Season's First Potatoes

Tonight, after my yoga class, our dinner will include some potatoes Angel harvested just a few minutes ago.  The spuds are doing very well -- we have multiple beds.  We may just end up with enough potatoes to last us well beyond our growing season!

Note that these beauties are piled on a platter that's significantly bigger than a typical dinner plate.

LQF Update

2nd iteration of proof ordered today.  Just rec'd email from company indicating that proof has shipped, so I'm hoping it'll arrive by next Thursday or Friday (July 1 or 2).  If it's okay -- and I really hope it's okay at this point.  It should take but a few minutes to "throw the switch" and make the book available on Amazon.com.

Fingers crossed.  Not holding my breath, of course.

Pollinating Chili and Tomato Plants

Although chilies and tomatoes have "complete" flowers (both male & female parts), in the outdoors, these plants are helped along by visiting insects.  To the right is a pot containing four jalapeno starts.  They've about tripled in size since I planted them.

The white plastic pipe things are some of my experiments at under-surface watering my potted plants.  The verdict's not in on that, but my idea is that by watering just beneath the surface, I can keep the soil more uniformly moist in a hot greenhouse.

To the left are some pots containing "super chilies" (whatever those are).  They're thriving and beginning to put out blossoms.


I spent quite a bit of time searching around for advice on pollinating these plants.  Do you need to help?  What's a good technique.  After reading several articles and watching some funny and slightly strange videos, I've reached the conclusion that if you're growing these plants in a greenhouse, you should definitely get into the pollination business.

On the right is my poblano plant.  It's easily the largest so far!


The best videos (IMO) were from a couple of guys who, from their accents, I assume to be in the UK. Here's a link to a vid they've posted on YouTube.  The vid talks about chilies, but I think that the technique will work just as well for tomatoes and eggplant.  These guys have a YouTube channel called The Chili Guys, which is worth a visit.

Garden Update

The plants in the greenhouse continue to thrive.  Today I put tomato frames around the three smallest plants (the largest plant already had one).  All four plants look very strong.

Several of the chili plants have blossoms.  I read that chilies growing in a greenhouse need to be hand-pollinated, so that little job is coming up.  All the articles I read claim that it's not a big deal: you use a small, clean paintbrush -- like you'd use on a watercolor painting -- and rub it around on the flowers of each plant.  That should be manageable.  Hopefully, two or three blossoms will open at any given time on each plant so it'll be easy to do the pollination thing.

The three eggplants appear to be recovering from the slug onslaught that got them transplanted from the outside garden to the greenhouse.  Even the most damaged has a new leaf, so I think it'll make it.  The other two, less-ravaged plants are much bigger and have more new growth.

The bell peppers (six or seven plants) seem to be developing more slowly than the chilies.  The plants look vibrant and healthy, so I think it's just a difference in the way these plants develop rather than an indication of a problem.

Outdoors, the potato plants are enormous.  I think we'll have a fantastic crop.  We're getting broccoli from the garden too.  Not a lot, but some, and it's good.  We've had bok choi, parsley, kale, and spinach.

 Oh, and did I mention the salad greens?

Brief Update on LQF

Rec'd notice today that the proof copy has been shipped.  It'll probably be a week and a half 'til it arrives, but I can hope for a faster turnaround.

Dang, this is exciting.

Broccoli and Poulsbo

Last night, as part of our dinner, we enjoyed some fresh broccoli from the garden. It was tasty as only garden-fresh can be and there is plenty more still growing. This little bit you see at the right is just one part of last night's harvest. We ate a lot of the plant's leaves as well.

I usually cook broccoli in the microwave. I cut it up in to bite-sized pieces and sprinkle it with garlic powder and a dash of garlic salt. Then I splash a little bit of olive oil on it and follow the olive oil with a little bit of water. I make sure to run the tap right on top of the splash of olive oil so the oil is scattered and (mostly) ends up in the water at the bottom of the casserole dish.

Then, I put the cover on the dish and microwave the broccoli. This way the water boils and diffuses the olive oil throughout the food. The flavor combination is spectacular!



