digging the district

Adventures in hot sauce making

2009-10-05T18:02:00.003-04:00

I haven't been so great with the posting lately, but with the new job and returning from vacation and whatnot, things have been a bit busy. In the frenzy of preserving before I left for SE Asia, I had to figure out what to do with that abundance of peppers I was accumulating. Seth and I decided that jalapeno hot sauce would be the fate of the spicy ones.

We went with this recipe from allrecipes.com.

1 tsp vegetable oil
20 fresh jalapeno peppers, sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup minced onion
3/4 tsp salt
2 cups water
1 cup distilled white vinegar

In a medium glass or enamel lined sauce pan over high heat, combine oil, peppers, garlic, onion and salt; saute for 4 minutes. Add the water and cook for 20 minutes, stirring often. Remove from heat and allow mixture to cool to room temperature.

Transfer the mixture to a food processor and puree until smooth. With the processor running, slowly add the vinegar.

Pour into a sterilized jar with a tight lid. This sauce will keep for 6 months when stored in the refrigerator.

The chopping process should definitely be done with gloves. We thought immediate hand-washing would be enough, but we both regretted this decision hours later when our hands were still tingling. We weren't sure how many seeds to include, so we ended up deseeding about half of them.

I'd also advise making sure your kitchen is VERY well-ventilated when you're cooking this! The effect of simmering jalapenos for 20 minutes was much like slowly pepper-spraying the kitchen. With the windows open and the fan on, we still had to vacate the kitchen for a while.

We ended up with 2 cups of delicious hot sauce in the end though, which obviously made Seth very emotional (nothing to do with all the pepper in the air).

Back!

2009-09-28T18:04:00.002-04:00

Finally back in DC, and I started the new job today, so things have been a bit hectic. Laos and Vietnam were both excellent. I was happy to find that some of my favorite fruits were in season, including dragonfruit and rambutans. I love the tropics!

Yummy dragonfruit! If you haven't had a dragonfruit before, the flavor isn't terribly strong, but they're refreshing and vaguely similar to a kiwi in texture and taste. They're one of my favorites just because they're so visually striking, with the dramatic red exterior and the white(or sometimes pink) interior.

I'm a little overwhelmed now by the current state of my garden though. The morning glory that I battle regularly has taken over and needs to be cut back from a lot of my plants. I have loads to harvest anyway, including loads of tomatoes and eggplant. I need to get started on my garlic planting now too!

Laos!

2009-09-14T21:40:00.002-04:00

This month will end up being a quiet one on the blog posting front, largely because I'm in Laos right now! I have a new job starting at the end of the month, so I decided to take off on vacation to visit a friend in Southeast Asia for a couple weeks beforehand. Hopefully, my garden is faring well in my absence!

In the meantime, I'll be enjoying some lovely tropical fruits (rambutans and longans and dragonfruits, oh my!).

Quick pickles

2009-09-04T11:04:00.002-04:00

I went to the store last night to pick up my non-iodized salt for pickling some peppers, and, sadly, I forgot to pick up the rubber gloves necessary to make chopping massive quantities of jalapenos tolerable. In the mood for pickling anyway, I mixed up a quick batch of refrigerator pickles using a recipe my mom sent me a couple years ago.

I had a few cucumbers that needed to be used, and I've tried this recipe before, so I can attest to its deliciousness. Mom says she found the recipe in an issue of Navy Family (?) a few years back. Here you go:

GRANDMA’S QUICK DILL REFRIGERATOR PICKLES

3 large cucumbers, unpeeled

1 large red bell pepper, seeded and cut into ½ in. strips

1 large onion, thinly sliced

1 T. salt

1 T. dill seed

¾ cup sugar

½ cup white wine vinegar

Cut cucumbers crosswise into 1/4 in. thick slices.

In a large bowl, combine cucumbers, bell pepper and onions. Add salt and dill seed; stir well. Let stand, uncovered for 1 to 2 hours; stir occasionally.

In a small bowl, combine sugar and vinegar; stir until the sugar is dissolved. Pour over the vegetables and mix gently. Spoon into large glass or ceramic containers. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 day or up to 3 weeks. Drain before serving. Makes 8 cups.

No fancy canning equipment required!

