Garden, 5 June 2014

Nikon D600, Nikkor 75-300mm AF

 red tropeana (I think) onion, coastal poppy background

 red russian kale

 collards starting to go to seed, poppies again

grrrrr

walnut

fuyu persimmon

swiss chard

fig

nasturtiums at Gary's

Lizzy Girl

 Lizzy Girl, the garden cat, as a youngster (from George Takei).

15 May 2014

it's hot. 95 in the shade at 11am.

Lizzy the black garden cat is none to happy.

 The new native plant installation (more/better pics to come, plus a plant list) is hanging in, though.

National Geographic: Future of Food

Check out this new bit about the Future of Food and an accompanying blog the Plate look. I took a quick look and reckon people may find it pretty interesting. As an aside, National Geographic photographers were infamous back in the day for carrying around red shirts to hand out to people to add color to their images, looks like that hasn't changed.

Black-headed grosbeak on a loquat tree

photo by garden member Laurie

a timelapse photography project with substantial ghgp content

Please enjoy my recent motion timelapse photography project with many garden sequences.  -Frank
"ellwood and environs"

Symphony of the Soil trailer

there's a UCSB geography professor in this



Symphony of the Soil Trailer from Symphony of the Soil on Vimeo.

a very interesting drought / farming story

cool story about crops/drought

using milk in the garden

this is a really interesting article

Fresh Garlic

'Tis the season, though it might be a touch late.

Zucchini Orange Marmalade Bread

Yum. I was googling for stuff to do with zucchini a while ago and someone made this zucchini marmalade cake thing, following a recipe from the Tartine bakery cookbook. Bells went off in my head, zuke (check - garden full of it), marmalade (check - pantry full of homemade stuff) Tartine cookbook (check). I made 2 changes to the recipe: 1) I cut the sugar way back, their recipe is for cake, I wanted a healthy breakfast bread 2) I don't follow rules well, so I don't really measure things when I bake. That said, here are the proportions you are supposed to use:

Zuke Marm Cake

adapted from Tartine
1 3/4 cups + 2 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 large eggs
1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons canola oil
3/4 cup sugar (I use ~ 1/4 cup of honey)
1/2 cup orange marmalade (I use more)
2 1/2 cups grated zucchini
1/2 teaspoon sea salt

mix wet, mix dry, mix 
350. 9x5 pan, an hour or so. low/wide pan a bit less...

 

Natural Mosquito Repellent

I learned on You Bet Your Garden this week (9 June 2012) that Lemon Balm and Catnip are great mosquito repellents if you rub them on your skin. Mosquitos aren't a big problem in Santa Barbara, but this is good to know. Both grow in the garden.

Michelle Obama / Gardening / NPR

Great interview this morning with Michelle Obama about the White House garden.

The money quote: We have a wonderful history in this country of community gardening and somehow along the way we lost that tradition. Part of what we hope to see is people reconnecting to that part of our heritage.

Gardening stories / NPR

really cool story about Thomas Jefferson's garden. and then a not-so-cool story about the 'cides they use to grow strawberries that don't necessarily taste like anything. yum.

On Community Gardening

You bet your garden this week (5 May 2012) has a fascinating interview with Mark Birdsall, who is involved with setting up community gardens for under privileged people who are used to receiving food from food banks. (The interview starts around the 14min mark).

Some interesting points, that reflect on the UCSB garden:
They will have master gardeners on hand to help with people's questions. This is one of our biggest issues. When I give away plots to new garden members I try to point out the plots of gardeners with alot of knowledge that people can seek advice from. I also give some basic advice about what grows well for me. But we are pretty far from being master gardeners. Producing a document of gardening tips for new garden members is something I've thought about and I definitely think we should do it; by pooling our info I think we could help alot of people.

Teaching people to grow food can be difficult, but it is as important to teach people how to cook what they grow. We've put some recipes on the garden blog, I think I'll put more of a focus on that.

Some gardens (i.e. school gardens) suffer because the school year doesn't match up with the growing season... "good intentions do not manage a garden." This is more of an issue back east than in California, but plots that are unattended in the summer do suffer. And that's also when many of the fruit trees produce, so people gone for the summer don't experience that benefit.  

Pollan's Food Rules, Illustrated

"Food Rules" by Michael Pollan - RSA/Nominet Trust competition from Marija Jacimovic on Vimeo.

Green Bronx Machine

Willie Nelson / Sustainable Farming

Who are the Young Farmers of 'Generation Organic'?

Interesting story from NPR.

Kale in the Limelight

Nice story from npr, prompted by the Eat More Kale/Chic-fil-A thing.

Bittman, the Santa Barbara Syndrome

"This kind of approach — grow what you can close to where you live and eat what you can grow — is obviously nothing new. (Even in my lifetime, I can remember seeing asparagus only in late spring, Macintosh apples in the fall and Empire apples — long keepers — through the winter.) What’s new is the lack of farmland, because much has been lost to sprawl or commodity crops, and farmers who can make it happen, farmers working on a scale between sustenance and industrial."

the whole article

One NUGGET in his article was a link to this article about the Santa Barbara syndrome. In our country we export 99% of what is grown here. AND IMPORT 95% OF FRUIT & VEGGIES THAT ARE EATEN!!! Holy Cow! David Cleveland, UCSB professor and garden friend is quoted thusly: "Picture two produce-laden tractor-trailers passing on the highway, one bringing food into the county; the other hauling it out."

Here's the UCSB press release on the Cleveland study

Garden, Fall 2011

A new local community garden asked for some pictures of our garden, here are a few I took.

comfrey

a chilean chile

EAB plot

pineapple guava

citrus

fava bean

fuyu persimmon

plumeria

fly trap in walnut tree

Composting Workshop

Rob led a workshop that built 2 piles out of garden weeds, comfrey, the chayote plant & manure. Hopefully we'll be composting most everything from now on.

Fall 2011 Workday #1

We've had great turnout for workdays now that so many new people have joined. On this workday we worked on weeding around the greenhouse so that first impressions are improved. Unfortunately, we have alot of pics of people from behind, and only a few from the front...

Frank working on clearing out the ponds

Ann pulling weeds in the cactus garden

Baker Creek Seeds on NPR

good story, might have to get the book

Rain, 2011-2012 Water Year

1.04", October 5, Goleta Fire Station

SB rainfall stations link.

Organic Food jpeg

Eat More Kale

A house guest was rocking an eat more kale shirt, pretty cool. On a more serious note, I have some extra plants, and have a ton of nice kale seeds if anyone wants them...

Ingredients Movie

I heard about Ingredients a little while ago because the Wild Garden Seed guy is in it. It's a documentary about local foods, mostly in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, and a couple of farms in NY. It's a nice overview of some facets of organic food -- lots of interviews with farmers, farmer's markets, school gardens, organic wine, free range meat, CSAs. It streams for free on Netflix, so check it out!

E Coli in Germany

These stories piss me off. It seems like the initial blame is always placed on something organic. It's happened before with spinach, for instance. So when the story broke the initial culprit was said to be organic cucumbers from Spain. But no one in Spain got sick, it was only people in Hamburg or who had produce distributed from the Hamburg produce distribution hub. Hmmm, sounds like the problem is in Germany... and not with organics.