Citrus Celebration

It's that time of year when most of the citrus needs to be picked and enjoyed. From my yard... Grapefruit, Tangerines, Valencia Oranges, Washington Navel Oranges, Limes, and Lemons. So many permutations for making juice ...and margaritas!

Bad Timing to Ask for a Handout?

Today in sunny Southern California, I rode my bicycle in shorts and then later picked fresh, ripe strawberries from my garden. Meanwhile, it seems the rest of the US is in the grips of a brutally cold arctic blast. That's a shame. So I was wondering... how is the rest of the country going to respond to California's request for a 6.9 billion dollar handout from the Federal Government to help us with our budget crisis?

A Perfect Weekend

Finally, after six months of things-are-not-quite-right weekends, the past 48 hours have been pretty much perfect. Allow me to bore you with the details....

Wife's Holiday Party
I've been told that a classic symptom of an introvert is that you dread going to parties, but you almost always end up having a really good time. That's me to a tee. Gina has worked at the same company for 24 years and I think I've been to all but one of her company's holiday parties. Some years are more memorable than others --the drunken, skirt-lifting affair comes to mind-- but they're always enjoyable. Like Friday: Tasty food and wine, along with good conversation. Our table won the trivia contest, albeit with some help from internet-connected iPhones. Then, after dinner, Gina danced and I played poker. The first few hands were bleak. The dealer was flirty with the cuties, and Lady Luck was not flirty with me. Twice I lost big with two pair, and then when I drew an inside straight, I ended up splitting the pot. But on the final hand of the night, when everyone goes all in, I nailed a flush and took it all.

Saturday Ride (Bonk-a-rama!)
All week I'd been excited to do the group ride, especially with near-certain rain for the next four days. Plus I really, really need to train. But all that logic goes out the window when the alarm goes off and you're still dog tired and outside the covers is dark and freezing cold and really early. Inside the covers is cozy warm and my sweetie is near. Why get up?! Because, that's what we do, isn't it. 8:00 downtown and I see that 40-50 other riders also got up in the cold dark early. The ride began with nice chatty tempo pace, but as per normal, the climbs sorted us out. I immediately fell back from the leaders and decided the remainder of this ride should be done solo. Skip the regroup, onward to the lake, Ventura, and up the coast back toward SB. Nice power on the rollers at first, but by three hours my fuel light went on and all I had left to eat was a small baggie of raisins. 40 miles to home.

Side story: I have a personal Thanksgiving tradition, and it goes something like this. Leave mid-morning for a four-hour ride. Carry no food. Inevitably a nice bonk will arrive at about three hours, just when the aromas from amazing Thanksgiving feasts begin to waft into the air. Savor the sensations: gnawing hunger, weak legs, slight headache, delicious smells. My theory is, a good old fashioned bonk kicks your metabolism and fitness up a notch.

Anyway, back to the weekend... I missed the Thanksgiving bonk ride this year, so Saturday looked like a good make-up opportunity. By Carp, I was mindlessly turning circles in the 39x17 at 15 mph. By SB, I moved up to the 19 and down to 13 mph. Literal State St. crawl. I saw big-time pro I-AM-TED-KING sitting alone at a coffee shop in full Cervelo kit, and my normal pro-ho tendency would have been to stop and chat (annoy, harass, stalk) him, but this bonk was serious business so I plodded on by. The smell of In-and-Out onion rings almost killed me, but I persevered. At 4 hours and 50 minutes, I arrived home and went straight to the kitchen to fry up some eggs and drench some toast with melted butter which I enjoyed immensely while growing mushrooms in my chamois.

A Nap!!!
After a long ride, a meal, and a shower ...is there anything better?