So. Many. Peppers.

2009-09-03T15:00:00.003-04:00

While other people are struggling with their late summer zucchini bounty, I've got peppers everywhere. So many peppers. Hot peppers, sweet peppers, red and green and even a purple one. I've already managed to fill a couple of quart bags of them to freeze:

I've been desperately trying to find some pickling salt, because I'd really like to try pickling some of these, especially the hot peppers. I've had no luck so far, so I might just try to pick up some non-iodized salt from Giant this evening to use instead. I'm also going to be picking up some rubber gloves, because I know those jalapenos can burn!

Anyone else doing anything interesting with a pepper bounty?

More on hops...

2009-08-31T15:01:00.003-04:00

I was actually able to harvest some hops, although I have no idea what kind they are!

I learned that hops need to be dried first for beer use, so I'll have these sitting on a window screen for a few days to do just that. I'm turning them every day while they're drying.

After they're done drying, they can be stored in the freezer for a few months if you're not going to use them right away. Just put them in a plastic bag, and squeeze as much air out as you can get. I'll be excited to make some beer with these soon, although I haven't picked out a recipe for them yet.

Speaking of beer, last night we popped open a couple bottles of our recently bottled IPA, made using the Imperial Ale 60-Minute kit from Annapolis Home Brew. Delicious!

Hops

2009-08-27T13:22:00.003-04:00

One of my favorite features in the Butterfly Garden at the Youth Garden is the hops teepee pictured here. This is created from a few long bamboo poles tied together at the top, with the hops growing up the length of it. The vine is attractive, it smells heavenly, and it's great for attracting butterflies.

Kathy Jentz, of Washington Gardener Magazine, recently spoke on WAMU's Metro Connection (listen here) about growing hops and grapes in the garden, and I'm definitely feeling inspired to try this next year! Housemate Cortney and I have already been scheming to try to fit this fast-growing, sprawling vine into our tiny yard somewhere. The folks over at Homegrown Evolution blogged about their success growing hops in containers earlier this month, so I'm considering a set-up similar to theirs.

Housemate Cort and I just bottled our summertime IPA last week. Hopefully next year's will be made with our own homegrown hops!

If anyone knows of any varieties particularly suited for this area, let me know! Since some varieties are native, maybe this is also a good candidate for some low maintenance guerrilla gardening?

Adventures at the Youth Garden

2009-08-25T09:48:00.003-04:00

Per usual, I spent last Saturday morning at the Washington Youth Garden. This Saturday marked their 38th annual Harvest Day Celebration, and participating families showed off their skills in a fantastic Iron Chef competition in the garden. My personal favorite dish was a spicy fried okra and tomato curry, but all of the creations were pretty amazing.

One of my favorite things about volunteering at the garden is that I'm learning something new every time I'm out there. The herb garden expert is a fount of wisdom, and I was excited to try a plant she mentioned called the "toothache plant":

The logic behind the name becomes immediately clear when you start chewing. Your tongue and mouth become immediately tingly and slightly numb, and the effect lasts a few minutes. Neat!

Her knowledge of beneficial plant uses also came in handy when I got stung by some kind of insect. I was immediately advised to chew a leaf of a common weed called plantain (no relation to our banana cousin):

This was easy to find in the butterfly garden, where plantain is planted as a draw for certain species in the area. The leaf is chewed a couple of times, and then applied to the site of the sting. I felt the effect almost immediately, and this knowledge came in handy when I was stung by a horsefly while running in Rock Creek Park on Sunday. This is a pretty common weed, and once you know what it looks like, you start noticing it everywhere.

Other fun finds in the garden:

Egyptian onions, which set new onions by dropping these bulb clusters.

The lovely Malabar spinach vine. Malabar spinach is not a true spinach, and the leaves are a bit more mucilaginous than real spinach, but the plants themselves are lovely. One family made a fantastic dish of cooked Malabar spinach with tomatoes and spices.

I had no idea what asparagus plants looked like later in the season, but this is it. I like to refer to this clump as the "asparagus monster".

Persimmon tree!

And, of course, there were butterflies flitting about everywhere. Another wonderful day at the garden!

