/Schellenberger ideal, though I don't imagine they'd ever fess up to it. One of the perks of vague diagnostics is that you don't have to take full responsibility for tremendous margins of error within the interpretation. Guerilla gardening, however, seems to espouse a middle road. We trade some revolutionary cache for some public legitimacy and, so far, the movement hasn't been ossified by media nods and bureaucratic road apples.

Hmm. Road apples. Guerrilla gardening meets arboriculture? I'll get back to you on that one.

Eating Out

2008-01-08T15:18:00.001-08:00

It's all very nice, rolling up celery seeds into clay projectiles and hucking them at and over every chain-link fence you toddle by. Very nice until you realize that, unless you intend to engage in trespassing and vandalism, you'll never see those plants put to use as food. And what about the busy narcho-punx? Sure, they can usually stop long enough to smell the daisies of every vacant lot they cross through, as long as they don't tarry in front of the Neighborhood Watch. Doesn't it seem a little ignoble to get shaken down for the simple act of digging a hole? You planted the damn potatoes, you should eat them, even if it isn't your yard. Can any of us even imagine the shame of having to explain to the rest of the revolutionaries that we missed out on puppet-building because we had to overnight in the tank for being, "really, really hungry"?

Is it a crime to hunger? Or is it against the law to help yourself?

As it turns out, you don't have to be Bradford Angier or Euell Gibbons or a bear to be a successful wild forager. Your ironic salvation shall come from the machines! Thank you, horrible, horrible machines!
Mr. Steve Brill (shown above, righteously devouring nature's spam, the Japanese Knotweed) was once arrested for eating dandelions in Central Park. If those aren't messianic qualifications, then it's possible the past 2000 years of human history have been for naught.
If you feel as though the written word is a bit more reassuring (because no one ever wrote a lie, right?), please go here to find a small field guide, bolstered by an impressive (and affordable) selection of classic literature on the subject.
Look! The English forage, too! And they invented time or something so you know they aren't just doing it to be cool.

So, the next time you are lost in the woods in back of your apartment or just trying to avoid mowing the lawn, consider your options. Your friends may ask you why you don't just steal something, like any other self-respecting consumophobe. To make your point, suddenly duck out of the conversation and swallow a handful of nearby edibles. Your critics will think you are invincible and never again question your motives, lest you next decide to eat them.

Botanical Graffiti

2008-01-07T10:36:00.000-08:00

Consider that idealized graffiti is a statement of art, as art, and as protest. A bad graffiti artist (you know who you are, Mr. Single-Black-Lines-and-Can't-Spell) should not denude the genus of expression any more than a bad poet makes you burn your anthology of Yeats. If someone tells you otherwise, laugh pointedly at their error. Cities are made ugly. Graffiti just makes that ugliness human.
In this capacity, we arrive at a new problem with guerilla gardening/seedbombing/botanical graffiti/et al., which is "Can it look good on its own merits and still serve its purpose?" To answer which, yes, it may. Anyone can plant a damn clover. In fact, clovers do a pretty good job of that themselves. The real power of this medium is similar to Buddhist protest; how can the power elite fight an ideological battle against a foe who is in favor or freedom and life? How can you go to war against very, very nice?
In the XTC song, "River of Orchids", we hear mention that, "the grass is always greener when it bursts up through concrete." This statement, while beautiful and incontrovertibly true, is also a subtle admonition of botanical graffiti. Really, what planted anywhere in the urban moonscape doesn't look good by comparison? I've seen withered chicories awkwardly stretching like a beginner's yoga class, up from between grates and beneath trash cans. No person cast those seeds. For a "seedbombing" to be successful, it must be surprising, yes, but irony cannot and must not be the final word of this Weltanschauung. It must also be a vision of the wonder of which it is a part, the antithesis of what it rejects.
But it will start small, like all good gardens should.
I had a sudden inspiration, regarding beautiful seed paper, after reading the previously posted moss tags recipe. This prepared nutrient goop would seem to provide a better than adequate growing medium/adhesive paste for a variably-scaled poster project, involving different plant species (and thus, differently-sized seeds), unto which the sheets could be further decorated, drawn, or written upon before finally being swallowed up in vegetation.
Also, as I reflected upon it, I do not think solid clay is the ideal means of preparing seedbombs. Clay, though absorbent, does not hold water especially well unless it is kept in moist conditions. And it doesn't contain a valuable mix of healthful elements which a sprout would appreciate. I think a potting mix or peat moss base with a clay mix to stabilize the shape for its short life as a ballistic statement would be best but until I can do a field trial, myself, I won't stand behind that innovation. Perhaps someone else has experimented with it, already.
The moss paste itself makes me think of perpetrating giant Chia pets. And of creating signatures which unveil themselves slowly across the brick facia of old buildings. I suggest brick for moss, since moss grows best in poor to no drainage. Soaked brick would dry, of course, but I think it would release water very slowly if properly saturated, after the fashion of a garden pot. A timber surface also would suffice, though the moss's growth would deteriorate the material unless it was pressure-treated, in which case I think it wouldn't sprout at all.

