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Post by oldmobie on Oct 30, 2017 3:21:34 GMT -5
Excellent; going where one hasn't gone before; can't say I'm much interested in chard stems, though; even fresh, I think they're kind of meh. Beet stems I like, though. No accounting for taste, I suppose. True, the stems are nothing to get excited about, beyond the fact that I ate one and didn't get sick or die. It would seem that in my inexperience, I still encouraged the bacteria that benefit me by discouraging the ones that would harm me. It works as a proof of concept, but I hope to learn to make tastier foods with it in the future.
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Post by oldmobie on Oct 29, 2017 21:11:18 GMT -5
Lactofermentation... Have you ever tried it? If so, what did you think? I've tried it now. I chopped up my swiss chard and put it in a big ol' kosher dill jar. Since answering before, I found cheap airlocks and matching grommets online, and ordered two of each. I drilled a hole in the lid and installed it just like someone else posted here. (I think it was toomanyirons .) I let it ferment eight days, then put on an undrilled lid and put it in the fridge. Kinda salty. Not quite sauerkraut, in pretty much the same way swiss chard isn't quite cabbage. But edible. Made sort of a salad with some of it and some baked chicken. Worked so well, I'm trying it now with my peppers.
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Post by oldmobie on Oct 26, 2017 21:47:06 GMT -5
Do you think they will ripen before winter? Our first freeze warning is for tonight. Some peppers ripened better than others, but we picked 'em all. I'll chop and freeze (or maybe pickle) the whole batch. Hey, say what you like, 2017's peppers treated me better than 2017's cucumbers...
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Post by oldmobie on Oct 9, 2017 20:39:42 GMT -5
Building my soil and learning what grows reliably without commercial input, in case I can't get it, while staying off-grid, is my plan; I think I'll be as ready as possible for whatever lurches down the road. Anybody got good recipes for zombie, or should they be processed through swine and poultry first? Mix 50/50 with brown materials and mix liberally into any tall vegetable bed. Almost as good for adding nutrients as pure long pig, good for sequestering carbon too. I think you/we should take a page out of Paul Wheaton's playbook. Put the zombies in the willow bank, coppice the willows and use them where ever softwood is acceptable. Hugelculture beds come to mind. Great for the garden, but put some in the yard too. Grow sunflowers. Sing this.
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Post by oldmobie on Oct 6, 2017 15:31:29 GMT -5
Actually it is worse than you note. You can access free-forums like this one, but you have to learn how to post with your cell-phone. At least a part of all those "no-posters" are cell users. The mobile version of the post editor is pretty feature poor compared to the destop version. On my cell, I read posts in mobile version (larger print) but post in the desktop version. Most popular browsers have a method to switch between mobile and desktop versions. Screenshots are from chrome on my android phone.
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Post by oldmobie on Oct 6, 2017 1:55:50 GMT -5
I'm curious about the red one, as I'd really like to have corn still sweet when red. Not very sweet yet, but if all goes well, I'll have seed to share. It'll be pretty small quantity, but it'll increase if it likes your place.
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Post by oldmobie on Oct 5, 2017 22:35:42 GMT -5
Picked today. Arranged by sibling groups. I have purple / red at fresh eating stage! All tasted good, I call it a success. I'll still try to improve sweetness in the future. I bet the upcoming F2 wrinkled seed selection will help.
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Post by oldmobie on Oct 5, 2017 21:40:40 GMT -5
My first guess would be lentil. Wow, never thought of that. I only grew lentils once. Dried, from the grocery store. They didn't produce much, and to my untrained eye they looked a lot like hairy vetch. I've read mixed reports about vetch's edibility, so I didn't plant again. I don't remember what that one bloomed like.
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Post by oldmobie on Oct 5, 2017 3:13:49 GMT -5
Do you think they will ripen before winter? My average first frost is this month. Between the 11th and 20th. Not really counting on the little bells unless frost holds off past halloween. The jalepeƱo shaped ones are a maybe. The banana type are close enough to use now, but I'd like them to ripen more for seed saving. I guess it's a reminder to me to keep 'em watered to speed the growth. And to consider materials to convert that bed to a cold frame.
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Post by oldmobie on Oct 4, 2017 23:51:09 GMT -5
I have little to no weed load so far, but this may be the first. Is this mimosa? Nope. I think it was this. Other than the poison and growing a little smaller, not much different from mimosa, which grows readily here. (As it does on most of the earth.) I pulled it out so it won't get a foothold.