Peaches & Cocktails

2009-08-19T14:32:00.001-04:00

bellini 023
Originally uploaded by your idea

I found another use for all those peaches I mentioned before. Frozen bellinis!

Ok, ok, I'd admit that this was actually a failed attempt at making this recipe for bellini popsicles. Apparently my freezer just doesn't get cold enough for alcoholic popsicles. The not-quite-frozen result made a delicious drink though!

Great events coming up in the DC area!

2009-08-14T13:00:00.003-04:00

Cool stuff coming up, via the DCUrbanGardeners listserv:

EVENTS & WORKSHOPS:

1. Film screening about DC’s community gardens!

Thursday, August 27

Doors and refreshments at 6:30 pm

Program and screenings at 7:30

Held at the Letelier Theater in Georgetown

Tickets are $15, to benefit programming of the Neighborhood Farm Initiative and the production of A Community of Gardeners. Details and presale tickets available at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/77293.

Please join us for an evening of film, local light fare and drinks, and live music, with a focus on locally-produced food and community gardening. The Neighborhood Farm Initiative will present the short film "Food Justice: A Growing Movement" and a very special 30-minute work-in-progress screening of the locally-filmed documentary "A Community of Gardeners," which explores the vital role of seven urban community gardens in Washington, D.C. The screening will be followed by a Q & A with the filmmaker, Cintia Cabib.

Visit Neighborhood Farm Initiative on the web at http://www.neighborhoodfarm.110mb.com and learn more about "A Community of Gardeners" at http://communityofgardeners.com. This screening is part of the Local Food Film Series, a program of the Local Food Project at Airlie. Special thanks to Media That Matters Film Festival for providing use of "Food Justice: A Growing Movement."

2. Fall Harvest Party:

August 29^th, 2009, 12:00- 3:00pm

Lederer Community Gardens

4801 Nannie Helen Burroughs Ave. NE

Join local gardeners young and old for a garden harvest party. All are welcome to visit the garden and harvest fresh vegetable grown on site. Bring your own bag.

For more information please contact Kelly.melsted@dc.gov

All ages

3. Support community farms by buying their fresh produce!

The Master Peace Community Farm is now selling our produce three times a week! Come to the Riverdale Park Farmers Market from 3pm to 7pm on Thursdays, and at our farm on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 10am to 3pm at 62nd and Sheridan Street, Riverdale, Maryland 20737. We accept cash, check, WIC coupons, or farm volunteer credit.

4. City Blossoms Harvest Party!
Monday September 7, 2-4pm

1480 Girard St., NW

Girard Children’s Community Garden turns one year old – please bring a salad or side dish to potluck and enjoy music, harvest, and fun! RSVP and details: Rebecca@cityblossoms.org

5. Backyard Habitat Workshop:

Thursday, September 10, 2009, 6:30- 8:30pm

Saturday, September 12, 2009, 9:00- 11:00am

Location: Walter Pierce Park, Adams Mill & Ontario

Learn about the role that your yard and land can play as habitat for wildlife as well as landscaping with native plants. The workshops consist of a Thursday evening session of lectures and an morning hands-on session where participants may help plant a demonstration garden, do a site assessment or receive assistance planning their own site. Participants will also receive a “habitat kit” to get them started creating wildlife habitat at home.

Workshops are offered once a month at different recreation centers through the city.

For more information and to RSVP: backyardhabitat@dc.gov

All ages

6. The Benefits of Cover Crop and Removing Invasive

October 3rd, 2009, 10:00- 12:00

Learn about the different types of ground cover and their benefits for your garden. Learn how to identify invasive plant species and how to remove them from your property.

For more information please contact Kelly.melsted@dc.gov

All ages

7. Urban composting and Using Organic Fertilizers and Pesticides Workshop:

September 12, 2009, 10:00- 12:00

Twin Oaks Garden

14th and Taylor St., NW

Learn all there is to know about composting in urban settings to use as an organic fertilizer for your garden. The use of organic pesticides will also be discussed.

For more information please contact Kelly.melsted@dc.gov

All ages

8. Introduction to Urban and Community Food Gardens

October 23rd, 2009 6:00 PM through October 25th, 2009 4:00 PM

Spend a weekend learning the basics of urban gardening, garden design and starting a community garden. Learn how to winterize a current garden and prepare an area now for a new garden in the Spring. Discussion on basic theories of designing with nature will be mixed with hands-on activities.

