Gourd Growing

A couple of weeks ago, we visited my parents in PA. While there I saw my father's efforts at the cultivation of the Calabash plant. The Calabash is one of the earliest domesticated plants in history. But surprisingly instead of being used for food, it's grown to create light weight, biological containers.

Amazingly, my father's gourd plant climbed up our backyard pine tree to the height of about 30 feet and produced 4 large green gourds. The container fruits themselves have to be allowed to dry until their outer surfaces harden into a thick layer of wood.

Each gourd can be trained with stones into the shape of drinking bottles, cups, serving bowls, pitchers, and large pots.

Canning Lessons....Part 2!!!

So for the tomatoes, we cleaned each tomato thoroughly and then sliced them. The sliced tomatoes were then poured into a large kettle pot and set to a low fire for approximately 90 minutes. As the tomatoes were gradually converted into a sauce, we proceeded to add a cup of lemon juice and some fresh basil leaves. One thing to note is that I had to keep stirring the sauce to prevent the bottom of the pot from burning the sauce. At the end of the boiling stage scores of fresh tomatoes have been converted into this bright red sauce with a rich, tangy scent.















The next step is to prepare the canning components: mason jar, canning lid, and funnel. Each mason jar and canning lid needs to be thoroughly washed and then sterilized. To sterilize the components, first we had a small pot of water boiling. Then the mason jar and canning lid is placed into the boiling water for approximately 10 minutes to kill all possible contaminants. Finally the funnel is placed into the boiling water for 2 minutes before being placed onto of the mason jar. After that, the steaming tomato sauce was poured into the mason jar, the canning lid applied tightly, and the entire mason jar is transported into a basket covered by many blankets. The purpose of the blankets is to allow the Mason Jar to cool slowly and therefore avoid cracking the glass.

Canning the pears was pretty much the same process, except for the fact that each pear had to be cored before being sliced. This was an arduous task since we literally had a bushel of pears. So we all got busy and sliced up all the pears after 2 hours. Then the pears were dumped into the large pot with 5 cups of water and 1 cup of lemon juice and cooked under low heat for 3 hours straight.



In the 3 hour cooking period I gradually added about 4 cups of honey to ensure a sweet flavor for the final product. The concoction had to be stirred every 10-15 minutes to prevent burning. As the cooking proceeded, the pear slices gradually transformed into a rich brown sauce that smelled heavenly. Finally the sauce was poured via a ladle into many mason jars. The finished mason jars were covered in blankets to cool for 3 days.



After the 3 day hiatus, we unwrapped our gleaming jars of goodness. In total, we canned 3 quarts of Tomato Sauce and 9 quarts of Pear Butter!!!! :)

Canning Lessons....Part 1!!!

This weekend has been a great adventure. With the tomato surplus that I've been getting from my garden, I decided to venture into the mysterious world of canning vegetables. My fiancee's mother has been canning veggies for years, so we went down to her house to learn the secret art. We brought with us a 30lb sack of ripe tomatoes, all hand picked from my raised bed garden. Now once we got there, my future mother-in-law mentioned that we were just in time to help her collect the pears from an old pear tree in her backyard.

So off I went with a long wooden pole to pick the pears. Now pear-picking is a tricky job, you have to basically catch a pear in a little metal net on top of a 20 ft long pole and somehow snap the fruit off it's branch. Marisa, her mother, and I took turns doing the deed. And it was real hard on the shoulders after awhile. The sun was blisteringly hot and the pears were in all of these hard to reach places.

After awhile, we had exhausted the pears on our side of the tree, however, our neighbor's side of the fence still held many of the dangling fruits. So off we went into the neighbor's backyard and picked and picked and PICKED some more for another hour. By the end of the pear picking session, we had exhausted all the low hanging fruits of the pear tree. There were still hundreds of pears left, but they were either too high up or buried too deeply within the canopy to be easily retrieved. Still we ended up harvesting a bushel of pears.

With the pears and tomatoes at hand, we began the canning process!!!!

