Upright Vertical Squash

 I found this garden on youtube, which is pretty impressive.  It Shows how to grow on limited space.  Demonstrates upright growing maintenance and care for squash.  Check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of3qE1R6wnw&feature=colike

Does a Bad Seed Float or Sink?

"Are my seeds bad?"

I was curious about floating and sinking seeds. So I decided to do some digging, or should I say diving?  What I found was that it really depends on the kind of seeds you're working with.

Found this post on gardenweb http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/seedsave/msg0921141511182.html

Raw Veggies or Cooked Veggies?

An excellent post that breaks down why some foods are best consumed cooked.

http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/think-raw-veggies-are-best-think-again/

Epsom Salt on Plants

Are epsom salts good for plants?

There is a bit of uncertainty concerning using epsom salts on your plants.  Research shows little effects, but gardeners have been using epsom salts on their rose bushes, tomatoes & peppers with obvious positive effect.

Use:
The general guideline for application is 1-2 tablespoons diluted in 1 gallon of water.  Applied as much as every other week.

Benefit:
Epsom salts include sulfur and magnesium, both of which are necessary minerals for plants.

Concerns:
Soil salinity - build up of excess salt (of varying types) in growing beds.  More than just epsom salt, many commercial fertizers are mineral based, and often times excess minerals that aren't used by the plants can build up in the soil.  As these excess minerals build up, it make it much harder for the plant to absorb water and nutrients.  Furthermore, salty soil diminishes moisture in the plant by sucking water out of plants in an effort to neutralize salinity.

Read more: Saline Water's Effect on Plant Growth | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/info_12140281_saline-waters-effect-plant-growth.html#ixzz23j6lqckv

More on epsom salts for plants on youtube.  FriedasGarden

So the short answer is yes, you can use epsom salts on your plants. Just make sure it's not too much or too often. 

The first harvest!

 

Yes I know, it's still February, but I couldn't wait.  So here you have it, the first harvest of the year.  Two beautiful romaine lettuce plants.

Even though these plants could have gotten a little bit larger, I decided to go ahead and harvest them anyway.  I mean what can I say, I was anxious.  Well there's that and the fact that I found a chicken IN MY GREENHOUSE this morning.  She must have snuck in at night, and got stuck there.  Chicken bliss I'd say.  Fortunately the damage was minimal, but because these two plants were pushed over I decided to pull them.

Surprisingly, that wasn't the strangest thing that happened this morning.  You see generally I don't go looking for a missing chicken.  But I found one of the girls on top of the hen house.

 

Besides wondering how in the heck she got up there, I wondered, why?  My next thought was, maybe she got scared up there, and then I started wondering if the chickens got attacked.  This prompted me to do a head count, and sure enough we were short one.   Well after some searching I found her where I said, in my greenhouse, just chillin'.

Open Source Ecology

NPR had a story on a network of farmers, engineers, and supporters that for the last two years has been creating the Global Village Construction Set, an open source, low-cost, high performance technological platform that allows for the easy, DIY fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a sustainable civilization with modern comforts. The GVCS lowers the barriers to entry into farming, building, and manufacturing and can be seen as a life-size lego-like set of modular tools that can create entire economies, whether in rural Missouri, where the project was founded, in urban redevelopment, or in the developing world.

Check out the story here:
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/19/147110017/building-a-village-one-home-brewed-tool-at-a-time

and be sure to check out http://opensourceecology.org/

Giant Egg

I was collecting the eggs the other day and I found what had to be the largest egg we've gotten to date.  I mean as far as eggs go, this sucker was like a bowling ball.  We held it up to the light and it looks like it could have up to 3 yolks inside.  Talk about an omelette maker, this would be the only egg you need.  Now i'm sure that anyone who has chickens isn't so surprised by this as it isn't that rare after all, but for everyone else, I love to share.

I Saw a Bee in January

I was outside cutting wood the other day, and for the past few hours I'd been wondering. Why?  Heck, new years was just a few days ago - I could still taste the cucumber flavored vodka in my mind.  But outside the temperature is over 50 and in a t-shirt I was fine.  I'd never known such a warm stretch of days in the middle of the winter.  But then again, it's not like it hasn't happened before.  At least this time it was to my benefit.  This weather was perfect for chopping wood.

A thing about chopping wood, even though it can be time consuming, it's very much a sort of zen type activity.  The day was so nice, that combined with the chore at task, it was difficult not to slip into thought.  Now what could have easily been a 15 minute task, took double that.  No matter.  I've come to accept and rather enjoy taking my time.  After all, in general the amount of work I have to do never really seems to reduce.

In spite of this I still manage to catch nature at work regularly, this time, on a much smaller scale.  A honey bee catches my attention.  Now what in the world would a honey bee, be doing out this time of year?  I begin to consider the fate of this bee.  Death possibly.  I mean, being realistic, there is nothing for this bee to eat.  Or maybe he will just go back to his hive and hibernate a little more.

Then I look closer at the bee.  So clean and fresh, almost new in a way.  I watch as the bee moves from each end of the freshly cut wood, likely looking for moisture.  Perhaps attracted by the smell.  It didn't matter, this creature had my fascination.  Then the School bell rings.

I realized that my connection with the time and space of that bee had been interrupted.  Automatically I search for the bee and try to focus again, but my mind won't let me.  I have a task at hand, to chop the wood.  No matter, this is not the point anyway.

In fact, there really isn't one.  Except that I saw a bee, in January.