Course is rain or shine - please dress appropriately.

Lunch and snacks provided.

• Location: Common Good City Farm, an urban community farm and education center in downtown D.C.

• Instructors: Steve Gabriel, Educator and Program Coordinator at the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute and Liz Falk, Director at Common Good City Farm

• Host: Common Good City Farm

• Co-Sponsor: Seeds of Change, organic seed supplier and promoters of sustainable agriculture since 1989

• Schedule: Friday, October 23rd 6-9pm, Saturday, October 24th 9am – 5pm & Sunday, October 25th 9-4 with break for lunch.

• Course Fee $200, however, scholarships are available to DC residents who are low-income and unable to pay any or all of this fee. For a scholarship application please call or email Liz at 202-330-5945, Liz@CommonGoodCityFarm.org. If you can afford the entire fee, please consider sponsoring a neighbor who cannot.

More details at www.commongoodcityfarm.org/events

9. City Blossoms’ Workshops at Girard Children’s Community Garden

At the Girard Playground (1480 Girard St., NW)

august 29: Cooking & Preserving Summer Bounties

Have too many summer veggies? Join us for a morning of culinary & preserving techniques. Instructor: Ona Balkus (10-11 am)

september 26: Getting to Know the Green Around You

Join a guided walk from Girard Garden to a nearby community garden & learn about the different green spaces along the way. The walk will be about 1.5 miles. Instructor: TBA (10-12 pm)

october 31: Making Food out of Fall Crops

Tried growing some Kale, Swiss Chard or Turnips this fall but unsure how to make them tasty? Join a cooking pro to pick up some fall harvest recipes. Instructor: Jamie Forsythe (10-11:30 am)

GIANT zucchini

2009-08-12T13:08:00.002-04:00

(banana for scale only)

I don't think the magnitude of this zucchini is properly conveyed in this photo, but here it is. I was rooting around at the Youth Garden this weekend, and, peeking under a leaf, I found this monstrosity. It's not actually some kind of prehistoric proto-squash like I initially believed, but it is apparently what happens when you don't pick your zucchini in a timely manner. Who knew? Of course I had to take it home with me.

When zucchini gets this big, it's not as flavorful, but it'll do just fine in a loaf of zucchini bread. Someone even suggested that I cut it in half, scoop out the inside for bread, and then stuff it with TVP, veggies, and breadcrumbs. I think this might just be dinner tonight.

Green Gazpacho

2009-08-11T09:35:00.002-04:00

My friend Meghan did not steer me wrong. Green Gazpacho is delicious. If you're tired of waiting for your tomatoes to ripen, try this recipe adapted from Mollie Katzen's The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Yummmm.

Green tomato rescue mission!

2009-08-10T11:24:00.003-04:00

After their watering at the Youth Garden on Sunday, quite a few green tomatoes fell to the ground in the little aisles between the rows. I declared it time for a Green Tomato Rescue Mission and went about collecting the ones I could find. I ended up taking these guys home. Green tomatoes are a fairly new love for me. I don't believe I had even tried fried green tomatoes before maybe a year ago. I was excited to try frying my own for the second time this year.

I went with the most basic frying recipe I've found. I just coated each side with a mix of corn meal, salt, and pepper and fried them up in a thin layer of oil (enough to come up to about half the tomato height), flipping them after 3 or 4 minutes.

I'm still not great at timing the flipping right, but they were delicious. Seth and I enjoyed them with a nice soba salad with ginger peanut dressing, using a recipe from the September issue of Vegetarian Times (the recipe doesn't seem to be available online). We incorporated more veggies from the garden, including red bell peppers, squash, and carrots.

Excellent! The rest of the tomatoes are going to go into a green gazpacho tonight, on the suggestion of my friend Meghan who raves about the recipe in Mollie Katzen's Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbook.

Friday Links Harvest!

