Celt M. Schira's Blog – November 2010 Archive (6)

After a holiday is a great time to stock up on staples. Snarf around at local supermarkets and grocery outlets and see what you can find. Whole wheat pastry flour, olive oil, shelled nut meats (freeze, they go rancid quickly), molasses, spices, winter squash, often a great deal on chocolate chips and whole frozen birds, especially if the bird has been dropped on the floor. Allow the bird to defrost in the refrigerator until it is thawed just enough to cut up. It will keep better if it doesn't… Continue

The glossy garden pornography has started to arrive. The Pinetree catalog was first. Pinetree sells small packets for modest sums, with a good selection of heirloom varieties and a focus on small-space gardeners. Best to start with a garden plan. Then the catalogs are more of a reference and less of a temptation. Inside on a snowy day, we can dream and plan next year's garden. Now is the time to think about adding a raised bed, or putting in a trellis, perhaps some herbs in pots. What worked… Continue

Time to fire up the sprouter. If you don't have a sprouter, Terra Organica sells a set of three cheerfully colored plastic lids for a widemouth canning jar, with holes of different sizes for alfalfa seed through soy beans. A tad pricey, but after fooling around with scraps of screening and rusting lids, I found it a worthy use of hydrocarbons. The nifty lids also make it easy to wash off the outer skins of the seeds. Sprouts do best in non-chlorinated water. I keep a jug of water sitting on the… Continue

Lemme start with letting my alter ego, Hamster, review the narrative in the style of my fellow Vanderbilt alumnus, Joe Bob Biggs of "Joe Bob Goes to the Drive In" fame, then the geek engineer can get to appropriate technology. Breasts: 12 (I think, I lost count), dead bodies: I definitely lost count; gallons ketchup: 17; corpse in the onion wagon; special points for panther mauling; sword fu; pistol whipping fu; head pounding fu amid chaos in brothel; goat butchery; horse appreciation; very… Continue

It's a great year for winter radishes. They are still coming up in the intermittent warmth, so go ahead and plant some daikon, Black Spanish, Rose Heart or Purple Plum. It might work. Since the radishes are looking so strong, maybe a few turnips or mini carrots will make it, even this late in the year. All the roots are sweeter just out of the garden. I've been crossing winter radishes for years. Breeding is perhaps too strong a word, since my program consists of pulling up anything too puny… Continue

Gardeners will routinely cheerfully eat produce that they would refuse to pay money for. Those undersized, lumpy, be-spotted potatoes that appeared after shoving a fork into a supposedly vacant row? Trim, steam and mash, or make cottage fries. The ragged cabbage sadly loved by slugs? Drown it in salt water to stun the critters and surreptitiously wash out mud, intense green caterpillar frass (bug poop), slime, earwigs, pill bugs and all four kinds of gastropods when the rest of the household… Continue