A Marathon in Town
A huge, huge event for our little community and the organizers did an incredible job of pulling it off. The Santa Barbara International Marathon had a couple thousand runners, which seems like a pretty good turn-out for an inaugural event. Gina decided to run (her 12th marathon in 12 years!) so I rode around to cheer and snap a few pictures of her and some other runners:

One of the most amazing things about Gina is her consistency and her ability to stick to a plan. All but her very first marathon have been in the 3:20-3:30 range. This year she targeted 3:30 which is a nice even time with a bit less pressure than her usual 3:20 goal. Despite the constantly changing slope of our local roads, she stuck to the effort level she knew was right and completed the 26.2 in 3:29:58. Incredible.


And you thought Chicken Rancher Gabe Garcia was just a sprinter! Look at him smiling here on the Cliff Dr. hill after already pounding out 23 miles. His goal was 3:30 also but he went a tad too fast and finished in 3:29:21. Congrats Gabe!


Lunchtime OSM rider Leif Reynolds is also a good runner and this was his 3rd (?) marathon so he knew what he was doing. He also looked quite comfortable climbing that brutal hill on his way to a 3:16:44.


Lots of press about the fast women entrants, and the smart money was on local speedster Drea McLarty to take the vee. But press leads to pressure, which can be a burden on race day sometimes. Well, not this time. She ran away from the field to win in a powerful 2:52:23, 11th overall and a solid eight minutes in front of the next woman. Wow!

Also notable for the cycling community was Eric Forte's performance (2:51:13 for 9th overall) and Nikola Valerjev's run in 3:26:31. Who says cyclists can't run?!

So inspirational was this event and those awesome runners, that I'm going to join the fun next year.


Farmers' Market, Lunch, and Coffee
...with brother and sister-in-law on Sunday afternoon. Nice that he'll still hang with us common folk since he's now a national TV star after his appearance on "Top Chef" and all. Rumor has it he'll be on a future episode of "The Bachelor" as well! Really.

Gardening
My garden really suffered during the remodel, but now it's finally getting the attention it needs. Amazingly, a bunch of summer crops were still producing so I picked a few things...


...and also finally planted my winter veggies. From seed: lettuce, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, cilantro, onions, Fava beans, and peas. Also pushed a bunch of garlic cloves in the ground. As soon as the rain lets up, I'll plant a bunch of flower seeds too, so that by next spring and summer we can have a beautiful mix of color and food. The added bonus, of course, is that the flowers will attract and feed a diverse population of predator bugs that keep the pests under control. Nature is amazing.

So that was my weekend, and it doesn't get any better than that.

From Dirt to Dinner

My "if-money-were-no-object" fantasy is to develop and manage a small farm just outside of town along with a small co-located restaurant where nearly all the food is grown or raised on the property. Naturally the menu would be seasonal, perhaps even changing daily depending on the vagaries of farming successes and failures. This fantasy would be the ultimate in eating local and farm-fresh-to-table. For those customers who want a stronger connection with their food, I'd encourage them to tour the farm before or after they eat. Maybe we'd also have a small farm stand to sell any extra produce.

This idea is half-baked at best, but my gut tells me it's doable, although perhaps not particularly profitable. I'd guess 10-20 acres could support a 5-10 table restaurant. That's asking the land to be a lot more productive than what we see currently in our industrial-farming paradigm, where it takes about 1.5+ acres to feed each man, woman, and child in the US. That is a real problem, by the way, because it's almost precisely the amount of arable land available per capita. As the graph below shows, the trends are troubling...


...because our population is growing and our arable land is disappearing (to erosion, depletion, and urban sprawl). What happens when we cross over? Do we become a net importer of food, dependent on foreign countries for our nutrition? Even now, with most of our food grown in the US, the average meal travels 1,500 miles to reach your plate. That's just nuts. And don't even get me started on the environmental damage done by the industrial farming mega businesses. Here's an industrial dairy's manure lagoon to whet your appetite:


Yum... I bet that's some tasty groundwater coming up from those wells in nearby towns. The really crazy thing is that the manure should be a valuable asset to the local agriculture, if it just weren't so concentrated in the feed lots and not full of pharmaceuticals and hormones. For a better way, see Polyface Farms, the place made famous in the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma".

