Tuesday, June 30, 2009

What Girls Used to Learn in School


This is a picture of one of my great-grandmothers with her two younger sisters. Note the dresses, then look at the picture below from Scientific Sewing and Garment Cutting, copyright 1898 (the youngest sister was born in 1892), by Antoinette Van Hoisen Wakeman and Louise M. Heller.I downloaded the book from Google books. This book describes a sewing program for grades one through eight, in which girls would learn to sew, first by hand, then by machine, including mending rips and patching. By eighth grade, each girl would be able to take a few simple measurements, and using a square and a parallelogram as bases, draft a pattern for a dress in 10 minutes! Modern women talk about being liberated, and being so much better off than their ignorant ancestresses trapped at home, but could your eighth grader design and manufacture any article of clothing from scratch given material, thread, needles, a sewing machine, brown paper, a ruler, a tape measure, a pencil, and pins? 
The description of the work girls did back then makes me feel a bit dumb. I want to work through this book sometime, if only to learn the darning and patching techniques, and how to match plaids. Maybe someday I'll be as smart and capable as my great-grandma was at age 13. We shall see.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Poke Salad or Poke Sallet


Some modern extension agents advise never, ever to eat the leaves of this plant, but generations of Southerners grew up (and lived to ripe old ages with nary a trip to the doctor, modern myths about early death notwithstanding), boiled, rinsed, re-boiled, and ate it with fatback and delight. It is too late in the year to eat it now, but as a young, early spring food it is a freebie available EVERYWHERE in the South. The Declaration of Independence was written in the fermented juice from its berries! How cool is that? You can get ink, dye for clothing, a potential treatment for AIDS, a royal stomachache, and a nutritious spring  green from the same plant. God gives us more than we ever deserved.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Canning Green Beans


I've gotten a good harvest of green beans this week, more than even we green-bean lovers can eat fresh. What to do? Clean them, take off the ends, string as necessary, break or cut into 1-inch pieces, and blanch for 5 minutes. From there, either plunge into ice water (not yourself, though you will feel like it- the beans) to cool off quickly, then into labeled freezer containers or bags, or can them while hot with enough of their cooking water to cover and leave a head space of one inch. 
One inch? Why? Because beans are low-acid foods, we use a pressure canner to can them, and the food expands at high temperature and pressure. The increased pressure raises the temperature to kill some very interesting bacteria that thrive in low-oxygen conditions and produce deadly toxins. Go to the University of Georgia for the latest safety info from the USDA, and follow the rules exactly, and you'll have green beans this winter even if there is a power outage. It works- there are multiple safety features built into these things now, so nothing blows up, and it seems to expel less heat into the kitchen than an open water-bath canner. If you are good at following instructions, you should try it sometime.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Poona Khira


This is a traditional variety of cucumber from India, usually available only in the area around the city of Puna. The plant TOOK OFF growing when the temperatures went above 95 F for daytime highs. It is supposed to stay sweet despite the heat. If global warming is going to happen, or global cooling, or whatever changing conditions may be, it is wise to use our global communications to ask others, "what do you grow in hot,dry-yet-humid conditions? How do you plant it, fertilize it, and grow it? How do you know it is ready to eat? How do you prepare it?". Maybe the land grant institutions could catalog and maintain seed banks and information, not just for "germ plasm" as raw material for experiments, but as a rich record of the agricultural ingenuity that enables humans to live and grow food in a wide variety of conditions all over the world. It would be a lot easier to help people adapt with resistant plants that already exist than to say "Give us millions of government dollars, and we'll engineer a resistant plant- sure it'll need a ton of water and specific fertilizers to make up for the fact that the inserted vector hit an essential enzymatic pathway, but it'll be rust resistant!" Can't we just try using what God has already given? We do not have to reinvent the wheel when a very nice vehicle sits in the driveway, fueled and ready to go.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Identifying a Volunteer


