September 2010 Blog Posts (6)

Celt's Garden - Easy Seed Saving

Here's how to save tomato seed: slice a very ripe tomato through the equator. Using the point of a knife, scrape and squeeze out the seeds and surrounding jelly into a glass. Add a half cup of non-chlorinated water. Take some tape and make a label with the variety and date. Now, leave it sitting around 2-3 days. The jelly will disintegrate. The top may grow a layer of mold. The good seeds will fall to the bottom. Take a mesh tea strainer and pour the lot through the strainer. Run some tap water… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on September 28, 2010 at 3:00pm — 3 Comments

The Community Energy Challenge

During these times of high energy costs, declining resources, and knowledge about how our energy consumption is affecting the climate, the Community Energy Challenge is a brilliant idea. While the Transition Network has a pilot program called the Energy Resilience Assessment going on in the UK, the Community Energy Challenge is a great pilot program happening right here in Whatcom…

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Added by David MacLeod on September 25, 2010 at 9:00pm — 1 Comment

Celt's Garden - Walking the Talk, in Baby Steps

Watch the weather now. When the nights start to drop below 50 degrees F, it's time to get the green tomatoes. If you have your tomatoes on stakes, you may be able to drop the stakes and cover the vines with row cover (Remay, Gro-Therm.) Mine are a happy sprawl of vines and cages, so I'm going with Plan B: go out this weekend and harvest all the tomatoes. Packed in shallow fruit boxes with newspaper above, below and between layers, they will keep indoors. Keep it to two layers deep maximum, as… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on September 24, 2010 at 5:00pm — 1 Comment

Celt's Garden - Healthy Korean Food

The Koreans are mad container gardeners. Everywhere there's a bit of sun, there are greens in pots, squash scrambling up walls, hot peppers and medicinal herbs tucked into corners. In the summer, Korean apartment buildings take on a shaggy look. Apartment buildings in Korea invariably have balconies, a miniature version of a traditional Korean courtyard. A courtyard house has an outside kitchen, a place to store big earthenware jars, a large sink, usually sunken below ground level, a bit of… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on September 16, 2010 at 9:30pm — No Comments

Scything reed canary grass

I wear so many hats, and one of them is as a contractor for a few humble projects along Whatcom County streams where the goal is to eliminate noxious weeds and replace them with large conifers. A worthy goal, you say? A reality check is forthcoming....read on.....

I constantly battle with my use of fossil fuels. Being in this battle, I analyze all my endeavors, as I'm sure you do too at times, for their impact on my own contribution to global warming. I mean, if I was totally…

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Added by Juliet Thompson on September 15, 2010 at 9:05pm — 3 Comments

Celt's Garden - Rotations and Smelly Garden Concoctions

A crop rotation is just following say, a bed of tomatoes, when it comes out in October, with a fall cover crop, perhaps a handful of small fava beans and oats, or that nifty cover crop mix from the Bellingham WFC. The solanums (tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplants, tomatillos and wild relatives including the nightshades) are the worst for building up diseases and pests in the soil, followed by the cole crops (broccoli, cabbage, kale, radishes, cauliflower, turnips, etc) and the alliums… Continue

Added by Celt M. Schira on September 6, 2010 at 5:30pm — 5 Comments