What can you do? Lots of things. Buy local, eat lower on the food chain, grow some of your own fruits and vegetables. For those blog readers here in Santa Barbara County, consider signing the online petition to urge our leaders to preserve Goleta farmland.

...

But anyway... all that stuff above is not what I really intended to write about. All I really wanted to post was the two pictures below.

First picture shows a portion of what I harvested from my backyard on Saturday. The potatoes were mostly a failure because all I got from about 40 sq. feet was a single brown bag full. Most of the plants died from pests or disease. I think next time I'll try to grow them in containers. But everything else in the picture has been wildly successful. We have enough carrots and garlic to last for a year. In fact, I've been giving away most of the garlic. The onions have done well as have the squash. Rosemary is always around.


...and so we combined all that and tossed with some olive oil and roasted it for about an hour. Paired with herb roasted chicken and a mellow merlot, and this was dinner in our makeshift kitchen on our cheapo Corelle plates:

Alice Waters Rocks

(If the video doesn't work for you, try here instead.)

Update

...or lack thereof, as it were. One word sums up my life in the last couple of weeks: triage. Some things get critical attention, others are deferred, and some get blown off completely. This blog has been in that last category for awhile now. Not that there's not stuff to write about. Lot's of topics rattling around in that half-empty block atop my shoulders. How about a quick shotgun blast of verbiage on a couple topics, just to keep this blog rolling along...

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San Dimas Stage Race:
An impressive weekend for Cody with a 2nd place in the Pro RR and a 4th in the crit, and that's against many of the best domestic riders in the US. But do you remember another SB rider to snag the silver in that San Dimas Pro RR not too long ago, getting pipped just barely by Chris Horner?

The Masters races looked interesting to this observer and I'm sure there are some stories below the surface of the results pages. In the 35+, the change from the Day-1 TT to the final g.c. results show how important time bonuses can be, and also how crucial it is to have a solid cohesive team. Chris DeMarchi won in large part because he scooped up nearly 50 seconds of bonuses. Congrats to Chris and his Amgen/Giant brethren:


Greg Leibert used a great TT and help from a solid Cynergy team to claim a well-deserved 45+ win.

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Training
Uhhhhhh.. next topic.

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Home Remodel Update
This is starting to get very real. The architect is done and we really enjoyed working with him. It cost around $12,000 but was extremely useful. He was equal parts interior designer, lighting expert, ergonomic consultant, structural whiz, and bureaucracy expediter. He will continue to consult when we start construction. We have two teams bidding for us, and we really like both of them. Unless their numbers are vastly different, we will struggle to decide which to use.

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Gardening Update
In this triage process of my life, I must admit that gardening is ranking above training on the importance scale. There are certain times of the year when stuff just needs to get done in the garden, and this is one of them. Seasons change and don't wait for you to get your act together.

Some pictures (apologies to those who've seen them already on Facebook):

A while back I bought a Raspberry plant in a 3-gallon pot and it was extremely root-bound and overgrown. I divided the root ball into seven parts and planted them all, figuring maybe half would take. Now, six weeks later, they're all growing and looking really healthy. Across the walkway from these, however, I planted six Asparagus crowns and unfortunately only one has survived. You win some, you lose some... but there's always next year.


I mulched my Strawberries with straw. Novel concept, eh?! Well it turns out that straw is full of wheat seeds, so now I also have a crop of wheat growing in the Strawberry patch!


I just picked seven artichokes yesterday from these thriving plants. I have a recipe for using Artichokes, Fava beans, Garlic greens, Lemon, and Thyme, all of which I can harvest from my backyard right now. By the way, I've also picked a huge crop of slugs from these same Artichoke plants, but I haven't found a recipe for those yet.