This may be the leaf of an acorn squash! Look at the little squash under the leaf and to the right. If so, I have at least 2 of these vining plants growing out in the garden, from seeds I "composted" out back from store-bought squash. Freebies! If I can keep them alive past the borers and the heat, it will be good to eat our own squash this fall. I won't be able to save the seed from these, though- I have zucchini plants out there, and summer and winter squash can cross-pollinate. My yard is too small to separate them adequately, as they are pollinated by bees. With the borage out there, at least a few bees seem to be daily visitors, so I hope they keep coming, and the borage keeps blooming.
Correction: I think it may be a melon- it isn't keeping that "acorn" shape as of June 30.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Corn is Beautiful


Have you ever looked closely at the leaf arrangement on a corn plant, particularly a large one when water is flowing down the leaves? They are arranged opposite each other and staggered down the plant, so that one funnels water to the other, on down to the roots. I know it has something to do with pollination, as the silks grow from the bases of some of those leaves to develop into ears of corn, but it is still a sign of how much fun God had creating this beautiful world.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Watching The Corn Grow


Some of my corn is tasseling already! The back quad (5x5 ft square, roughly one plant per square foot, with Missouri Wonder beans and zucchini interplanted) is a bit stunted for lack of sun, but this is supposed to be a dwarf (5 ft high) variety of corn for close planting and less than optimal conditions, anyway. Golden Bantam is a 100-year-old variety of corn, and it produced pretty well last year despite the lack of full sun and the less than optimal growing conditions. It is getting fertilized at more proper intervals this year, and my husband trimmed the crepe myrtles back, so hopefully it can produce. I don't know whether the beans or zucchini will or not. though the zucchini is looking leafy. This picture is from June 19. Just wait until you see how much it has grown since!

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Stink Bugs Stink


Some are our friends, and some are not. The green ones and some of the brown ones suck the juices out of plants with a piercing probiscis, wounding the plant and lowering yields. I think these are brown stink bugs, Euschistus servus. One appeared to be sucking on the sunflower plant shown here. I disposed of them after the photo. You can read about and view these friends and foes at

Monday, June 22, 2009

Warning! Graphic Garden Humor


Boy carrot. We need some sandier soil.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Gardening Means Never-Ending Learning

I told my husband at lunch that there are several grand-daddy long-legs (leiobonum vittatum) living in my green bean plants. They seem to occupy the same place every day under the leaves, so I try not to disturb them. The entomologists say they are arachnids, but not true spiders, and little is actually known about their ecology. They don't really have poisonous venom. You can read about them at 
http://www.uky.edu/Ag/CritterFiles/casefile/relatives/daddy/daddy.htm#leio. He told me that I'm really getting to know my garden and its inhabitants. That is important, as I need to know who will get to eat what, who is harmful, and who is helpful. They think the leibonum eat soft-bodied insects (aphids and grubs maybe- in which case- have at 'em, boys). I sure hope they do.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Solar Clothes Drying Without Offending Neighbors


So how can you air your laundry without offending your HOA? Many options. A backyard with a privacy fence would work, or using a back porch (what they can't see can't offend...) or, if your attic is floored and has stairs as ours does, you can get some exercise and dry laundry very efficiently at the same time. These are our clotheslines. I use the old TV antenna at the back for hanging shirts on hangers, or pot holders or aprons with loops. I can generally hang about 2 loads at a time up there, hung early in the morning this time of year, and taken down in the evening. No, the light bulb is NOT a CFL. Why? I have bumped my head on a bulb up there and broken it before, and I do not relish cleaning up mercury-contaminated (CFLs dirty secret- all of them currently contain mercury, so if government forces us all to convert, mercury environmental contamination will get A LOT worse) glass in a hot attic. I haven't seen any mercury cleanup kits in the light bulb section of the store, as we would be required to have at work if we use a mercury-containing product.
Anyway, these lines are old, but they work quite well. The clothes get that slightly stiff feeling that comes from not being beaten to death in a dryer, and they last longer. You save money all the way around.

