This weekend was apple butter: couple trees in a park nearby must have recently dropped their fruit, so it was bruised but un-buggy, which is perfectly fine. Did catch one tree still fresh, though. This years composition is far more on the tart side, so I'm happy. 
Look up Jaques Pepin's apple coring videos. I haven't mastered it myself, but I refuse to use those corers. Paring knife or bust.
Look up Jaques Pepin's apple coring videos. I haven't mastered it myself, but I refuse to use those corers. Paring knife or bust.
We don't have the apple trees any more -- after a while the product was really inferior.
When choosing super market apples for pies I find that using two varieties makes a superior tasting pie.
Corn, tomatoes and peaches have been particularly good this year.
Yes, I was at my fave corn place the other day, and they had some no-spray peaches as well, 25 cents each or 12 for a dollar. Needless to say I got a dozen, and have had a sliced peach and a handful of blueberries on my cereal every morning this week.
I roasted 2 ears of the corn and cut the kernels off the cob, and also roasted a big fresh green pepper, a nice ripe tomato, half a sweet onion, a couple of jalapenos and a couple cloves of garlic. Peeled and chopped the roasted onion, garlic, tomato, and peppers, mixed with the roasted corn, added a chopped avocado, salt, chopped fresh coriander leaf, and juice of half a lime. Roasted corn salsa ftw! (thinking I should have put some peach in it)
Nice tip!
My corn didn't come in well this year, the seeds may be too old. I bought a pound a few years ago. Seems my local farmer friends were right they really don't keep. If course a pound from a farm supply source cost less than a small packet at the local shops.
I am having two ailing sugar maple trees removed. Nothing like a 120' tree dropping dead branches. There was a third but it came down in a storm. Took out a fence. One of the two goes over the empty next door wood frame house.
Awarded the work to two firms that never got around to felling them! Found a third that looks like they will actually do it!
Once the trees are down I will put up a trellis for the grape vine that is growing on a third really horrible shape tree. It is really a hollow trunk home for wild life. A fifth cherry tree next door came down on its' own this year with no damage.
I did plant three fire maples at my shop and even with trucks driving over one sapling all three are now over five feet. At the shop I am killing a small plot of rather aggressive weeds so that next year I can put in corn. I let the shop neighbors take as much as they want.
Now of interest is the empty house is for sale at a price that in my opinion is too high for the shape it is in. I do expect it to at least loose a chimney if not collapse in the next few years. Neighbors on the other side put up a fence over their property line! They also set off Independence Day fire works that landed in the dead brush next to the empty house. So there still might be excitement down the road. (My garden hose has nowhere near the pressure or volume to extinguish even a modest fire. So clearing the dead and dying wood seems to be of some priority.)
After reading the above post, I quietly bought some Indian River tomato seeds and put them under the grow lights. Got 20 seedlings which I transplanted into 4" pots and allowed to grow a foot tall. Chose the strongest looking two of them and transplanted them outdoors, among the other 28 varieties previously planted.
Regrettably, I don't seem to have adequate sunlight to let Indian River plants synthesize the really excellent flavor molecules. There have been plenty of ripe Indian River tomatoes but all of them were flavorless. Water balloons. I'm doubtful that they'll get any better before the end of the season, we shall see.
Meanwhile the big orange "KBX" heirlooms (link) are spectacular this week, as are all of the cherry varieties. The other big whomper tomatoes have been disappointments, same as Indian River. I guess my growing area, in a deep hole surrounded by redwood trees, only gets enough sunlight for a very few types of tomato plants to create tasty fruit. Twas worth trying though.
Our CSA farm has been experimenting with varieties after a blight two years ago that wiped out the entire crop. There were some great small 2-3" ones this year (I have to ask the farmer for seed info), the heirlooms are just showing up in our shares due to the cold spring and horrible rains.
Ed, the grow lights part of my tomato journey was the very smoothest and easiest part. I bought two 4 foot long fixtures that each hold 6 grow light fluorescent tubes called "T5 HO" . Here are the fixtures on amazon
Amazon.com : T5 HO Grow Light - 4 FT 6 Lamps - DL846S Fluorescent Hydroponic Fixture Bloom Veg Daisy Chain with Bulbs : Garden & Outdoor
I also bought a couple of stand racks from amazon that allow me to hoist the light fixtures up and down, so they're always exactly the right distance from the tops of the plants, as the plants grow. Those, and four cheap heat-mats, were all I needed to germinate 4 cellular flats (50 cells/flat), and then put the transplanted seedlings in 4" pots, back under the lights until they grew a foot tall.