First-time potato farmer, and so far they're doing well. Companion planted with Garlic and Rosemary (not shown here because I planted after the picture). By summer I'll harvest them all together and make Mondo's famous potatoes!


Who knew greens could be so colorful?!? See the happy Fava beans along the side of these two beds.


Thinking ahead toward summer... tomato plants started inside. Roma and Brandywine.

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Lots more to blog about but now I think a training ride is bubbling up on the importance scale.

Random topics I'd like to pursue at some point...

1. "Retirement" is a thing of the past. Why? Prevalence of "defined contribution" plans and the woeful shortfall in people's savings. Those people with "defined benefit" plans will suffer their limited cost-of-living-adjustments in the coming era of much higher inflation. But anyway, why shouldn't people continue working at some level into their later years???

2. Paths kids choose, such as my daughter being baptized and confirmed Catholic despite no religious influence from her family. Lots to cogitate about that one.

3. Commitment-phobia -- What do you do when you see somebody who has an incredible, smart, funny, attractive, fit, and all-around awesome girlfriend, but he seems a bit frightened to take the obvious next step, as in getting married?

That is all. Time to ride.

Youthful Passion

When you are young, you spend way too much energy on sex...


...to the detriment of your long-term health.


I was told this yesterday by an expert in the field.


You just know how all-consuming it can be...


...whether or not you're getting any.


I blame it on genetics.


We're all wired to propagate the species.


And it's hard to resist instant gratification...


...to hold off in anticipation of sweeter fruit in the future.


But I know in my heart it's the right thing to do.


So today, after looking lovingly at my beautiful young Blueberry, covered in hundreds of tiny delicate flowers each with just a blush of pink...


...I proceeded to cut them all off!

That horny little plant better focus it's energy on long-term growth. For now.

In a few years, Blueberry orgy time!!! Hopefully all five get in on it. Three O'Neil, one Misty, and one Southmoon.



(ps. I wonder if this blog post will get a lot of hits for some reason??)

Tea Time

Corey Welles can ride a bike very fast, but he is also one smart cookie when it comes to organic horticulture. He's in charge of plant health at Ganna Walska Lotusland, which is home to some very rare and beautiful botanical specimens. Some are literally priceless, with genealogy traceable back to prehistoric times. It's Corey's job to keep those babies alive and thriving ...without using any chemicals. When Corey talks plants, I listen carefully.

And so it was a month or two ago on the Sunday group ride, that Corey told me about the Compost Tea Maker he just acquired for Lotusland. He told me about the beneficial effect on plant health, how the billions of microbes in the tea help suppress plant diseases and discourage insect pests. The plants at Lotusland are thriving and Corey says that Compost Tea is a cornerstone of their operation.

I decided I needed some of this magical brew too. For my plants. So I raced home and jumped on Google and probably spent an extra hour of chamois time researching Compost Tea. Sure enough, the organic gardening community raves about it. The only problem was that the equipment to brew the tea is not cheap. Even the units made for the home gardener ran a hundred dollars or more.

So after a bit more research, I concluded that the key component was really nothing more complicated than an aquarium aerator pump. You see, the crucial aspect of brewing Compost Tea is to oxygenate the water to breed a booming population of microorganisms. So off to the pet store I went, dropped $30 for the pump, and came home to brew Compost Tea. That was a week ago, and my backyard garden seems to have responded nicely, so I made another batch and documented it for your consumption...

Start with water in a five-gallon bucket. If the water is fresh, like from rain or a stream or directly from an underground well, then you're ready to go. Otherwise if it's from a municipal source, then you should run the pump in the water for a while to evaporate off the chlorine.


Next, take a shovel full of compost --about a quart or so-- and pile it on a piece of mesh fabric. You want the fabric to be permeable to water, but you want the compost material to stay inside when you enclose it. It is important that the compost be fully aged, preferably from a hot pile, so that it's free of diseases and pathogens. You want that dark and rich mix that smells like a forest after a rainstorm.