Friday, June 19, 2009

A Dreaded Enemy Has Found Me- Manduca Sexta


I knew they would show up eventually. I was watering my tomato plants when I saw that one looked a bit chewed. Examining more closely, I saw this- entire branches of fresh, new growth partially denuded. I knew of only one local foe of tomatoes that destructive- the larva of the Carolina Sphinx moth, otherwise known as the tobacco hornworm. The tomato hornworm is a relative that is equally destructive, and they look a lot alike.
It is a large and pretty moth (you can mistake it for a hummingbird or a small bat), that has large and ugly offspring. This is in a pint jar. The caterpillar is as big around as my thumb, and as long as my index finger. Its head is not shown, but that red tail spike (black in the tomato hornworm) is an identifying mark. The best thing to do is to inspect your plants regularly, and pick them off. If you have birds or chickens big enough to handle eating them, feed them to your animals. Otherwise find a way to kill them before they skeletonize your rich tomato dreams.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

The Harvest is Gearing Up- And So is the Heat

There is a heat advisory today, meaning temperatures in the mid-to-upper 90s F, and hazards for the very young and the elderly in terms of overheating and dehydration. I grew up without AC for most of my childhood, though the old house was surrounded by fields and trees, so it didn't get nearly as hot as a sun-baked house surrounded by the concrete and steel of a city. Watch out! Stay in the shade; move slowly; wear a big, floppy hat; and drink plenty of water if you are outside in the heat of the day! 
In the better news, the garden yields are going up. We harvested only a little over a pound of produce last month. This month was harvested over five pounds so far, with over a pound coming in yesterday. The larger tomatoes have not even started ripening, and the corn will not be in until mid-July! Then we'll have some big numbers. Stay cool.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Bumblebee Fun


I like bumblebees. Evidently they are a native American pollinator (honeybees hail from Europe,as do some species of Bumblebees,though they may originally be from Asia, according to Wikipedia). Bumblebees even shake flowers in such a way as to pollinate tomatoes really well. They also pollinate squashes (hope, hope, hope) and other native American plants. As you can see from the picture, they love the borage. I think this is a Bombus bimaculatus, according to the pictures on http://www.bumblebee.org/NorthAmerica.htm .  They are fun to watch, too, as you realize that God likes to mess with our scientific minds a bit; He makes something as un-aerodynamic as possible, then makes it fly, even after it bashes its head against the wall looking for its nest several times. I like backyard science, and photographing things that don't mind the camera, and wondering at the creative power of God out there. I hope you do, too.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Leucauge venusta


This is Leucauge venusta or the orchard orbweaver. Isn't it a beautiful spider? God had fun with this one. Decorating something so gloriously that spends its life catching and eating insects, when a dull brown might have been more "adaptive", just goes to show that He is an artist as well as a superb engineer. Praise God for the small things that make our lives easier, and leave a few webs up around your place today.

Monday, June 15, 2009

15 Minutes Can Change Your Life

At about 4:30 Friday, I was cleaning up after finishing an assay when the sky blackened. Rain poured over the building in sheets. Leaves and trash swirled upward from the construction site below the window. I headed downstairs, despite the lack of any alarm. It was over in a few minutes. The tornado warning alarms sounded for the next half hour. They may have been going during the storm, but we could not hear them indoors.
On the way home, I saw the usual small branches and leaves littering the road. The electricity was out when I got home, but I called the utility company, and the automated service said it would be up in a few hours.
Hours passed. We went for a walk after dinner at the local cafe, which had power. A few blocks south of us, a huge, mature oak had split from the bottom (roots were shallow and black with rot, though the crown was lush and green) and fallen on a thick north-south power line, crushing a utility pole with the transformer and leaving lines in the road. We learned that this had happened all over the city, with winds up to 70 miles per hour, and a tornado suspected in Bartlett. It travelled up Bartlett Boulevard. It hit densely populated areas along the route. Nobody died, and only a few were injured. About 130,000 people were left without electricity. We bought some dry ice and prepared for the worst.
The trucks started coming and going the next day. The neighborhood echoed with chain saws and generators, but was otherwise strangely quiet. The holes for new poles were being drilled by Saturday afternoon. Police cars with spotlights patrolled the neighborhood all night. Wires were up Sunday, but there were other wires down that had to be fixed before they could safely restore our electricity.
The dry ice was gone by Sunday afternoon, and the refrigerator was getting too warm. We went hunting dry ice, but to no avail. We bought regular ice and hustled all remaining salvageable cold goods into the chest freezer in the garage, packing it full so that it would stay cold.
We grilled a dinner of fresh vegetables and thawing chicken in our smoker/grill. We'll eat a lot of chicken and pork chops in the next few days. Fortunately the meat did not thaw completely.
We learned that we are too dependent on the electric company for our basic needs. Freezing as a sole means of food preservation is not good. We lost a LOT of frozen vegetables. We need a battery or crank-operated radio. I'll be canning a lot of strawberry jam in the next few days, as the strawberries thawed, too (but stayed cold). We need to build our emergency supplies. We will.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