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Post by oldmobie on Oct 4, 2017 21:02:28 GMT -5
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Post by oldmobie on Oct 4, 2017 16:10:44 GMT -5
oldmobie can you give us an update of how your corn projects are doing? Thanks. I'll try to get a few pictures on later today. That's my patch, if you can call it that. The white stakes indicate half sweet rows. Note the difference in size and vigor between them and the sweets. Some of that will be due to season length. I've gotten tired of throwing ears to the goats because I thought they were ripe when I picked them. So now I shuck one from the first plant in the row, but leave it attached. If it's ripe, I pick it. If it isn't, I leave it as an indicator for that row. If it looks good later, I can eat it. Otherwise, it'll be for seed. This was one of my better sweets. Here's a good, but fairly typical half sweet. Another gratutitous cornographic image: I shucked this one yesterday. The darker purple marks on the tips were already present, though paler. The rest was white. My first (known) photo-sensitive corn! Wonder if the whole sib-group's like this?
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Post by oldmobie on Oct 4, 2017 13:51:45 GMT -5
oldmobie can you give us an update of how your corn projects are doing? Thanks. My only active corn project this year is the sweet / indian corn. I started by planting a patch of sweet corn; the seeds saved from what had done best for me in the past, and some new-to-me varieties I got through trades. My saved seeds would be mostly descended from Peaches and Cream and Ambrosia. From trade would be mostly Joseph Lofthouse 's strains of LISP Ashworth and Astronomy Domine. In the middle of the patch I planted a few rows of seeds saved from non-sweets with traits I want to bring to my sweet corns. Mostly saved from indian corn and decorative dent corn (Earthtones Rainbow). Saved from ears that were the biggest, the best filled, and / or suffered the least bug damage. I staked these rows to mark them. They were detassled. Basically I followed the advice Joseph gave me earlier in this thread. That patch was generally unhappy. Can't imagine why. Morning shade, compacted soil with no tilling,virgin lawn cut short and smothered with newspaper, compost and potting soil. No chemical inputs, except a little generic osmocote. You know, the conditions modern sweet corns are bred for. None the less, the detassled rows outperformed the sweet corns. A few plants even produced filled ears. I ended up with five or so ears worth of probable half sweet / half less modern seed. Based on a little more of Joseph's advice, I didn't shell them, I dried and stored them on the cobs. This year I did similarly, but in a slightly better location. Further west, there's less morning shade. Raised bed; used to be Mel's Mix, but has been topped up with compost and potting soil. Short rows running north and south, about four feet long. Alternating sweet and half sweet from the patch described above. Three rows of sweet (one each of LISP Ashworth, Astronomy Domine and High Carotene), alternating with two rows my half sweets, ear-to-row. I marked the half sweets to detassle, but stopped doing so because the blooming time is so much later than the sweets I was afraid there'd be no sweet pollen left. The sweet corn harvest has come and gone. We did get a few edible ears. Like four. Poorly pollinated. Whatever, the goats think I should continue growing it. In the half sweets, I'm getting some big, full ears. I've only picked one. Should've thumbnail tested it. The kernels looked and felt mature, but near the tip, the cob showed a little bit of green. It tasted like you'd expect corn to, but less sweet. Maybe genetic, maybe underripe. Sometimes I'd notice a chlorophyll / grassy taste. Before I sample again, I'll confirm milk stage. When I save seed this year, I'll select for wrinkled kernels. Once this project passes through that filter, I expect the next generation will be sweeter. I'll try to get a few pictures on later today.
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Post by oldmobie on Sept 27, 2017 11:54:42 GMT -5
No, although that's definitely intriguing. It was inversion canning. Lactofermentation sounds even better. Have you ever tried it? If so, what did you think? ... Never had any problems but it seems that using wax is frowned on now as well. Tough. No, I've never tried it, but I hope to some day. It seems to be the traditional method for kosher dills and saurkraut. Maybe kimchee too, but I've never seen a recipe for that. They seem to love it at permies and mother earth news. Seems pretty foolproof, IF you observe basic food safety and are diligent. Trouble is I have the attention span of a fruit fly. So I'm watching for a way that even I can't screw up. Got my eye on one where you ferment right in a canning jar, with the ring and a flat (with an airlock) in place. ... Mom canned peach jelly one year with parafin caps and no other lid. It didn't set up right, which I doubt is related. (Great on pancakes.) None of it spoiled. No one got sick. I once had an unscented candle fall over on the range top and land on the hole where the oven vented. A bunch of it melted onto my pork steaks. We were young and broke. I let the steaks cool and scraped it off. I couldn't tell that it made a difference. We use wax paper. It's probably bad for you, but probably less so than most of what's in the foods in the grocery store.
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Post by oldmobie on Sept 27, 2017 11:20:07 GMT -5
Nice looking cuc! They fill out quickly. Are you pollinating by hand, relying on the bees, or is it a parthenocarpic variety? I'm hoping for bee polination. They're from my own saved seeds, parents were Joseph Lofthouse 's and a handful of storebought varieties I've been mixing up for three or four generations. (Boston Pickling and Burpless are the names I remember.) I've never bought any parthenocarpic, so they won't be that unless the genes came out of Joseph's.
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