Category Archives: books

Great Permaculture Resource

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Just found Permaculture Media Blog. This Blog is so full of information I just feel like I’ll never have to buy another book or film again. Best of all it’s all FREE!

You like documentary films? How about on , or , or , etc…

Read much? Well then throw your peepers at this , or , or  , etc

I could do this all night long… Instead I’ll let you head on over and see for yourself.

 

Vernalization and What it Means for Your Garden

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Soviet agronomist Trofim Lysenko coined the term Jarovization in 1928. This translates to Venalization, vernum being the latin word for spring.

This study left my head spinning. What it boils down to is that plants know when to flower in spring because of sensors telling them it’s been cold for a prolonged period of time. When it stops being cold, the plants assume that it’s now spring. This makes the glorious spring blooms happen.

I’ve read on Growning Plants From Seed by “Doc” and Katy Abraham that you can chill your tomato seedlings right after the cotyledons, or seed leaves unfold. This is when they are about one inch tall. Do this for two to three weeks at fifty to fifty five Fahrenheit. This makes the plants stockier, flower earlier and produce up to two times the flowers in the first and second clusters.

Urban Forage Event

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What a great weird day…

Last night I went to a friend’s new home. He, with his wife and newborn, just moved much closer to me. It was a “we got the key” party, so Erin and I went. We had a couple of drinks and a whole lot of laughs.

Today I woke up with a head ache, the Irish flu kind. But also I felt somehow weird. After laying in bed chatting with Erin for a while, I started making frequent emergency trips to the porcelain god’s altar. Now, I know what you are thinking, “that’s what you get when you drink to much”. Well, it wasn’t that type of feeling, this was more like a food bug.

All this made me feel like crap, so we missed the Farmer’s Market today. Specially annoying because I’m finally having some friends over to help out with the garden and there is a guy there that sells vegetable plants for a dollar each. I’ll have to do that part next week.

Now to the main reason for this post.

At about one p.m. I realised that today was the Urban Forage Event I put on my handy dandy blog calendar. Suddenly I was up against the wall. The options were, staying home feeling like crap and doing nothing fun all day, or going to the event and risking vomiting all over my fellow foragers and shaming the family name. By one thirty, I was dressed and ready to face the world.

I’m very glad I chose the later of the two options. I will to put all my notes and pictures together, then I’ll post all the awesome stuff I was learned there.

As an aside, one of the gentlemen there shared a link with me on a book written in the early 1900s about permanent agriculture. Enjoy this great read, I know I will.

Easy “yogurt”

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This is the long story…

I heard of Erik Knutzen about two years ago. He did a talk at a local gathering promoting his new (at the time) book. He spoke of water harvesting, brewing spirits, gardening, etc. Needles to say he had my full attention. I bought this book that same night.

I gobbled up the book very quickly while at the same time taking notes. One thing that caught my attention was the section titled “Fil, Piima and Viila”. In it Erik describes a yogurt like substance called Filmjolk. Try as I might I could not find these cultures any where and so decided to make plain old yogurt in stead. It is comparatively an involved and time consuming proses. Not to hard, and you do get tasty yogurt for cheap. However the stuff described in the book was supremely easy. All you have to do is put a spoon full or two of the culture and a cup of milk in a jar. Lightly cover, let sit in the kitchen for 24 hours and you are done.

Fast forward to a week ago. My wife (Erin) goes to a pregnant friend’s home to take photos and massage her (lucky). As all this is happening they started unknowingly talking about the magical cultures of my desire. After a while Erin noticed that what they were talking about was that “yogurt” I had been obsessing about for a while now and asked to take some starter culture home for me. This made me the proud caretaker of a Finnish strain of Fil and Viila, and have now made a couple of jars of the stuff. It’s so good and so easy. If you are interested in some starter and live in the Silverlake area, then contact me and we can arrange the adoption…  

Awesome read!

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I just finished reading Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan (OK I really just listened to the audio book, thanks Los Angeles Public Library). It is a very insight full and well written book. In it, he goes into detail about three types of meals. One from industrial food, organic, and foraged/hunted.

First he talks about how corn pretty much rules our industrial food chain and how perverse it is. Check this out on more of that. Then he goes on to talk about the origins of the organic movement and industrial organic, which made me think twice about Whole Food inc.

Something that really caught my attention is the part where Michael spends a week in a farm I’ve heard of  before. This is the AMAZING Polyface farm. The owner, Joel Salatin wrote an awesome book called Everything I want to do is illegal. Another gem. This guy has his farming straight. Very closed loop. Nothing wasted and all out in the open. I hope to one day make it to the farm and have a look around.  The section about grazing cattle is inspiring to say the least.

The third meal involves foraging for mushrooms and hunting a wild California boar amongst other things. All this culminates in a meal prepared by Michael from all (mostly) local and self acquired ingredients.

All in all, I highly recommend this. It left me feeling hopeful about what we eat again. Also gave me a new appreciation for my local farmer’s market.