Today, we drove down to Poulsbo. There's a Home Depot there and I wanted to get some clay pots for the greenhouse. I have a lot of plants going now, and I've used up nearly all of my clay pots and am making do with some reclaimed pots from shrubs we've purchased at the nursery. Hard to tell if these are "food grade" pots or not. The terra cotta pots are good quality and US made, so I'm hoping there's been some appropriate health regulations followed...

In addition to everything else I've got going, I now have three eggplant bushes in the greenhouse.  These were in the garden, but something had been eating them. Also it's also not quite warm enough here for eggplants to flourish. I think these guys will recover. We'll see.

Oh, and my prize poblano chili plant is now over a foot tall!

A Slight Detour

To be perfectly honest, I prefer to write about gardens and greenhouses, irrigation systems and energy conservation programs.  It's also fun to write about interesting books or films or even tasty recipes.  Politics is grim territory, but sometimes I feel compelled to write in that space too.  Politics comprises much of that which makes this Rock feel, well... Wrong.

A couple of teeny-tiny facts from the financial pages:

1. 30,000 Americans -- that's about 1/100 of one percent of the population -- now pull down 6% of all income.  The gap between the richest of the rich and everybody else wasn't that egregious even at the end of the "Roaring 20's."
2. At the Federal Level, there are three times as many lobbyists representing the financial sector alone, as there are elected representatives in Congress.
3. Only Singapore and Hong Kong have a greater gap between rich and poor than the United States.
4. Twenty-one percent of American children are now living in poverty.  That's now.  Today.  That's here, not in some third-world country.

The notion, widely propagated by the Tea Baggers, is that the US has become a socialist state. Strident voices have told my own family members that "our children are being indoctrinated in Stalinist political thought." The data do not support that assertion.  We are becoming, we have become a plutarchy.  We are ruled not by law, but by the desires of the rich and powerful.

Perhaps we are not even a plutarchy.  It may be that we are more of a "lootocracy" -- a state that is ruled by looters.  After all, even plutocrats want to preserve the system that supports them.  Lootocrats merely grab and move on.  The notion of a plague of locusts comes to mind.

But I digress.

I add to these disturbing revelations the recent shenanigans of the Texas school board: a deliberate and concerted attempt to rewrite American history in such a way that young people are exposed to extreme right-wing propaganda, a deliberate and concerted attempt to weaken the barrier between church and state and imply that Christianity is indeed the official religion of these United States.  They even tried to downplay the role of Thomas Jefferson in US history, but they backed off that (for now).

This followed Texas education requirements that demand the teaching of evolution as "theory."  Texas school children will be exposed to creationism as though it were a competing scientific point of view.

We might shrug.  "That's just Texas," we might like to think.  But it's not: Texas is the largest, single textbook market in the country.  Textbook publishers are unlikely to make one version of books for Texas and another for the rest of the US.  The Texas school board is well aware of that.

In my opinion, the deliberate attempt to undermine the education of generations is a crime beyond that of mere greed.  In an ever more complex and competitive world, a deliberate attempt to damage our children's understanding of science and the natural world, of economics, of religion; a deliberate attempt to undermine critical thinking... these are crimes that aid and abet our enemies.

Finally, I offer the opinion that much of the purpose of government is to level the playing field, to keep the rich and powerful from stomping on the needs, let alone the dreams, of everyone else.  I also note that there is an ever-present drone from the corporate media -- and that's entertainment media as well as "news" media: the government is the problem.  Reagan may have popularized the chant, but he hardly invented it.

So we, as a society are being taught to distrust and despise the only part of the system that stands between us and serfdom.

The upshot of all this is that we are thrown back upon ourselves for support.  We must rely on our neighbors, our colleagues, our friends for information.  Regional economies (the drum I so often beat) are the systems that stand a chance of changing the course of events.  Only there can we find accountability.  Only there can we expect the integrity born of local reputation.

That's one reason why you should grow the biggest garden you can.  Share the food you grow with your neighbors.  

Maybe gardening isn't your thing?  That's okay.  Learn to bake bread.  Learn to weave wool into yarn.  Learn to make basic useful furniture.  Share what you know.  Share what you produce.  Share what you learn.

You can do these things.  We can do these things.

Okay.  Back to our regular programming.