2009-08-07T11:06:00.003-04:00

Seed Savers Exchange was featured in a nice little write-up in the Washington Post yesterday. SSE is great organization in Iowa that does a lot of work in preserving heirloom variety vegetables. They also maintain the country's largest nongovernmental seedbank. A lot of my seeds come from these guys!
Homegrown.org tells us about Window Farms, which are described as "suspended, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible food gardens built using low-impact or recycled local materials. This site is the online community of window farmers, where we share our development processes and design innovations." Looks pretty neat!
Lifehacker advises us to plant vegetables in the garden that promise us the highest yield, including tomatoes, potatoes, and salad greens.
Aliza at the baltimore diy squad describes a new book on "yarn bombing," or knit graffiti. I've been itching to break out my knitting needles again since I read this!
Gayla Trail (of You Grow Girl) is coming out with a new book! It's called Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces and it's going to be released next February. I'm already sure I'm going to love it.

Books & Plants: The Backyard Homestead

2009-08-06T11:12:00.006-04:00

I was lucky enough to find a copy of The Backyard Homestead (edited by Carleen Madigan) at the Mt Pleasant Public Library when I was browsing the newly returned items a couple months ago. Since this copy was actually due back to the library last week (I am the worst librarian ever), I guess it's about time I wrote something up about it.

The Backyard Homestead is really intended for people with a little more land than I have access to. Early in the book, we're given sample plans for what a homestead on a tenth of an acre, a quarter acre, and a half acre would look like, so this is really more suitable for those in the suburbs and further out. Nevertheless, there's a lot of good information in here that I found I could use anyway.

I may have dismissed this book when I first picked it up because a lot of it is actually devoted to raising livestock in small spaces for eggs, milk, and meat (about a hundred pages, with additional information on making sausage and jerky). Granted that as a vegetarian, I'm pretty biased, but I think you've really got to have some pretty understanding neighbors if you're going to keep a cow or some pigs in a quarter acre lot for eventual slaughter. I basically skipped over these chapters since those really have no practical application for me.

The rest of the book is rich with useful information about gardening and preserving. There are detailed instructions for building cold frames and hot beds to extend the harvest for those in colder climates. There are encyclopedic chapters on vegetables, fruits, nuts, and herbs, and these are followed up with some great information about using and storing your bounty, including canning, drying, freezing, making wine and beer, and grinding grains. There were also some nice examples of edible front-lawn landscaping with fruit trees and hedges.

I also found the appendices to be excellent. Additional resources are given for all of the topics, and you also get a bonus chart outlining selected city municipal codes for keeping chickens (DC, sadly, is left off).

This book will be going back to the Mount Pleasant Public Library this weekend, but I imagine that it'll become a permanent part of my collection whenever I actually have more land to work with. For time being though, I'll probably stick with The Urban Homestead (review to follow, eventually).

Find a copy in your local library
Buy a copy here

Starting the autumn garden

2009-08-05T07:53:00.004-04:00

Summer moves way too fast for me. I'm still harvesting away, but this weekend I finally got around to planting some cool weather crops. So far I've planted:

Kale
Chard
Radishes
Carrots
Lettuce
Cucumbers (it might be too late for these, but I'm determined to get some cucumbers this year anyway!)

Happily, some of the lettuce has already started sprouting:

I've got some collard and mustard greens seeds that I'd like to find a place for this weekend. I know I should probably pull up the Cherokee Purple tomatoes that have stopped producing, but I just can't bring myself to do that yet.

The tomatoes I planted last month have started producing as well now.

I know these are some kind of cherry tomato, but I'm not sure of the variety yet.

After my first squash vine succumbed to the squash vine borer, I planted another pattypan variety in its place, and this one has started to come up now. My second large squash plant finally gave in last week, so I pulled it up and disposed of it in the trash (you don't want these vine borers in your compost!). Happily though, my strawberry plant that had been barely hanging on in the shadow of the squash plant seems to have come back to life, and is even starting to produce strawberries again!

Now's the time to start ordering garlic for planting in the fall (for a spring harvest). Any other suggestions for other things to plant now?

Harvest (of vegetables and links)

2009-07-31T07:52:00.003-04:00

Yesterday's harvest:

What to do with all the jalapenos I'm getting now? I'm definitely harvesting faster than I can eat them.