How To Grow Big 'Maters (in Memphis)


Start with a nice sunny, sheltered spot that gets some shade from the merciless afternoon sun, to prevent sunscald (bleached white patches on your tomatoes). The "sunny" part is flexible- we grew tomatoes successfully in middle TN behind a deck, where the plant only got a few hours of sun a day. Less production, but they were good.
Fertilize well with compost or whatever your soil needs. When the plants get big, they appreciate a good mulching and deep, even watering to prevent cracking of tomatoes. This gets tricky in the hot summer, when a hurricane remnant can dump inches of rain on us in a few hours. Some will crack then, regardless, but cracked ones will still have edible parts. When it is hot, water daily and well. Continue to give weekly liquid fertilizer ( Miracle gro or worm poo or compost tea or whatever grows yer 'maters) throughout the growing season. Make sure you have plenty of calcium in your soil (crushed eggshells are a good amendment) to prevent blossom end rot on the tomatoes.
Provide the birds with drinking water as well as birdseed. They'll help keep some of your pests at bay, and the drinking water reduces the temptation to peck your tomatoes as they ripen. Also keep rats out with a cat or ratting dog. A big enough dog might keep raccoons out, too, though some dogs like tomatoes and would have to be kept out of the garden. 
Support your tomatoes with cages or supports of your choice. I like cages best, to support the plant with minimal damage under windy conditions. Do inspect for the dreaded Tobacco or Tomato Hornworm (large, ugly skeletonizers of plants), and eliminate without mercy. Let God take care of the rest.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Freshly Shelled Peas Bounce Higher Than Frog Eyes

Strange things run through your mind during veggie preparation when you used to be a seventh grade school teacher. Boys will try to bounce anything remotely ball-like, including the eyes of preserved frogs. Maybe they would eat more peas if they helped shell a few, and could do some comparative bounces!

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

My Garden View-Corn


The corn is growing, along with the squash (planned and volunteer) and a tiny volunteer tomato. Up front, the broccoli has not headed yet. The cauliflower made buttons. The chard is adding nutrients too my weekly lunch soups. In the very back bed, the herbs seem to be enjoying the heat. One of the sunflowers is strangely afflicted, as are the amaranth plants (no way to eat those scarred leaves), but I can find no bug, and nearby beet and herb and okra plants are fine, as are other sunflower plants. I'll discuss the tomatoes tomorrow. Live, observe, and learn. 

Monday, June 8, 2009

Summer Has Changed Since I was Young

If you grew up on the edge of suburbia/rural America as I did, summer went by in a hot, happy blur of outdoor play, lying indoors reading, drinking tea, and leaning off the back porch eating juicy peaches and watermelon. Evidently kids don't do such things anymore. According to the National Institute for Summer Learning (warning: sales pitch for structured summer activities for kids), kids gain three times as much weight during the summer as they do during the school year, because so many sit at home alone all day eating and playing video games indoors instead of running around outside. How sad is that?
I can say as a caveat to the statistics they provide, that I grew a LOT the summer after my seventh grade year- an inch a month for three or four months. I ate massive amounts of food. My BMI probably changed pretty dramatically- though I was a severely skinny child, anyway. I could eat an entire medium pizza alone, and not look like I had eaten anything, like the skinny cows in Pharaoh's nightmare. I just got taller. I still get accused of having an eating disorder, even though I have a healthy weight. So, "kids gain a lot of weight in the summer" might just mean they are growing- or might not. It just might mean somebody needs to kick them out in  the yard, or take them to a park, or leave them with someone who can- which is where those summer programs have their place. I'm going out to run around in the yard now.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Jams and Jellies are Easy

