Garden Journal #5

That's right people...drool...experience envy...hate me if you want.....but that is from my garden! I have been away from it for nearly two weeks and it's killing me that I can't see and pick and eat it. Kyle actually harvested that haul and posted it on Facebook. He managed to completely leave out my participation in the garden....out of sight out of mind I guess. Oh well.

Onions, tomatoes, squash, soy beans, jalapeños, banana peppers, pears, fennel, cucumbers zucchini, tomatillos. I wanted the onions to get bigger, but Kyle tells me that a week of rain while I was gone really challenged them. If only all that rain would have come in June when we had to water almost every day! For now I am not eating the fruits of our little piece of earth......if Kyle is letting this stuff rot I will kill him. At minimum he should be giving this stuff away.

Graph of the Day - July 17th

Okay, it's not the greatest graph from a basic design standard. The visual hierarchy is a little funky since the title is so understated, but the point of this graph is obvious: traditional fossil fuels is already highly subsidized more so than renewables.

For those market-worshiping conservatives (remember, libertarians wouldn't be supporting those huge market altering tax breaks for oil, gas, and coal), this is what people mean when they say that renewable energy doesn't get a fair break in tax incentives.

A very important distinction between the fossil fuel subsidies and the renewables is that the former are written into permanent U.S. tax code and create predictable incentives that drive business decisions. The latter are temporary and are approved year to year and sometimes not. The renewable energy industry doesn't get to plan for continued and efficient growth like the fossil fuel industry.

The Democrats want to end some of those Big Oil subsidies, but good luck ever getting Big Coal to ever pay it's fair share. The subsidies for Corn Ethanol are listed under "climate protecting" but that is highly controversial. All of this might create decent economic policy, but it is horrible environment policy. Energy policy must be somewhere in the middle.....it cannot be considered merely a part of economic policy. The renewable energy subsidies should be made permanent and predictable. Europe has figured it out...why can't we?

Read more at http://www.eli.org/Program_Areas/innovation_governance_energy.cfm

Garden Journal #4

It only makes sense that these garden journals speed up in mid-summer. It's when things start getting ready for harvest and eating. I suppose I could have written heavily about all the hard work of bed preparation and seeding, but those things just don't seem as exciting. Plus I didn't have my nifty phone with camera capabilities back then!

So this the Potato Journal. Potatoes were a complete experiment/accident for me. I had a few grow up in my compost pile and I decided to give it a go. They were put in pretty late if I understand what I have read about potatoes. They should have been much further along before the heat of summer. I will remember that for next year.

I read about mounding potatoes, so I knew what to do. I decided to start them low in one of the boxes and mound up as they grew. I didn't think about the fact that I was planting them in the worst clay soil at the bottom of the bed. They grew tops at first and I hilled up some new good soil around them, but then they seemed to quit. The summer heat hit and I guess they were just done. The tops slowly died off and I finally got impatient and pulled them this morning. This is what I got:

I am a little disappointed after my great success with the green beans. As an experiment and accident though, I should be happy. I have a few small potatoes that I coaxed from the earth. I will use what I have learned for next year: start earlier, have nice rich, fluffy soil below them and more to mound with, and have patience.

Garden Journal #3

I guess all the garden really needed was the heat to turn on...and turn on it did! Though I had some faith that these things work themselves out, I was skeptical that my yard was going to produce something worth eating. Some things have not worked out the way we envisioned, but other things have surprised us.

Green beans are surprising me right now. Kyle "let" me have a 12 foot row in the yard. He doesn't care for green beans, but I think they are the perfect reason to garden. I will eat green beans out of a can, but nothing beats the fresh ones. They are pricey at the farmer's market, so it makes sense to grow them yourself. Green beans are BUSH beans, not pole beans. And no, they are not string beans...breeders bred the strings out years ago. We turned over a 1 foot by 12 foot strip of yard and worked in a bag and a half of Scots garden soil amendment. That's it. Stuck the beans in the ground. Watered. That's it. We didn't even weed the row, as the beans grew faster than anything could have tried to get into the good soil.

Result?

That's the first picking. 14oz and pretty good looking. The second picking had ever better looking beans and was 3lbs. The next was 2lbs and was a little rougher looking. There is probably one more good picking out there. If I had known how easy it was going to be, I would have planted three times as many and provided everyone I know with beans. I did give some to my mother...after all, it was her mother that was big on growing beans and making great dinners out of them. Speaking of dinner:


This is why God created the green bean. Green beans and potatoes. I cannot think of a better way to eat green beans. This was always one of my mothers's best dishes and my grandmother's as well. It is pretty simple. Unlike my girl Misty with her detailed recipes over at Popcorn on a Skillet, I only give rough estimates of what went into my dishes.

1 pound of fresh beans
Some potatoes, peeled and quartered (I was trying to get rid of old ones and used too many this time)
4 oz black pepper ham (the nice stuff...like $7 a pound nice)
1 clove garlic
Salt and pepper
Water

Clean and snap beans. Put beans, crushed garlic, and enough water to half cover beans into a wide skillet. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Add diced ham, potato, salt, and pepper. Add more water if you need. At this point I went out for a run, and came back about 45 minutes later to a perfect dish. The potatoes should be cooked, but not to the point that they totally fall apart with a fork. Now, in my family we eat this as a complete meal, so this amount should only feed two people.

So my little bean row has done me proud. Nearly six pounds so far, and more to come. Because I have been too busy to cook lately and because Kyle doesn't eat them, I actually had too many to eat. Though I hate the texture of frozen green beans, I did freeze a pound or so. Clean, snap, and blanch for three minutes, then three minutes in an ice water bath. Into the freezer in a ziplock. They will be stirfry I suppose.