Knowing a storm was coming up at the end of the week, I planted the fuchsia on Wednesday week. I look forward to learning more about this plant and having it’s lovely flowers grace my garden in the coming years.

Rain gauge at 2.5 inches from yesterday's storm.

That was a nice storm yesterday, the first good one since early October, if I’m not mistaken. I’ve been watering my winter crops with rainwater from that early storm, using about 200 gallons so far. It’s unusual to need to irrigate in the winter, but I’m glad I’ve got my rainwater collection system.

Yesterday’s storm (with a few drops from Thursday) totaled nearly 2.5 inches. That was enough to completely fill my rain barrels, giving me another 260 gallons of water for irrigation.

A side note about the rain gauge: I put this up a month ago, as part of dealing with leftovers from my parents’ home. This was a Christmas gift to my dad many years ago and I’m happy to provide it a new home. It took me a while to figure out where to put it, since I didn’t want it to be “influenced” by trees or buildings. The only good place I found is on my grape trellis I installed in 2010. Now, it’s very accessible and a welcome addition to my garden.

http://labelgmos.org/2011/11/california-ballot-initiative-to-require-labeling-of-genetically-engineered-foods-submitted-to-attorney-general/

I’ll be talking more to my friends about this in the near future, as I am committed to collecting signatures and placing this before the voters of California.

(The first photo shows the meal, except for the fruit dessert. The second photo shows the dessert in the serving bowl, before adding the blackberry liqueur. Click on the photos to see a larger image.)

Menu

Salad–Tomatoes (two varieties), cucumbers (two varieties) and purslane, dressed with vinegar and oil.

Entreé–dry beans, cooked, then sauteed with garlic and leeks.

Vegetable side dish 1–string beans.

Vegetable side dish 2–summer squash (three varieties).

Vegetable side dish 3–mixed greens (brocollini and beet greens)

Vegetable side dish 4–beets (boiled, chilled, then dressed with olive oil and vinegar).

Dessert–mixed fruit (apples, blueberries, apriums (pulled from the freezer) and pepino dulce) topped with homemade blackberry liqueur.

So, I’m minding my own business this morning when an email comes across my screen telling me of all the flowers I could be eating. Check out this link with a very long list of edible flowers, plus some sensible precautions. I hope I can change my habits and try eating some of the squash, apple, etc. flowers that I’m already growing but not eating yet.

Shown on this page are Calendula, apple, lemon, pineapple guava, leek, and okra blossoms, all from my garden, and all listed in the article as edible. And there are more. Oh, my, what have I been missing? (Click on any photo for a larger image.)

A few years ago I transplanted some from my front yard to my backyard and began cultivating it for consumption. This year I’m getting a great crop. Yesterday and today I picked a couple bowlfuls and ate some fresh, while freezing most of it for future use. The Wikipedia article has a picture of it in a Greek salad. I’ll have to give it a try in my favorite summer salad: tomatoes, cucumbers and feta cheese.

I encourage you to check your yard for it and give it a try. Growing food doesn’t have to be hard, but can be as simple as pulling a few weeds.

However, I post this research here with a warning. Industrial agriculture’s biotech wing will undoubtedly use this at some point to blow smoke on the issues surrounding genetically engineered crops. A pet peeve of mine about biotech agriculture is how it is not up-front about the issues. One of its alternative strategies is to use verbal trickery to discount the issues by lumping what they do with the traditional selective breeding that has gone on –as this article illustrates–for thousands of years. They do this using the term “genetically modified.”

There are a number of terms used to describe modern, high-tech genetic manipulation: genetic modification, genetic engineering and transgenic. While commonly used in a technical sense to mean the same as the other two terms, genetic modification can also be used in a non-technical sense to mean any human activity that manipulates an organisms genes. This includes, of course, traditional methods of selective breeding and cross-breeding of closely related organisms. By lumping modern techniques that insert genes from totally unrelated organisms with traditional methods, biotech agriculture is trying to make people think they are the same process. They are not.

So, when I talk or write about modern methods, I prefer to use the term genetic engineering. This clearly gets the point across that this is a modern, high-tech method that differs from traditional methods. Although I don’t use the term transgenic because it requires more explanation to a non-technical audience, it means the same thing.

My advice: Keep an eye out for arguments made by proponents of genetic engineering. Somewhere along the way, they will probably use the term genetic modification. When they do, they are also likely to make a claim like “People have practiced genetic modification techniques for thousands of years. We wouldn’t have today’s foods if we didn’t have genetic modification.” Recognize that they are using the term in a non-technical way to lull you into believing it is a benign process similar to traditional methods. It is not.

OK, let me put an ecological slant on my aprium tree, since ecology is the them of this blog (see how I neatly avoided using the plural?). I’ve posted before on how backyard food production differs from commercial production. Instead of monocropping with massive amounts of just one or a few crops, backyard production is best served by having small amounts of a large variety of crops. My aprium has served me well in this regard this year. After a large crop of apricots last year, I thinned my apricots aggressively this year. About a week later, we had another spring storm that knocked most of the remaining blossoms off the tree. Net result: I have two apricots on my tree this summer. But, having let my aprium produce some fruit this year for the first time has paid off. I’ve had a small but good harvest of aprii this year (ooops, had to use the plural). They’ve filled in nicely for the “missing” apricots. The point? Crop diversity is very important if you want to have a regular supply of food.

There’s certainly a lesson here for industrial agriculture, since loss of a single crop that is the only crop, means losing lots of money. Just as biodiversity in an ecosystem means a more stable ecosystem, crop diversity means a more stable farm income. That’s the way it used to be on family farms, but industrial-scale agriculture has changed that.

So, you might still be wondering: What does an aprium taste like? Apriums are a bit less tart than an apricot and a bit sweeter. (There, I’ve given equal time to both plural forms.)

I was surprised last week, when I took a closer look at my Pepino and found about 8-10 fruits already developing. Beautiful little things, aren’t they? I can hardly wait to see what they taste like. To be continued….