DIY Moss Tags: A Natural Graffiti How-To

2008-01-06T22:24:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of Heavy Petal.

The moss starter goes on pretty much clear. To make a quick moss starter, you'll need:

One or two clumps (about a small handful) of moss
2 cups of buttermilk
2 cups of water (or beer)
1/2 tsp. sugar

a blender
container with lid
paintbrush

How to:

1. Crumble the moss into the blender - try to remove any pebbles or insects you find.

2. Add the sugar, buttermilk, water or beer, and blend at the lowest speed until it has the consistency of a milkshake (add more water if necessary).

3. Paint the mixture onto rocks, logs, pots or statuary, or simply pour it on the ground wherever you'd like your moss to grow.

OR: Create some living graffiti. Paint your chosen design on any shaded, damp vertical or horizontal surface. Porous, moisture-retentive surfaces work best (brick, wood, coarse concrete).

The moss starter method works best if it is kept moist until well-established. A twice-weekly misting with a spray bottle is ideal.

Vegetative Apathy

2008-01-06T22:15:00.000-08:00

From Heavy Petal -- Why Aren't More Young People Gardening? A good question.

This smells like a much more relevant line of inquiry than Why Aren't More Young People Voting? -- Food is something that actually matters.

My favorite passage from Endgame was Derrick Jensen building a system of morality off "Clean, Drinkable Water." (Ben Mack did that, too.) Water is good, so is food, air and love. These are all good things, all better than anything this damn computer will ever offer me.

Found a clever variation on Food Not Bombs: the natural space advocacy group Food Not Lawns.

...and of course, those with certainty never suffer from apathy, right? Check out The Seed Project: a Bible translation in every language, this generation. We might not be able to figure out the energy crisis or actually feed any of these people, but we can sure as hell preach the Word of God to them.

In Search of Prolific Greenery

2008-01-06T22:07:00.000-08:00

Did you not know? The humble radish is the most abundant crop in Japan. I feel like such a domesticated and broken animal, asking the Google gods what the most prolific vegtables are.

Spinach is Damn Good.

I like spinach. Spinach is a great source of Magnesium, and it is damn tasty.

The myth about spinach and its high iron content may have first been propagated by Dr. E. von Wolf in 1870, because a misplaced decimal point in his publication led to an iron-content figure that was ten times too high.

History is full of hilarious shit like that: learning really is fun. As long as you do it right. Gotta eat your spinach fresh, though -- even reheating it can make it poisonous, and spinach has been the vehicle for e. coli outbreaks in the past.

Soil and Health Library

A huge resource I just came across -- we'll be backing up all of this material shortly, but in the meantime:

Soil and Health Library

Remember Paul

Paul Laffoley, obviously...and his admonition about Ginko the miracle plant:

Native to China it tolerates all climates and soils. It was saved from extinction in the 19th century by certain Chinese Monasteries. The tree dates from the Mesozoic Era (144 million years ago) making it the oldest flowering plant alive at the time of the dinosaurs. Shoots of the tree can connect deciduous to conifer trees, fruits to vegetables, grasses to vines.

Pilfering from Phase II

2008-01-06T21:57:00.000-08:00

How Stuff Works: Nanotechnology

The Future of Food (video)

"Culture is not your friend." A truly great speech from Terence McKenna.