Where I had trouble was out in the garden, when the plants were 5 feet tall and laden with unripe fruit, on days when a 40 mph windstorm would come through.
Amazon.com : T5 HO Grow Light - 4 FT 6 Lamps - DL846S Fluorescent Hydroponic Fixture Bloom Veg Daisy Chain with Bulbs : Garden & Outdoor
I also bought a couple of stand racks from amazon that allow me to hoist the light fixtures up and down, so they're always exactly the right distance from the tops of the plants, as the plants grow. Those, and four cheap heat-mats, were all I needed to germinate 4 cellular flats (50 cells/flat), and then put the transplanted seedlings in 4" pots, back under the lights until they grew a foot tall.
Where I had trouble was out in the garden, when the plants were 5 feet tall and laden with unripe fruit, on days when a 40 mph windstorm would come through.
One of my options is putting a greenhouse along the south side of my house. It would be 32' x 6'. It would require protection heat for the worst of winter and the roof above would need snow/ice breakers. Entry would change on window into a door.
But I think I will start small with an LED grow room. I like the idea of year round fresh food without any pesticides or weed killers.
But I think I will start small with an LED grow room. I like the idea of year round fresh food without any pesticides or weed killers.
LED grow lights are a scam as far as I'm concerned unless you pay through the nose for them from a reputable brand. Just stick with T5HO tubes, the more the merrier. Hydro shops on ebay will gladly sell you a $50 AUD (seen them as cheap as this) twin tube T5HO assembly.
There is also a thing called a 250w Metal Halide grow light if you are annoyed at power consumption of 400w or larger tubes. Kind of hard to get but worth it? Dont know, it depends on the size of your crop, a 250w MH with reflector will cover a very large crop that is for sure. For small time stuff stick with T5HO.
The best method for growing leafy veggies is under grow lights in a grow tent. That way they don't get attacked by bugs. Specifically Blackfly here in Australia.
Of course there is nothing quite like outdoors growth., free water and sunlight and if you have chickens free fertilizer and eggs, I'm planning on expanding my home farming with a 200 meter squared lot growing everything from sweet potato to pumpkins and sweet corn.
There is also a thing called a 250w Metal Halide grow light if you are annoyed at power consumption of 400w or larger tubes. Kind of hard to get but worth it? Dont know, it depends on the size of your crop, a 250w MH with reflector will cover a very large crop that is for sure. For small time stuff stick with T5HO.
The best method for growing leafy veggies is under grow lights in a grow tent. That way they don't get attacked by bugs. Specifically Blackfly here in Australia.
Of course there is nothing quite like outdoors growth., free water and sunlight and if you have chickens free fertilizer and eggs, I'm planning on expanding my home farming with a 200 meter squared lot growing everything from sweet potato to pumpkins and sweet corn.
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I use 24" Florescent grow lamps to start my sets in February. My setup is in my garage with heat mats.
Last winter I used the lamps for my indoor plants during part of the winter and they seemed to help.
I'm going to try some of the LED grow lamps for the house plants this year to see how they do compared to the florescent grow lamps.
I wonder about the ones that advertised short wave UV as part of the LED spectrum. Not something I want to look at directly, but I wonder if it would be a problem with reflected light?
Last winter I used the lamps for my indoor plants during part of the winter and they seemed to help.
I'm going to try some of the LED grow lamps for the house plants this year to see how they do compared to the florescent grow lamps.
I wonder about the ones that advertised short wave UV as part of the LED spectrum. Not something I want to look at directly, but I wonder if it would be a problem with reflected light?
Yeah same with a friend of mine except it was his basement and the RCMP. He might have been OK if his wife hadn't run for office.
When I bought my house the second floor back room had two deadbolts on the door. The front outside entrance door had all the paint peeling off from too much humidity escaping the house through it. I found a very nice old mechanical Mettler balance scale among the junk left inside that sold very nicely on eBay. Also found a more modern digital scale.
Wonder why?
As to UV in grow lights it seems to be useful according to some but at a level lower than in sunlight.
Wonder why?
As to UV in grow lights it seems to be useful according to some but at a level lower than in sunlight.