Garden is overflowing with food

This summer is progressing nicely and my Riverdale garden is overflowing with nature's abundance. The swiss chard and peppers are producing a few meals worth of tender greens every week. The herb garden is increasing my stockpile of oregano, cilantro, dill and chives. And most importantly, I'm being deluged with scores of tomatoes, scores of summer squash, and bag after bag of pole beans.

The 2 raised bed gardens represent a mere 70 square feet of cultivated soil, and yet their productivity has been absolutely astounding. Every square inch of soil is intensively cultivated, every crop is succeeded by other crops, the peas were succeeded by the beans, lettuce will success the swiss chard, sweet corn will succeed the summer squash and so on. In this manner, 2 small raised beds will produce several hundred pounds of nutritionally dense, organic produce.

Here we have straight necked, curve necked and green summer squash. The curved necked summer squash didn't grow as well as their cousins. I think I won't plant any next year.

We've gotten so many tomatoes that I don't know what to do with it all. We've been eating tomatoes every day for weeks! And the truth is, the fresh tomatoes from a garden is far superior to store bought one.

Snail Hunting!!!

Over the last couple of months, we have settled very comfortably in our new home here at the edge of the NYC metro area. In my backyard adventures, I have discovered a valuable source of wild protein....snails!









Snails are an extremely common pest here in this area, though I hardly ever saw them in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Catching Snails is real easy. First, I created a few areas of shade and dampness in the backyard. This can be done using cinder blocks, or piles of leafs/twigs and other organic debris. After a rainy night, turn over the pile and you'll find scores of snails hidden underneath. These animals are quite beautiful to look at. Their translucent shells spans the gamut of natural colors...from dull brown to spiral green and everything in between.


So I captured a score of these little critters and then I proceeded to fatten them up. This step is relatively easy. First you put the snails into a large glass jar, and put in some vegetable scraps. Then on a daily basis, the food is cleaned out and replaced. The snails themselves are taken out, washed, and put back into the jar. This is repeated every day for a week. At the end of the week, the snails will begin to produce clear to semi-translucent excrement, at that point they are ready to be eaten. I sauteed my "herd" with some garlic and butter before putting it into a pasta sauce. The snails are quite delicious, they taste like somewhat like shellfish.

Escape from NYC!!!!!!

After 3 years in the bowels of the concrete jungle that is Manhattan, I have finally escaped with my fiance to the remote edge of the New York Metro region. Our new home is located in fair Riverdale, a quiet leafy, neighborhood perched along the Hudson river.

My new landlord was kind enough to give me 300 square feet of her backyard to do as I please. Sure I still have the backyard garden in Pennsylvania, but due to the distances involved, my father has been maintaining it to great effect over the last few years. So with such a generous amount of land just outside of my doorsteps, I set out at once to put it to productive use!

Firstly, I have 5 herb pots which I quickly planted with basil, cilantro, oregano, dill, and green onion chives. There were some chives from last year which was growing nicely in the fine spring weather. I collected my first handful in my new home just last night!

The soils of Riverdale seems to be very rocky. The entire area was cut out from the mountainous hillsides of the lower Hudson river. So that ruled out a conventional garden bed or even a semi-raised bed. For a bio-intensive garden capable of high yields, only rich, well-drained soil will suffice. So I set out at once to build a full raised bed garden.

I coughed up some hard currency and bought eight 6'x1' non-pressure treated oak planks. These planks were screwed together with 3 1/8' screws on each joint to form 2 large raised beds. The raised beds were then positioned on the 2 sunniest spots in my patch of land. Then the following layers of materials were placed within each raised bed:

1. 1'' of brown cardboard were placed at the bottom, this kills the grass and weeds growing on the ground beneath and attracts worms to the raised bed.

2. 1-2'' of Peat Moss were placed on top of the card board layer. The peat moss serves as a moisture retaining layer which dramatically increases the water usage efficiency of the raised bed.

3. 10'' of Top soil were placed on top of the peat moss. The top soil is medium in which the actual garden crops will be growing in.

With the two beds built, I quickly planted my stock pile of seeds and seedlings.

Raised Bed One with less such is planted with peas(Sugar Snap, Snow, Oregon Giant), onions(Walla Walla, and Georgia White), broccoli, and swiss chard.

