BigPlants

Automatic hammer

April 30, 2012

Video-Automatic hammer build by Larry Sandlin (in action) This is a video of a hand built automatic blacksmith hammer. This hammer was built by my late brother-in-law for use in his blacksmith shop. He assembled and cut to size all the components. The motor is 3 phase. He studied up on different designs of hammers, [...]

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Roasted Sweet Potatoes

March 13, 2012

Easy to make, this recipe is the first sweet potato dish I’ve fonnd that I like. Ingredients 2 to 4 sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes small to medium onion,finely chopped 1/4 cup brown sugar 2 to 3 tbs extra virgin olive oil Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put sweet potato cubes [...]

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Alocasia macrorrhiza

March 11, 2012

These big, upright elephant ears are becoming more popular lately. I see them in public landscapes more and more and find them for sale at nurseries quite often. It has the upward pointing leaves of Alocasia and is gets very large, up to 6 to 7 feet tall with 3 foot leaves. It is native [...]

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Equisetum Horsetail Plant

March 9, 2012

The horsetail plant grows where it stays wet or where it gets plenty of water. It is sold in nurseries as a water garden or bog plant. In some areas it can be very invasive. In northern California we saw a form of horsetail growing dense in wet areas along some roads and were told [...]

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Building our Underground Home

March 8, 2012

The crew ab0ve were some of the helpers we had when building the house. Without friends like these we could never have completed the project. When we were designing the house we tried to keep in mind that we needed to use construction methods that would allow me to do most of the work without [...]

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Sarracenia psittacina Parrot Pitcher Plant

March 7, 2012

This small pitcher plant has pitchers that are recumbent, lying almost flat on the ground forming a sort of rosette. The top of the pitcher is shaped somewhat like the beak of a parrot, thus the name. With the bulbous head and recumbent pitchers that have a sort of fin, this pitcher plant looks much [...]

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