Enertia Housing System: Scalable Solutions to Energy Shortages

2008-01-05T08:40:00.000-08:00

Not immediately relevant, but it fits the theme of "hidden in plain sight" -- are you familiar with Enertia? Came across it again doing an image search this morning, and it reminded me that although this company is profitable, they're also in total obscurity considering what they offer. It's a proven, math-based, scalable system for construction that leverages the temperature difference from day to night to eliminate the need for heating or air conditioning. From a pure thermal energy perspective, the house looks a lot like the yin-ying.

But that's just me being high. The real payoff is the fact that from a home-buyer perspective, the house looks really damn nice. The system can be scaled to any kind of wooden structure. The potential here is pretty vast and the media coverage is non-existent. Amatiwa ha.

The quote was too dope to leave out:

"While news of inventor Mike Sykes building system has been floating around the web for at least six months, and he's been awarded a patent for the design, MSNBC notes "No major homebuilders have yet shown interest in Enertia but Sykes' goal is to usher the technology into mass production."
Quite frankly, we're a little surprised at the lack of takers on this concept: Enertia's overview of its various models demonstrates that the homes are spacious and conventional-looking. They're also sold in kits, which should make for easy construction. The all-wood walls might scare away some developers or buyers working and living in areas prone to wildfires, but if that's not a major concern, it's hard to believe that buyers wouldn't snap these up if offered."

Invasive Species and the Ethics of Natural War

2008-01-05T08:24:00.000-08:00

I keep coming back around to Kudzu. Many people I've known in the South speculated aloud on wether or not Kudzu was some sort of divine punishment, or even some sort of Yankee biowarfare project. Kudzu is a pain in the ass and it kills local species. I don't see that as effective or efficient, if the goal is healing the planet or rebuilding a more beautiful Earth.

Don't let your physical scale be your permanent frame of reference. Move around. See things like the aliens do, see things like your mitochondria do. You've got billions of them, did you know that? There's reading facts and then there's realizing, in your stomach, that something is true. Somewhat of a large difference between the two.

I think we should keep our thinking fluid and try to anchor our "ethics" and other assumptions globally. This isn't a moral stance, I think it's better strategy to move our frame of reference around when we consider problems and solutions. We will get more diverse ideas, and that's important to winning and stuff.

Winning is not a philosophical goal here, or a casualty count. Winning is very easy to measure: have you made the world more beautiful and less controlled? If so, sleep well tonight.

UK Guerilla Gardening Resources

2008-01-05T08:01:00.000-08:00

First and foremost, you've got good old Guerrilla Gardening dot org, which is small but offers high quality content. They're also burdened with a "cell" style rhizome non-heirarchy, which is actually not de-centralized enough for BIPT standards. Remember the MO: an army of one.

The site Primal Seeds also offers a Guerrilla Gardening page, which is mostly just rhetoric and noise. Fortunately, they've got a decent archive of materials and resources on the sidebar, so click around and redeem the goofy manifesto.

Path to Freedom is a fascinating site on any level, but today I'd like to call attention to their DIY Projects archive. There is a lot of easy, low-tech and genius ancient innovation contained here.

the revolution's you

2008-01-05T02:30:00.000-08:00

I like the meme and the message behind this: the revolution's you. Check the backstory:

Last November 2006 I was shot by a man in a robbery attempt. I could have let this fill me full of fear and hatred. This could have caused me to close off to the world and just live for myself and my family. But, this isn't what I chose. I started thinking "what if'".

Perhaps, the most important what if is, "what if the man who shot me had a person, of positive influence at the right time in his life? Could his life have turned out differently?” With that idea in mind, I started thinking about children. I'm a father of two boys, ages 5 and 2. I believe children are searching for someone or something to give them direction, purpose, and attention.

First event being organized is an Arts and Music Festival on April 26th, 2008, at the Harvard Park Elementary School in Springfield, Illinois.

Tim Boucher: Sow Possibilities

2008-01-03T22:15:00.000-08:00

From his excellent Six Strategems comes the following relevant passage:

(1) Sow Possibilities.