Raised Bed Two with a few hours more worth of direct sunlight, is planted with Tomatoes(Early Girl, Beef Stead, Homestead), peppers (Yellow, Jalapeno), red onions, Summer Squash and sweet corn.

Asparagus Bushes and Fig Trees

Many momentous events have transpired over the last couple of months(my engagement for one thing :D ) , thus I haven't had much time to practice the field craft of organic gardening.

However, over Thanksgiving break I was able to go home to my garden in PA and prune the Asparagus plants with my father. The 8 Asparagus crowns that I had planted 2 and a half years ago have now turned into huge 4 foot tall bushes. During the late Autumn, these bushes would turn yellow and then brown. At this point the standard maintenance procedure is trim off the entirely of the bush above ground level and apply heavy organic compost on top of the root crown. The trimming of dead above-ground foliage disrupts the life cycle of the stem burrowing beetle, while the compost gives the Asparagus roots plenty of nutrients to grow delicious asparagus shoots in the coming Spring.

Upon returning back to the City a few days later, I was at my fiance's parents' backyard. And before us was a Mediterranean Fig tree. Since Figs are intolerant of extreme weather, we proceeded to shield it from the elements. Winterizing a fig tree involves first a great deal of pruning. This is to remove dead, tangled, and generally excessive limb growth. After I had finished pruning, Marisa and I pilled 4-5 feet of leaves around the trunk of the tree to provide insulation, the leaf pile was secured with chicken wire. Then the leader branches of the tree Canopy was binded tightly together with rope and then covered in layers of wool. With this protection in place, the fig tree will hopefully survive the winter and yield figs for us next year!

Eco-Tourism in Northern Appalachia

Two weekends ago, we decided to investigate a small community in Northern Appalachia known for it's Eco-Tourism initiatives. I'm referring to the fair town of Wellsboro, PA which hosts the famous grand canyons of PA. It is well known, that the Mountain communities of Pennsylvania were once famed for
their steel works and other heavy industrial plants. Some 30 years ago; however, the tide of globalization began to move the industries away from that area, and a general degree of impoverishment followed. Many cities and towns suffered a huge drop in population and commerce, but surprisingly, some communities have attempted to re-fashion themselves to suit the post industrial economy.

Driving in our fuel efficient Toyota Corolla, we swiftly left the coastal center of New York and entered the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. The roads traversed hills that gradually became mountains. I was surprised by the steepness of some of the highways. It seems that the transportation infrastructure in the Appalachia is not nearly as well developed as the coast. The countryside was extremely beautiful, filled with hills, woods, and farms scattered here and there. Every so often, we would drive by herds of cows or goats or other fine ruminants. Most of the towns that we passed seemed to be shells of their former selves. Many communities looked genuinely impoverished, what with all the abandoned factories and run down houses in many of these towns. We drove by one town which seemed to have invested a large amount of resources in the creation of vast windmills on the hills surrounding their settlement.

After about 3 hours of driving, our Car's GPS unit took us onto a one lane dirt road which ran up the side of a rather steep mountain. That was quite intimidating to Marisa who urged me to head back, but I kept driving on. After a few miles on this dirt road, we ran into a pick up truck heading directly towards us! Upon seeing this, I decided to head back down the mountain and go back onto the highway. After talking with the gentlemen in the truck, it appeared that the dirt road(called Rattler's road ) was indeed meant to accommodate 2 lanes of traffic! How that works is anyone's guess. After that little adventure, we drove for another 10 miles and finally reached the town of Wellsboro. I must say that the town is Beautiful. It seems to be a highly urbane, cultural center in the midst of many poverty stricken communities. We came to a pretty looking bed and breakfast in the middle of town and decided to get a room there. Wellsboro boasted of very decent lodgings and the restaurants were superb. At that point, both of us were wondering how such a prosperous community could exist on Eco-Tourism alone. After talking with a young waiter at a local restaurant, we learned that like is apparently the entire town hosted a huge number of Pensioners from all over the country. The regular town's folk were basically taking care of a large number of wealthy senior citizens, this along with the eco-tourism income has kept this community prosperous. With that question settled, we retired to sleep.