And Friday's links round-up:

Torontoist gives us a look at the street art/guerrilla-gardening stylings of Eric Cheung and Sean Martindale, who create planters in postered-over walls. Probably not good for the long-term health of the plants, but it's an interesting idea nonetheless.
Lifehacker shows us how to transform a shoe organizer into a vertical herb garden.
Want to try one of those upside-down tomato planters? Here are plans for making one for only $1.50 (my folks told me that the AS SEEN ON TV ones you get from the store are overpriced and junky anyway).
There's a neat article in the San Francisco Chronicle on Alemany Farm, a great model for urban farms in the Bay Area.

First melon, and the hazards of city life

2009-07-29T12:10:00.004-04:00

When I came home Monday evening, I was excited to see my first melon of the year hanging on the fence. This is a Rocky Ford, an heirloom variety dating back to the 1800s.

Less exciting to come home to, however, was the realization that someone had upturned two of my raspberry plants and had STOLEN THE BUCKETS. Seriously?? We're talking ultra-cheapo plant pots that I found on the side of the road last year. The plant damage wasn't too bad, and I was able to re-pot them right away (one with an empty plant pot that was sitting RIGHT BY the other plants). What the heck is wrong with people? At least the thief left me a half empty can of Natty Ice in their place. Sigh.

Fun thrift store finds

2009-07-28T12:11:00.004-04:00

I arrived back in DC last night after 5 days in Carrboro, NC. Thrifting is one of my favorite activities when I'm outside of the city, and Chapel Hill area did not let me down. I scored some pretty good plant- and gardening-related finds, especially in the book sections.

Plantcraft by Janet Cox is a pretty fantastic guide to houseplants, printed in 1973, and full of illustrations with a wonderful 70s aesthetic. This one also came with a record, presumably to play to your plants to help them grow:

"Quartet in a Green Key for Strings." I need to find myself a record player to give this a listen (or to play it for my plants?).

The Field Guide to North American Wild Plants. I'm starting to worry that Seth might be right when he jokes that I'm really a crazy survivalist at heart. This is a nice photographic guide though!

Trees: A Guide to Familiar American Trees. This is a classic. Also: I like trees.

Hippocrene Color Guides: Plants that Feed and Serve Us. I bought this one mainly for the great illustrations:

Nice images of the plants, fruits, and flowers.

Plus, I got that adorable little flower pot for just 50 cents. Yay!

As a demonstration of how fast things move in the summer, this is the same okra that I photographed when it was flowering last week:

Now the size of my hand!

Okra flower

2009-07-23T12:36:00.003-04:00

Okra flowers are my new favorite. Okra is actually a relative of hibiscus, hence the large, gorgeous blooms.

I'm in North Carolina for the next few days for the XX Merge music festival, so posting will be pretty light. I made sure to harvest from the garden before I left, so I brought a big bag of veggies to eat while we're here.

It's buried at the bottom of the bowl here, but I finally picked my first sweet pepper, a red sweet apple. I picked a couple more jalapenos as well.

Peaches & Canning

2009-07-20T12:28:00.004-04:00

I went out to Homestead Farm in Poolesville, MD yesterday with Seth and Housemate Cortney for some peach-picking. The picking was good, and we may have gotten a little carried away considering that, between us, we came home with over 40 pounds of peaches (and a few pounds of blackberries too!). Pick-your-own peaches were priced at $1.49/lb, so the total damage came to about $60 total. They're usually priced at $3.50/lb or so at our local farmer's market, so it's actually quite a deal.

Luckily, they had canning jars for sale at the farm, $11 for 12 packs of either the pint jars or smaller jelly jars, so I got to try my hand at canning for the first time. As soon as we got home, I got to work slicing peaches and sterilizing my jars per instructions from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. I jarred up 6 pints of sliced peaches in a light syrup, and then got to work making some jam. I didn't have any pectin on hand, so I just mixed about 4 or 5 cups of crushed peaches with about an equal amount of sugar and boiled this mix for just shy of an hour while it reduced down to the right consistency. This made about 5 1/2 jars of jam. Again, I jarred these using the instructions provided from National Center for Home Food Preservation.

There are still tons left though, so I'll be back at work this evening, mixing up some peach butter in the crock pot and cutting up peaches for freezing. They're already soft from the trip home, so I've got to act fast!

