For some time, I’ve been looking for something to put in the raised planter in the middle of my yard. Although my backyard is my mini-farm/orchard/vineyard,berry patch, I’ve always wanted to have a pretty ornamental in the central planter of the yard. I thought I would put in a small Japanese maple, but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. A week ago, I was reminded that a local nursery was getting out of the retail business and had an 80% off sale. I figured it was a pretty good time to use the $25 gift certificate I had picked up at a fund raiser several years ago, so I went to the nursery in search of the perfect Japanese maple. The nursery didn’t carry Japanese maples, but as I was walking around with one of the staff members, I asked about the pretty pink fuchsia in the five-gallon pot. Five minutes and five dollars later, I was loading the fuchsia in my car.

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.

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.

I’ve been a supporter of labeling genetically engineered foods ever since I heard of them. I don’t have time to go into all the reasons here, but read the following press release of good news for California:

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.

Dinner made from all homegrown ingredients.A couple years ago, I cooked a meal for the guys in my men’s group that I called a Michael Pollan-type meal. By that, I meant that the ingredients were primarily home-grown, following one of the meals in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. From my previous posting about that meal, I count eight different foods I prepared that were from my garden. This week, I repeated that exercise, again cooking for the guys in my men’s group. This time the menu was not only quite different, but included many more dishes and ingredients from my garden. Following is the menu. Homegrown-fruit dessert bowl, with apples, blueberries, apriums and pepino dulce.All ingredients except beverages, vodka & sugar (in the liqueur), oils and vinegar were homegrown, for a total of 16 homegrown ingredients, not counting multiple varieties of the same ingredient. It was both a tasty and colorful meal!

(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.

EntreĆ©–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.

We all have our habits. One of mine is the kinds of things I eat. Depending upon the crop, I eat roots, stems, leaves and fruits. For some reason, (more…)

I had the good fortune of learning years ago (Boy Scouts, cooking merit badge) that the common weed purslane (Portulaca oleracea) is edible. Outside the United States, (more…)

This recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides evidence that people have been doing selective breeding of plants–using evolutionary concepts of selection–as early as 10,000 years ago. This work continues today.

However, I post this research here with a warning. (more…)

aprium harvestI’m struggling with language here, so any advice is appreciated. An aprium is a new fruit variety, created by Zaiger Genetics. It’s 3/4 apricot and 1/4 plum, just the reverse of a pluot, also developed by Zaiger Genetics. (Before rambling on about my garden, I should mention that the SF Chronicle had a nice article on the Zaiger family a few days ago. I visited their farm a few years ago while on a tasting tour and met them. They’re good people, and (more…)

Nicholas Kristof has a nice summary of one of the major problems we face as a culture, antibiotic resistance of dangerous bacteria, due to massive overuse of antibiotics in agriculture. Read his NY Times column on the topic. If you don’t know about this problem, or, even if you do, this is a must-read article. Our Federal government (we won’t get into state government problems here) no longer watches out for public health, but focuses instead on the health of large corporations. This is the tragedy of modern American politics and governance. His article describes just one instance of this in agriculture, which is just one industry where this is true.

Pepino dulce Solanum muricatumLast year I heard about another fruit I hadn’t tried, Pepino dulce. It’s a plant from South America that no longer is found in the wild, but is a domesticated fruit-bearing shrub. The fruit is reputed to taste like a kiwi fruit. Last summer, (more…)

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