It is not hard to take 5 or 6 cups of berries (the recipes come in the pectin package! Just fruit, sugar, and pectin) and make 6-8 half-pints of sweet goodness. Then you can spend the rest of the evening listening for the satisfying "pop!" of a jar well-sealed, and licking all the utensils. You will lick them, and your hands. You will turn the kitchen into a sauna, and come out delightfully steamed. You can even freeze the berries now, and use them later when that heat is welcome, and you want to give the sweet spreads as Christmas gifts. The making of jams and jellies was something I wanted to learn this year, after the apple butter last year was such a ringing success, so it turned out pretty well. All the jars sealed properly, so we'll have more than just apple butter for sandwiches in the next year. Lunch just got a little more diverse.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

La Belle Vivre Sans AC May End Soon

Today is most likely the last day in our area with highs below the upper 80s or lower 90s, and a low in the 60s. Those temperatures define my ability to cool the house effectively by "passive" means (opening windows at night, with window fans to encourage air flow) after heating it up by baking or canning, or doing much ironing. I'll be doing all of the above this afternoon and evening, plus running the old dishwasher to sterilize the jars. The kitchen will be HOT by nightfall.
I want to finish my niece's birthday gift so I can send it Monday, finish a pink outfit for me(same thread) I've had in unfinished condition since last year, and try my hand at making blackberry jelly (bought the berries today) and strawberry jam (from berries chopped, sugared, and frozen last week). That should make for a pretty full afternoon, considering that I have gardening and other duties as well. I want to make some cookies for my husband, too. It is difficult to pack a week of homemaking into a few days off on week-ends, especially when they are partial days. But when you know the Heat is coming, things must be done. Cannot bake, starting tomorrow, except in the bread machine. Oy!

Friday, June 5, 2009

Rain Grows Corn


This is last year's corn, picked a little late.
We got a wonderful rain (long, slow, and gentle) yesterday, followed by cooling temperatures and sunshine today. The corn is visibly taller than it was before the rain. It is growing pretty well!
My first year growing corn out there, I tried it in a few rows. It was too widely spaced, so pollination was poor. I had not had the soil tested (it was really acid at pH 5.6), so the stalks were weak and spindly. At acidic pH, even if you fertilize, the nutrients are simply not available to the plant. A $30 soil test includes a lot of valuable information, and is well worth the money. Last year I paid attention to my husband ( he is from Nebraska, the Land of Corn), and planted the corn in a 4x4 foot block, about one plant per square foot. I had also previously limed the soil. The stalks were stronger and pollination was MUCH better, though I was in Spain when the corn was ideally ripe.
This year I fertilized before planting, then side-dressed the plants with more fertilizer when they were about 6 inches high. No new lime this year. The stalks look stronger and even better. I'll be giving them the same weekly liquid fertilizer I give the tomatoes (sorry, it is Miracle Gro- the only kind I could find with low P, but high N and K, and some boron,which is what my soil needs), and some support via stakes at the corners of the beds and twine. I have 2 beds planted a few weeks apart, one of which has Missouri Wonder beans and zucchini interplanted. The other has some zucchini and some unknown volunteer squash-like plants. We'll see if they survive the borers to produce, and we'll see how interplanting affects yield So far my best-performing beds are the crowded ones, with a variety of plants to attract and repel different bugs. We'll see how it goes.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Fantasy and Reality- Energy Activist Style