Make things happen. That’s the simplest way to explain the first stratagem. Instead of nothing, create something. Instead of sitting back, take action. Instead of saying no, say yes - or at least maybe. Always be opening doors and making connections. Don’t just shut down. Create opportunities for yourself and for other people.

I hear a lot of people talking about manifesting intentions nowadays. I see intentions as potential. Focusing your intentions is like plowing a field. You’re preparing the ground for things to grow. But once you have tilled the earth, you have to take it a step beyond that. You have to take action. You have to plant seeds.

Seeds are possibilities: things that could happen if the proper conditions are maintained for their growth. When a farmer sows seeds, he doesn’t expect that every single seed will grow into a fruit-bearing tree {See the Parable of the Mustard Seed}. But he knows that at least some of these possibility-seeds will grow to fruition. He can’t necessarily predict which ones, but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he take steps beyond simply focusing his intention: and that all-important first step is sowing the seeds of possibilities. Put another way, passive potential becomes active possibility through initiating cause-effect chains in the world of action.

--read more right here

"Seed" by Peter Randall-Page

2008-01-03T13:54:00.000-08:00

From the EDEN PROJECT:

Learn more here. Enjoy 2008.

An Excellent Anonymous Comment from Myspace

2008-01-03T13:42:00.000-08:00

From today's inbox:

"It's sad to see that you have to make simple farming into something "cool" and a form of "warfare" before you can get people interested in growing their own food. It's sad that something as basic as growing your own damn food needs to be sexed up as "seedbombing" to get these people to pay attention. Not hating you, just saying, it pisses me off."

Well...I never thought of it that way. So thanks for the clarification. You're right: this project is about learning the fastest, most interesting way to teach "simple farming" to a generation that barely live in their own bodies. The "Seedbombing" angle seems to grab people's attention. It's all marketing, even when it comes to getting people to value sustainable free food. Even when it comes to clean drinkable water.

I definitely invite more criticism and feedback. This project is evolving every day or so.

Dope Mycoremediation Videos from Joelz Magick

2008-01-03T10:43:00.000-08:00

Love and Gratitude to Joelz Magick for the heads up on these videos:

Mycoremediation -- using mushroom networks (and intelligence) to clean up toxic waste, fast food and heavy metals. Waste oil and crude leaks can also be repaired with mushrooms.

I would also recommend a google video search on Paul Stamets.

And of course, as long as I'm at it ...Seed Bombs on Google Video.

Brainsturbator Seedbomb Project 2008

2008-01-03T10:11:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my research notes for the Brainsturbator Seedbomb Project. This will be an open-source exploration of the techniques and strategies behind Nature-assisted repair of urban and suburban wasteland. We believe every living human has the responsibility to spread seeds on behalf of all the plant life destroyed daily to maintain our lifestyles.

Urban Assault Forestry

Resistance is Fertile

Seed Bomb T-Shirt from Another World is Possible.

Toronto is Dope: City-Sponsored Guerilla Gardening

2008-01-03T06:08:00.001-08:00

This is apparently done with the blessing of the Toronto Public Space Committee. They arm people, train them, and then set them loose to beautify the city. AMEN.

Funtimehappygardenexplosion

2008-01-03T06:04:00.001-08:00

Yep...thanks to the good people at Fun Time Happy Garden Explosion, there's now a rough draft instructional manual, complete with an empty lot that talks.

Hello, I am an empty lot. I exist in your neighborhood. I'm just a big patch of dirt and some trash. I make my neighbors feel uneasy and sad. No one likes me and it makes me sad too. All over, it is a lose-lose situation.

But maybe you can help me? All I need are some seed bombs. They're cheap and easy to make. And if you do it right, they are completely self automated and great for the environment. They will be a sight for sore eyes and they will make everyone happy. Especially the butterflies.

The Future of High-Tech: Dirt, Shit and Seeds

2008-01-03T05:58:00.000-08:00

What if I told you I had access to some insanely advanced nanotech devices that were self-replicating food and medicine generators? Let's imagine these devices are so cheap they're basically free, and that they could be safely stockpiled until you wanted to put them to use. These devices are completely safe, and many varieties are even edible.