With a piece of twine or string, tie up the edges of the fabric so the compost is inside just like a tea bag. Leave enough extra string so you can hook it to something else so that you can hang the bag in the bucket. A couple other ingredients are helpful. Add a tablespoon or two of unsulphured molasses. This will feed the microbes. You can also add a tablespoon or two of a fish-emulsion/kelp fertilizer as a good nitrogen source for the plants.


Now hang the bag into the bucket and get about your day. The concoction needs 12-24 hours to fully brew.


By the next morning, the liquid has turned the color of your favorite dark beer, and it should have a rich, vaguely sweet and yeasty smell. You'll almost be tempted to drink it! Or not.

Dilute it with some additional de-chlorinated water and use it as a foliar spray, or pour it directly into the soil around your plants' roots. It's important to use it within a few hours because without the aeration, the microbes will begin to die.


So there you go. Homemade organic fertilizer, plus disease control and pest repellent.

Bad Mulch?

What happens to all that green waste we put out each week? What about all the debris from commercial tree trimming? Turns out that Santa Barbara County turns most of it into composted garden mulch and offers it for free back to the community. Check out the details here. I gathered some and put it around a couple of trees and they seem much happier, especially my semi-dwarf avocado. I'm sure y'all know the advantages to putting a layer of mulch on the ground... helps retain moisture, adds organic matter and improves soil structure, keeps the nearby roots cool, and suppresses weeds. Good stuff, that mulch.

So yesterday when I saw some city workers trimming the Brazilian Pepper trees on our street, and subsequently feeding them into the mother of all chipper/shredders, I asked if they could dump a bunch into my driveway. Sure thing, they said...

Thirty-seven wheelbarrow loads later, I had it spread around my yard on some bare spots and weedy areas. I was careful not to put this mulch too close to any plants because it was too fresh. As it begins to decay, it will suck nitrogen from the soil underneath, so it could harm the plants initially. It should be fine within a month or two.

Then later, on a whim, I googled "Mulching with Brazilian Pepper trees" and discovered that this particular species is hated in some places (especially Florida) because it's extremely invasive and hard to kill off. A couple sources recommended never making it into mulch. Seems it can propagate from the pieces and if you aren't careful, you'll end up with a forest growing from the mulch. Now you tell me!

Oh yeah, and on my ride yesterday a rabbit ran across the bike path and got decapitated in the spokes of the guy next to me, and blood and guts splashed up on me. It was gross.

Food Not Lawns ...Not Bikes

As you might expect based on the banner at the top of the page, this blog has been predominantly about bicycle racing, albeit with a few other topics thrown up from time to time. It's been a true reflection of my activities and impressions, and my posting frequency is usually a good indicator of how much I'm thinking about bike racing.

Or how little, as it were. Last week I did not use those few precious blocks of clear-weather time to crank out VO2Max intervals or climb tempo pace up the mountains. Instead I planted food. Lots of food. Blueberries, raspberries, asparagus, potatoes, garlic, onions, lettuce ...LOTS OF LETTUCE..., Fava beans, spinach, chard, cauliflower, soy beans (edamame), peas, and basil. My mind was in the garden and not in the saddle. Wait, that didn't sound right...

And it's not completely true either. I have watched most of the Tour of California, and marveled at the Pros' ability to race in horrible conditions. I've also been enjoying the race reports from SB riders who've been ripping apart pelotons all over California. Chesta-san taking a Cat-3 Vee at the UCLA RR in the desert, and C-Walk taking 2nd in P/1/2. Great placings from Chicken Ranchers John, Bob, Matt, and Danny up at the Velo Promo races, along with Derek Johnson and Steve Weixel, with the latter doing three races and bagging two top-10s. Finally, HeyRon, Chesta, and Brandon raced a crit in Brea this weekend, with Ron sprinting to a Bronze. Congrats to all.