I was lying on the couch last night, reading a peak-oil-activist account of the near future, with fewer cars and limited electricity, when the contrast between her vision of reality and the actual reality of my neighborhood came into sharp focus. My college-age neighbors drive their cars and trucks half a block to go to school. Not kidding. I wish I could walk or bike the 3 miles to my workplace, but it is not safe to do so. Being a victim of robbery is considered "paying Memphis tax" around here. 
Though the temperature was in the mid-80s and cooling, the neighborhood roared with the sound of air conditioners (I could hear them because our windows were open, and our AC has remained off since the heat of summer broke last fall). Our electricity is stable, and 2/3 coal-fired. Houses glow with security lights and big-screen TVs.
Our city is not set up for much use of mass transit. There's no way to travel from my house to work by bus without walking at least 1/2 mile to a less-safe area, then having to go all the way downtown, change buses, and come back. I could walk all the way there in only a little more time than it would take by bus, if I could make it without getting mugged.
I know things  may change, but I wonder if the people who advocate using carbon taxes to beat us all into using less energy have fully considered the suffering they are asking to inflict on others. Who drives the oldest, gas-guzzling cars? Who lives in older houses with bad windows and old appliances? The poor and the elderly. They cannot afford solar panels and wind turbines and rain barrels. They cannot afford a $40,000 electric vehicle, or the electricity to charge it through their aged wiring, or new batteries every 2 years. Activists point out that climate change is already inflicting suffering on people. I would counter that the Earth has warmed and cooled several times without our input, and will again. Didn't the Viking explorers call Greenland by its name for a reason, and grow crops there for a few hundred years before it got too cold again, and call Canada Vinland for all the wild grapes?
Yes, we should prepare for coastal flooding- but in hurricane prone areas, they should have been prepared anyway. We should help people who need to relocate, if they request help. We should not waste the bountiful gifts God has given us, and a bit of walking would help greatly with the "obesity epidemic". But taxing people into submission has been tried here before-with mixed results (reduced smoking recently, revolution in the more distant past). I'm afraid to see the stories of hypothermia in winter, heatstroke in summer, and hardship because it was too expensive to drive and too unsafe to walk to work. I hope these people get out of their urban or suburban middle-class enclaves and ask how the other half lives (Drive your Prius through Frayser, will you please?), then think things through before advocating "drastic action" that could kill thousands, drain funds, and not accomplish a thing for the climate.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Praying Mantis

When I went out to pick fresh basil for the soup last night, I saw a most unusual praying mantis on one of the plants. I've seen a baby green one before, but this one was brown, with black-and-white-striped legs. I did not have the camera, and the lighting was a bit dim, anyway. I just looked it up on the UK entomology site, and it is a Carolina Mantid, Stagmomantis carolina. Go there for a picture of the adult. The nymph was cute. An American native! I hope it stays, thrives, and eats the bad guys.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Basil Aplenty


I like basil in soups and pasta sauce, but sometimes my plants produce so much, we may not be able to eat it all. If you want to start herb gardening, I would suggest starting with basil or mint if you like them. They grow easily, aren't too fussy about conditions, and produce big yields. Fresh basil (especially enough to make a pesto, if you can get pine nuts) is REALLY expensive, so it could easily repay the cost of a pot and some soil and seeds or a seedling. You can freeze basil or mint, or use them fresh. Advice is mixed on drying them, and I have never tried. I might try it in the attic this summer, but it gets so hot up there that the flavorful volatile oils of the basil might evaporate. A small batch as an experiment won't hurt. The picture is from last year on July 4, and the basil is in the front next to the tomato plants. Scary thing is, my tomato plants are almost that big now, from seed, in a different bed with more sun. Wow!

Monday, June 1, 2009

Trap Plants

If you are trying to minimize pesticide use in your garden, an understanding of trap plants is a good thing. I have allowed some radishes that bolted (started flowering) before growing good-sized roots to continue to grow and flower, simply because their leaves seem to attract the slugs away from the lettuces and carrots. The large plants are lying among the carrots and near the lettuces. The leaves are seriously lacy, but they still attract the slugs left out there, which are fewer all the time. I've collected over 7,900, but the rate of collection is slowing greatly with the heat of summer. 
The nasturtiums are supposed to be trap plants for aphids, as well as a tasty radish-y flower for your salad when the weather gets really hot. They're kind of tasteless right now. 
The borage plants do not trap anything as far as I know, but the bees seem to like the sweet flowers, and they're supposed to improve the pollination of your garden plants. Strategic interplanting is good when you have tiny beds like mine. We'll see how it goes.