I've posed this question to a lot of people, and generally it's only the farmers and gardeners who realize I'm not asking a hypothetical question. I'm talking about seeds, which are some of the most powerful technology for social change on the planet Earth.

So it won't surprise you to know that there has been a very literal War on Seeds, which has escalated beyond belief or sanity in the past 50 years.

I am making the aquisition and subversive redistribution of seeds a central focus for my life in 2008. This will extend beyond literal, illegal freelance agriculture. I'm also very aware of the parallel between planting seeds and, say...touring around the country putting my carefully designed words into the heads of thousands of strangers. I am fascinated to see what the first annual crop is going to look like.

Paul Laffoley: Seedhouse II

2008-01-03T05:50:00.000-08:00

Comments: The secret to grafting and growing Das Urpflanze Haus to a mature and seeded state is the Ginko Bilboa or Maidenhair Tree. Native to China it tolerates all climates and soils. It was saved from extinction in the 19th century by certain Chinese Monasteries. The tree dates from the Mesozoic Era (144 million years ago) making it the oldest flowering plant alive at the time of the dinosaurs. Shoots of the tree can connect deciduous to conifer trees, fruits to vegetables, grasses to vines. The Ginko Bilboa tree is not subject to the divine proportion (.382…/.618…), the proportion of death.

From the Catalog Raisonne, hosted @ Brainsturbator. Also, check out the associated "Thoughtform" to an earlier work:

Subject: The Vegetable-House as the Answer to Low Cost Housing

Comments: The modern movement in architecture is based primarily upon the utopian solution to the most basic of building types: mass-housing. As we enter the Bauharoque Period with its bulging populations, unwinable wars, the degrading of the world environment, and gradual increase in poverty level life styles, what could be more plausible than having the world housing shortage ended by simply sowing genetically altered seeds so that houses could be grown almost anywhere on the surface of the earth, with a growing time of approximately two months.

From the Vermont Freedom Forum

2008-01-02T22:09:00.000-08:00

Hosted by Brainsturbator, the backend forum for Ash Green.

Cyanobacteria that Consume Carbon Dioxide...and Excrete Ethanol Corn-free Ethanol? Now that's some futuristic shit, right there.

"Mycoremediation" -- grow some mushrooms, save the planet...you know, the usual routine.

Transforming City Space into Park Space, illegally and as quickly as possible.

Wiki source on Earth Sheltering.

Aka. "Guerrilla Gardening"

2008-01-02T21:43:00.000-08:00

Because just one label is never enough: Guerilla Gardening also fits the bill. Wiki agrees.

Guerrilla gardening is political gardening, a form of nonviolent direct action, primarily practiced by environmentalists. It is related to land rights, land reform, and permaculture. Activists take over ("squat") an abandoned piece of land which they do not own to grow crops or plants. Guerrilla gardeners believe in re-considering land ownership in order to reclaim land from perceived neglect or misuse and assign a new purpose to it.

Some guerrilla gardeners carry out their actions at night, in relative secrecy, to sow and tend a new vegetable patch or flower garden. Others work more openly, seeking to engage with members of the local community, as illustrated in the examples that follow. It has grown into a form of proactive activism or pro-activism.

Also some gems from Tim Boucher:

South Central Farm and People's Park -- two pirate utopias...with fresh veggies!

DIY Primitivism -- touches on all of the relevant themes...with fresh veggies!

The Humanure Handbook, 3rd Edition

2008-01-02T07:36:00.000-08:00

A free PDF download of the Humanure Handbook, 3rd Ed. Courtesy of the excellent library at Weblife.org.

However, for the record, the BIPT Library kicks the humanure out of anything else on line. Of course.

Seedbombs from Marshall McLuhan

2008-01-02T06:13:00.000-08:00

Some early morning brainfood: hand-selected mix of seedbombs from Marshall McLuhan, the sage of Canada. This project is very much dedicated to his memory and indebted to his spirit.

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.

Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort.

Where the whole man is involved there is no work. Work begins with the division of labor.

The scientist rigorously defends his right to be ignorant of almost everything except his specialty.

Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behavior.

Advertising is an environmental striptease for a world of abundance.

Affluence creates poverty.

Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either.