Peaches will be in season through the end of August in the DC area, so be sure to get out and pick your own!

Friday Links Round-up

2009-07-17T14:40:00.002-04:00

Because, why not?

Ali over at Gastronomolies describes how to build a worm composter. I want to try this soon! If anyone has some extra worms, let me know.
A new documentary focusing on community gardens in DC is launched. A Community of Gardeners is currently in production. Can't wait to see it!
Homegrown.org links to an Instructable on making seed-embedded paper. Would be really great for invitations (friends Meghan and Cyrus used seed-embedded paper for their wedding invitations!), or as a gift for your guerilla-gardening friends.
Also found on Instructables, how to make your own seed tape. This could be a fun crafternoon project (also with some potential for guerrilla gardening)!

Harvest- 7/17/09

2009-07-17T13:49:00.000-04:00

Squash vine borers

2009-07-15T09:36:00.003-04:00

I finally worked up the nerve to pull up the squash plant that I has been previously complaining about. The stem broke off easily in my hand, and I realized what exactly the problem had been.

Squash vine borers! Ick! You can see this one as the white larval-looking thing in the right upper corner here.

Squash vine borers are a pretty common pest, attacking the stems of squash, gourds, and pumpkins. The vine borer is a species of moth that lays its eggs on leaf stalks and vines. On hatching, the larva immediately bore their way into the vine. Watch out for a sawdust-like frass at holes near the plant base. Once they've bored their way into the plant, it's hard to treat the problem. It does look like you can try slitting the vine open at the points around the frass to attempt to kill the larva, or you can try using a needle or toothpick to minimize the damage. If your squash plant wilts very suddenly, Squash Vine Borers are likely the problem. Unfortunately, by the time it wilts, it's already too late to treat it. Prevention seems to be the best tactic, and I'll definitely try this next year.

At the end of your harvest, pull your squash plants and destroy them to prevent the larva from completing their development (i.e. don't throw the plants in your compost!). Once your plants are established, you can also try wrapping the lower stem in aluminum foil to prevent egg-laying.

My one remaining squash plant now has some signs of infestation, but is still doing ok. I'll try the needle method and hope for the best. I just planted a Patty Pan squash where the other one had been, but, luckily, egg-laying has generally already occurred by early July, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Here's an adult squash vine borer moth, so you know what to look out for:

DIY Sub-irrigated Planter

2009-07-14T07:48:00.007-04:00

Last night, I finally finished making the sub-irrigated planter for two of my new tomato seedlings. As a model, I used the design outlined in the Bucolic Bushwick blog, which itself was a modification of Josh Mandel's design. I had to modify the plan a little bit myself because of the design of the plastic bins that I used.

To start with I used the following items:
2 18-gallon plastic bins (about 6 dollars each)
1 plastic basket (in a pack of 3 from Dollar Star, ~$0.75)
8 inches of PVC pipe (about a dollar)
2 cubic feet of soil ($12)

Using the plastic basket as a guide for the height, I marked around the base of one of the plastic bins, and then cut this using a utility knife. Using the top of the basket, I cut out a circle slightly smaller, and then I drilled a series of holes using a 1/4" drill bit. This will act as the base of the container over the water reservoir.

The base was then inserted into the container, after slits were cut in each of the corners to allow for a better fit. I would have liked to just drill the fill/overflow hole directly into both of the containers as outlined in the instructions from Bucolic Bushwick, but, unfortunately, the gap between the sides of my base and my container were too big. Instead, I cut a hole through the sides of both containers to insert a short length of PVC pipe.

Voila! So this is the point I could start filling it with soil, starting by compacting it tightly in the wicking basket. I added the rest of the soil, mixing in a cup of garden lime to help prevent blossom end rot in the tomatoes. After packing the soil tightly, I planted the tomatoes in opposite corners. I added a line of organic fertilizer down the center and then covered the top with a black trash bag. This allows for the slow release of the fertilizer throughout the growing season.

I cut out the center of the lid for the bin and then placed that on top to keep the black plastic in place:

Done!

And, remember, be careful when cutting the plastic with your utility knife! Poor Seth sustained an injury in the line of duty while assisting me. Martyred for the cause of delicious homegrown tomatoes!