I included all those links so you could read about bike racing, because the rest of this post is about gardening...

It's been three or four years since I dug up our back lawn and started a mini-farm. Gina rolled her eyes but went along with it because of the good supportive wife that she is. Besides, the lawn had died by that point and was being overrun by weeds. How much worse could it be? As the picture here shows, I planted crops in the rows-and-furrows style of a real farm. When the plants were mature, it was both productive and attractive.

But it wasn't the best approach. After every crop, I'd need to cultivate the soil and re-form the planting rows. That's pretty harsh on the soil life, and soil life is crucial to healthy plants. Watering was more difficult and wasteful, especially when the plants were young and their roots hadn't yet reached the furrows. Walking down the rows compacted the soil more than the plants like.

Last year I built a bunch of raised beds, shown in the picture here. Each bed has a drip irrigation system on its own valve. Lots of advantages to this approach. First, the soil fertility and life can flourish right where the plants need it, and you need not walk on it or disturb it after every crop. The size of the beds allows easy access so you can plant densely, in the so-called "French Gardening" technique. The drip system allows very efficient watering, and the drainage is good if it rains a lot (like lately).

One of the most exciting (haha) things about gardening is how dynamic it can be. Day-to-day and season-to-season. Californians can grow food year round, especially true here in Santa Barbara. The picture here is from this morning. Mostly greens and root crops are growing now.

Not visible in this picture, but I recently added a few new beds around the sides of the yard and house. Slowly but surely, this farm is taking over my entire 0.2-acre lot! Now if you think that doesn't sound like much room, check out what these good folks have done with the same sized tract-house lot.

Anyway, a few more pics with some details of what's growing now...

Collard Greens, a southern favorite, first time I ever tried growing these. Leaves are tough as leather but get tasty and tender with 20-30 minutes of steaming. I cooked these last week with garlic and onions, topped with bits of bacon. Served with cornbread and pork roast.


Hard neck garlic. Supposed to be a lot stronger taste than the grocery-store varieties which are mostly soft-neck. I'll let you know in a few months. The yellowing leaf tips are a sign that the soil is a bit too wet.


Chard is sure happy though!


Fava beans grow like crazy in the winter. Lots of biomass for green manure and also nitrogen-fixing roots. A great plant to grow. I hope to find a good Chianti soon.


I planted some Blueberries in a special bed that I'd prepared months ahead of time. Added lots of peat moss and some elemental sulfur to get the soil pH down to around 5.0. Blueberries need very acidic soil. If all goes well, they'll make a beautiful six-foot-tall hedge.


Compost is the real black gold. Early results of my son's science experiment shown in this picture. Equal number of spinach seeds planted three weeks ago. The soil on the right has been amended with our homemade compost, a very rich brew of kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, and Azomite. The soil on the left was amended a year ago with garden-variety store-bought potting mix. The results are dramatic, both the number of seeds germinating and the size and health of the young plants. We'll see over the next few weeks if the healthiest plants avoid bug problems.


One challenge with food gardening is getting the timing right. Sometimes you want to leave an area fallow, to give the soil a rest, but usually you want the ground to be productive. How to avoid long stretches with barren dirt in the vegetable beds? Easy! Plant seeds in flats and time it so they're ready to transplant as soon as the previous crop is finished. In fact, plant extra and give the "starts" to your friends and neighbors. Then later you can share the bounty.


OK, if you've read this far, perhaps you're interested in building a garden or expanding one you've already got going. Need motivation and/or ideas? Find a copy of "Food Not Lawns". The author is a grass-roots (haha) activist and she's been the inspiration for a growing movement. In Santa Barbara and want local help and advice? Check out the local chapter of Food Not Lawns. Looks like they'll even help you with installation!

This is the wave of the future.

You Go Girl!

Seems the nice weather has awakened my seasonal workers a bit early!

