350 Garden Challenge

Weeks have gone by but I have been too busy gardening and working on the community garden and other things like work to post anything here. There are all kinds of garden opportunities comming up. Here in Sonoma County, there is an effort to get 350 gardens going on the weekend of May 15-16. There is a pretty broad definition of gardens so anything can count, whether it is a window sill garden, a community garden, a residential garden, etc. It can be a brand new garden or new work on an existing one. iGROW is the place to go to register. You can sign up your own garden or volunteer to help someone else's. In other garden challenge news, the Victory Garden Foundation in Oakland is also doing the 350 Garden Challenge.

Also, if you live nearby there is a meeting this Wednesday at the Baker Creek Seed Bankfrom 7pm to 9pm Phone (707)509-5171 199 Petaluma Blvd. North Petaluma, CA 94952

I will be working on my own garden as well as the Arroyo Community Garden that weekend. We had a workday on April 17th, shown here:



Another one is scheduled for May 1st.

Pickled Eggs

If you have more eggs than you can eat right away, why not pickle them? We happened to have just that problem. Sometimes we give them away, but I like pickled eggs and I happened to also have a bunch of beets. I steamed the beets and hard boiled the eggs. In a pot I cooked water, vinegar, salt and a tiny bit of sugar. I put them all into a jar and put the jar in the fridge. A week or so later and they make the perfect Easter egg.

Of course, we get Easter eggs every day from our chickens.

Fava Bee-n

Dig For Victory

My sister just sent me a link to this video.





Dig it.

Fava Beans

I planted fava beans as a cover crop in the fall. I couldn't wait for beans to mature before turning under 2/3 of the plants, but I left a patch to keep growing. They have been blooming for a long time now, but not beaning.  Finally beans are forming. Not sure how long it will take before we can eat them. We have been eating the greens, which are pretty tasty.

Compost Tea 2.0 Solar Powered

Years ago I bought a small solar panel and charge controller but they sat around and I never put them to use. I want to make compost tea on a regular basis and I don't want extension cord to a fish tank air pump for the 48 hours or so you need to bubble it. So I went to an auto parts sore and got a deep cycle battery and a battery box. I found a device called "Power Bubbles" for keeping fish alive on your boat when you are fishing, It runs on 12 V DC and uses very little electricity. I hooked up the solar panel to the charge controller and the charge controller to the battery. Power Bubbles came with clamps to connect to the battery terminals. Everything fits in or on the battery box. Power Bubbles can drive two tubes with air stones, so I was able to use two 5- gallon buckets.

The picture at the top shows some compost tied into a piece of cheesecloth but I also have recently made a worm bin. My neighbor told me that the CVS sells red wigglers as bait so I went over there and found the fridge that contained containers of red wigglers. I had an old plastic storage bin and some nylon screen and drilled holes in the bin, lined it with screen and fillied it with compost from the regular compost bin, rice hulls and worms.

The worm bin sits on top of a 5 gallon bucket.

When you water the bin to keep it moist, it drains worm compost tea. I added that to my solar powered compost tea bubbler along with some molasses and kelp.

Solar powered compost tea. I have made one batch and am working on the next. The bubbler has been going 24 hours a day for several days now.

Good News?

Attorney General Eric Holder abd USDA chief, Tom Vilsack have announced that their agencies are working together to enforce antitrust laws in the agriculture sector.  I hope this is good news. They will be going after companies like Monsanto who monopolize the seed and chemical business. Pretty soon generic biotech seeds will become available as patents expire for things like Round Up Ready corn. Does this mean that we can see the percentage of biotech crops grown in the US increase from where they are now? I can't wait. Generic GMOs.

Of course, this quaint step towards enforcing the law will mean nothing if we do not amend the Constitution to reverse the "Citizens United" Supreme Court decision. Chris Dodd introduced an amendment but I think it is too narrow. It focuses on the ability of Congress to pass laws restricting campaign spending. I prefer the Move to Amend approach, which is to say that money is not speech and corporations are not persons.