Garden 12/30/2019: plants

Nikon D500, 18-300mm 

 same leaf, different backgrounds

 gopher purge

 cherimoya

 dino kale tree

garlic

Garden 12/30/2019: critters

black phoebe

wrought iron pig, we also have a wrought  iron giraffe now!

ana's hummingbird (probably)

black Lizzy, she prefers rainwater

Trailblazer

Lizzy girl doing some trailblazing, photo by Elyce

Vegan banana or cranberry or pumpkin bread

I've been making this for workdays because many gardeners are vegan. I'm a cook, not a baker, which means I don't like measuring things, so this is semi-informal.

Grind 2T flax seeds in a clean coffee grinder, mix with 5T water, this is your egg replacer
Add a can of cranberries or pumpkin or 3 ripe bananas
Add 1/3 c neutral oil like sunflower
Add a splash of vanilla
Add 1t salt
Add some honey or jam if you used pumpkin, it might be sweet enough if banana, it definitely is sweet enough if cranberries.
Mix in about 1.5 to 2c flour, generally a mix of whole wheat, rye, coconut, etc. GF flours are ok, too. You want a moderately thick dough.
Mix in 1/2t baking powder.
Chocolate chips or nuts or whatever are good

Pour into oiled pan
350 40 min, put a knife in, if it comes out clean it's done

Hummus from scratch

soak 1c dried garbanzos in a quart of water 12-24 hours
bring to a boil, simmer partially covered for an hour with 1t salt + a bay leaf or sage or a little kombu (if they are from a store that sells alot (IV coop) they cook in an hour, if older beans they can take 2-3 hours)
let cool, covered

blender:
cooked garbanzos with remaining liquid if not too much
1/2 c tahini
pour in olive oil for a couple of seconds
2T chia seeds to soak up the liquid
garlic to taste; I use small cloves that are annoying to deal with for regular cooking, and don't bother peeling them
juice from 2 lemons
it might need a little more salt

Planting Fava Beans

a little illustrated tutorial...

dried fava pods

 dry favas out of the pod

 soak them overnight in plenty of water

 drain off water, put on a paper towel. note how much plumper they are than in the first pic.

fold towel in half and place in a plastic bag. note I added a little extra water than what is pictured above so the towel was evenly damp. I put a tomato on the bag so it was sorta closed.

after 2.5 days, beginning to sprout

after 4 days, ready to plant. you can plant them with a bigger sprout, too if the timing works out that way. plant about 5" deep, keep soil moist-ish, but they are pretty tough. no real pests. you plant in the fall, they produce March or so. they produce ALOT. eat fresh raw, fresh lightly cooked, dried.

 you can get seeds from the IV food coop (bulk bins) or rareseeds.com currently has 4 varieties available 

Herbicide for Dinner

good article. Herbicide is what's for dinner.

Critters in the garden

 not the best picture, funny roost for the red shouldered hawk in the background

 hawk feather

I love it when Lizzy's tail falls through the cracks when she's sleeping

Epazote

I'm going to try to put more food info on the garden blog. Epazote is an herb that has been used for a long time when cooking up dried beans, e.g. the Mayans used it for cooking black beans. It helps with digestion. Another use is putting a leaf inside of a quesadilla. There are also medicinal uses. Anyway, it grows here and there in the garden.

New cistern with new mural

Some UCSB folks got a grant to install a cistern and GHGP was the beneficiary. It was kind of an ugly green color, but luckily there is a class in the UCSB art department that paints public murals in the community surrounding UCSB.

 Lizzy the art critic

bees, poppies

couple of Lizzy

 I think I prefer the 2nd one but was real happy with this composition

misc, April 2019

 carrots, garlic, poppies. springtime!

crows in agave

flowers, April 2019

 icelandic poppy

 coastal CA poppies

chamomile, coastal CA poppies, black mustard, pineapple guava shrub (flowers on this are pretty and tasty)

the red shouldered hawk

had my good camera with me on Sunday

favas

Spent a couple hours this weekend shelling favas. I eat most of them fresh or frozen, but do dry some. I mostly grow a tan variety, some purple. In one of the purple pods there were a couple that had crossed, so Appaloosa coloration. Sweet!