Rouge d'Hiver

This is an heirloom variety of lettuce (or Lactuca sativa for you botany nerds) from France that dates back to the 1800's. Of all the varieties I've grown, it's the most robust and problem-free, and coincidentally enough, is also one of our favorites to eat. Pick a bunch of these along with some other, more-crinkly loose-leaf lettuce and you've got yourself the basis for an awesome salad.

Add toasted walnuts, sliced apples, and feta cheese and top with a tasty Walnut-oil Vinaigrette:

2 Tbl. Apple cider vinegar
2 Tbl. Maple syrup
2 tsp. Dijon mustard
2 Tbl. Walnut oil
1/8 tsp. Salt
1/8 tsp. Cayenne pepper

Yum-yum!

Bacillus thuringiensis

Waiting in the checkout line at the garden center, I wished I had dark glasses and a fake mustache because I didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea. I was holding a bottle of Thuricide, which at first glance, looks like the typical eco-terror poison capable of wanton mayhem and nondiscriminatory destruction of life. In other words, the type of insecticide applied by the ton on most industrial farms across the country. I have sworn off such poisons and would rather give up gardening than stoop to using such environmentally-unfriendly products.

But these strangers in the store didn't know that.

Finally I couldn't stand it anymore so I blurted out to the woman in line behind me, "It's organic ...you could actually eat it." She gave me a strange look which I interpreted as, "Did I ask? Please don't talk to me anymore you weirdo!"

I paid at the counter and slinked away with my items bagged and hidden from view.

The day had come where I needed help. Help in a bottle. Our winter garden is growing with Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, and Collard Greens, among other cool-weather crops. These plants have attracted daily visits by the ubiquitous White Cabbage Butterfly. They are pleasant enough to watch as they flit around whimsically from place to place, but in reality they are pursuing a singular and determined purpose. They want--NEED--to lay eggs on plants in the Brassica family, i.e., Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, and Collard Greens.

Here is a picture of what happens next...
A small green caterpillar emerges within days and begins to eat an unbelievable quantity of leaf. See the little dude in the picture? See what he has done to my growing broccoli over his first few days of life? And this despite my daily search-and-destroy missions.

So I bought some Thuricide, a brand name for Bacillus thuringiensis, which is a naturally occurring bacteria that is toxic to certain kinds of caterpillars if they ingest it. I think it's working. The little guy in the picture has not moved or eaten in the last couple hours. I think he's dying. snif, snif... NOT!!

There are other biologically-based insecticides approved for organic gardening and farming. Two of the more popular ones are Neem oil and Pyrethrum, made from seeds of the Neem tree and Chrysanthemum flowers respectively. I will be trying these eco-friendly pesticides when the aphids arrive.

A November Morning's Harvest

How many places in November can you go in your backyard and harvest: tomatoes, cilantro, peppers, onions, garlic, and limes?

We may not have brilliant fall colors or picturesque dustings of snow...

...but we got really fresh salsa!!!

Ehh, What's Up Doc?

I dug up these beauties today. Twist off the greens, wash off the dirt, put them in the fridge in an unsealed plastic bag and they should be good for 6 months or more.

But I wanted to use some now, so I made juice...

Ingredients (all from my garden):
- 6 Carrots
- 2 Tomatoes
- 2 sprigs Parsley
- 2 sprigs Cilantro
- 10 Swiss Chard leaves
- 1 ripe red Serrano pepper
- 1 marble-size red Onion
- dash of salt (not from garden)



Chilled over ice, it wasn't half bad ...despite how it looks!

Western North Carolina Farmers Market

We like to check out Farmers' Markets in places we visit. Yesterday we went to the biggest one I've ever seen, the Western North Carolina Farmers Market in Asheville, NC. It's open for business 7 days a week, and it's probably where most families and restaurants around here get their produce. These farmers (and consumers) don't focus so much on organic methods, but at least they're selling and eating local. 'natch, I took some pics...