Seeds in the City is off to explore island farming life for the next ten days. I found this great map on the Maui County Farm Bureau website that shows all the different farms and gardens. I will be volunteering at O'o farms and I can't wait to see how things are done over on the island. There will be MANY photos to follow. Please let me know if you have any suggestions on places to visit.
As a lover of Italian cooking, mostly due to my infatuation with bread and cheese, I frequently utilize many different varieties of mushrooms in my cooking. They can get rather expensive once you start getting into the gourmet varieties so we have decided to grow our own starting with Portobellas. I'm hoping to get all the necessary information at this years mushroom fair which includes cooking and growing demonstrations as well as volunteers on hand to identify your own 'found' mushrooms.
When: Sunday, February 20, 2011
from 10:30-3:30pm Where: Balboa Park, Casa Del Prado Building, Room 101 What: All things mushroom How: Through your generous donations
Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, now back to work! Our first post of the New Year focuses on some very late/early spring cleaning we have had on our list since our very first post where we lost our beloved artichoke.
Finding it unfathomable that a gopher could exist in a concrete jungle we searched for possible reasons as to why our plants roots were disappearing overnight. We settled on some sort of soil borne disease that fed on our plants because we had never seen any signs of a gopher. I grew up in a yard of gophers and could see their mounds and tunnels from a mile away. Well it turns out that our gopher is very sensible of this fact and has managed to keep a very low profile, until recently.
Two dead Borage plants later I finally spied a tunnel and then a mound of dirt. Now, I'm the last person who would kill anything, I save daddy long legs for gosh sakes but this guy has taken it too far. I called in our resident gopher expert for some sage advice on ending this little guys reign of terror.
Her first advice was get the right trap. Essentially the metal style is the best, the one featured on the video has been passed down through generations of gardeners but a similar style can be found at Home Depot. Secondly we looked for the most active hole and we opened it wide up to fresh air and plenty of sunlight. Now it's time to set the trap.
After the trap was placed in the hole we placed a board across the hole and fenced it off so our dogs could not be harmed by it. Now we wait...tomorrow morning I will go down and see if we were successful. If not we will explore our next options together. Stay tuned
**Update**
1/7/11 The only thing the trap caught was a bunch of well packed dirt, to be continued....
1/10/11 Well R.I.P Mr. Gopher, you will not be missed. After the third try and much WD-40 we were successful in our efforts. The scene this morning reminded me of instances where I have come upon a car collision and cannot quite fathom how it was possible for the cars to get themselves in there respective locations. The gophers main hole where the trap was placed was filled with dirt and nasturtium remnants and he was outside the hole. Go figure.
Our first of fall harvest is ready and I don't know about you guys but I'm looking for any reason to turn on the oven this time of year. Cheddar Cauliflower was the first crop ready this season and I have never grown it before, I was pleasantly suprised by it's beautiful bright orange color. Once I cut it up it looked like a bowl of cheddar popcorn!
There is nothing like potato gratin so why not try cauliflower gratin? I found a great recipe from the Barefoot Contessa and decided to give it a try. It was easy and quick. So delicious!
As with all things we consume and purchase these days it seems as though we have to constantly be on guard. Where did this come from? How was it raised/grown? What's in it? and the list goes on and on....
Us "organic" home gardeners and backyard chicken raisers tend to, I will admit it, feel a little smug but we have to be just as mindful as everyone else. Every time I let my guard down and allow myself to be lulled into a false sense of security I'm jarred back into reality.
This time in the form of arsenic in chicken feed, the feed is claimed to have elevated children's arsenic levels 50% and more above safe levels after consuming eggs from their backyard chickens. The additive at the forefront of this is Roxarsone and I urge everyone with backyard chickens to take 5 minutes and go outside and get the ingredients off of your chickens feed and study it. Although most feed suppliers have discontinued the use of the additive I think you might be surprised just how many ingredients you cannot identify yet alone pronounce.
Ingredients like Ammonium Hydroxide (yep, that's the same one as your floor cleaner), Bentomite (a clay that can be found in cat litter) and the ever popular and broad artificial flavoring category which could and does contain just about anything. I have to ask myself is it necessary for our chickens and ourselves to consume these chemicals? You might find ingredients even more mystifying then these, take a minute to enter them into your google search engine and see what comes up. I wager you might be questioning why you or your chicken needs things like Methionine Liquid.
Lucky for us gardeners we have a happy selection of foods for our chickens to forage and hopefully some not so happy bugs because if we look back to our chickens prehistoric ancestors they certainly weren't living off of corn and soybean meal.
Pollinators have a hard time finding food once all the spring flowers have died and gardeners focus on their winter crops but we could still use their services. Bees prefer the bright white, yellow and blue flowers while butterflies look for bright red and purple flowers.
Here is a list of plants that can brighten up your fall/winter garden as well as provide food and shelter for your hard workers.
1. Agastache (Hummingbird Mint)- Blooms through fall providing nectar to hummingbirds and butterflies. 'Blue Fortune' the dwarf variety only gets 3-4'. 2. Bluebeard - Bees love this late summer bloomer. 3. California Goldenrod - Late bloomer that provides food to the three B's! Bees, Birds and Butterflies. 4. Coreopsis Lanceolata - Good source of nectar that blooms well into summer with regular deadheading. 5. Gallardia - Oranges and Lemons as well as the dwarf goblin are long bloomers with deadheading. 6. Prince Calico Aster - Native to North America, blooms late summer through fall, attracts bees and butterflies. 7. Rosemary - A great choice for bees that blooms late into the season and adds great flavor in recipes. 8. Rudbeckia - Late season bloomer, provides food for butterflies. 9. Scabiosa (Pincuchion Flower) - Butterfly Blue attracts just what it's name suggest and with deadheading will bloom throughout summer into fall. 10. Yarrow (Moonshine) - Great food source for native pollinators that blooms through summer.