On the next day, we drove about 5 miles out of town to check out the Grand Canyon itself. The views were very impressive, the top of the canyon was about 2 thousand feet from the Susquehanna river tributary at it's base. The town had built out an elaborate series of trails all along the canyon. We took the "Turkey" Trail which was very scenic but also extremely narrow at certain points.

The ambiance was extremely beautiful, the entire trail down was through a dense cover of mostly Coniferous trees, probably owing to the acidity of the native soil. Every so often, we would catch breathtaking views of the entire Canyon. As we descended, we noticed many small streams all along the breadth of the ravines. As our descent continued, we noticed that the streams were gathering into larger streams. And eventually into a series of spectacular water falls, one larger than the one preceding it.

As we kept walking down, we saw that certain sections of the trail were carved into the mountain side itself, such that a cross section of the mountain was made transparent to us. In such cases, we saw the miracle of biology at work. Trees surviving on top soil only a few inches deep were implanted directly above solid bedrock. The roots of these trees, along with lichen were literally mining the bed rock for minerals. This kind of a biological system is incredibly stable, and the fertility that these minerals can supply to the trees could easily last of tens of thousands of years. I figure that humanity could create a forest garden of useful trees on these mountain sides, it would be economically productive with no maintenance for an indefinite period of time.

At any rate, we gradually came down to the base of the valley. There, all the waterfalls were happily unloading themselves into the Susquehanna river. The river itself was broad and it's waters extremely clear. All of this was exceedingly beautiful and of course we had to take a few glamor shots! :D

And that was pretty much our visit to Wellsboro, we later went to the town's Historical Society to learn it's history before going back home. I must say that Wellsboro definitely has a great beginning in sustainable eco-tourism.

Mid-summer Gardening work!

Last weekened, we journeyed back to Pennsylvania to work on the Suburban Garden. The time is high summer and the garden is overflowing with food. Since I've been living in NYC for the last 2 years, my father has largely taken over the daily operations of the Suburban Garden. And over that time, the man has grown to love my garden as his own. One can easily tell by the vast amounts of food that he is producing from the land!

Garden beds 1 and 3 has recently been harvested. My father gathered some 70 lbs of potatoes from those 2 beds. So with that in mind, I found time to plant some winter sugar beets and coriander in the newly accessible beds. Meanwhile, my dad was on his knees gathering large handfuls of bush beans. This was hardwork in humid, 90 degree summer weather. But since this is now my 4th year gardening, I've grown to love this act of productive labour.

The tomatoe bed is now a dense bush of vines and tomatoes. All 4 tomato plants are thriving and giving us buckets of tomatoes every day. As we harvested the ripe ones, I couldn't stop eating the cherry tomatoes. They were so sweet and juicy, like bright red grapes, and twice as tasty! As we were picking, I noticed that there were tomatoes in the interior of the bush which were quite inaccessible to us. This is a bit of a design snafu on my part. A good garen design should always have the most productive plants also be the most accessible ones. Next year, I'm going to put in wire mesh cylinders which will separate the 4 tomato plants and allow a person's arm to reach all the way into the middle of a garden bed.

The pepper plants are ready to be harvested and my father took in 4 huge green peppers. Next year, we will grow smaller red peppers and more Habanero peppers.

The Perennial plants are doing great as well. All of our Rasphberry and Blackberry bushes are producing abundently. The Asparagus bushes are thriving with huge, thick shoots. They will be ready for harvest next year. The Apple Trees are doing well, the sickly golden delicious tree that we planted 2 years ago, seems to finally be growing quickly. This year, we got the very first golden apple from that tree!

Miniature Ecology on Fire Island

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been working like mad on my day job, clocking 80 hours a week. As such, I've been rather negligent on my blog postings. In any case, 3 weeks back, Marisa and I journeyed to Fire Island, a far-flung strip of land near the southern coast of Long Island. We wanted to see the impacts of an ecology in relative isolation, and Fire Island presented the most accessible case study. Upon first glance, the Island seems almost utopian. There seems to be no crime, no industry, and almost no automobiles in sight. All the people are either walking or riding bicycles. Even the roads are narrow things meant for a "human" sized world.

The island itself is over 30 miles long but only about 1 mile wide. There seems to be a dense concentration of vacation cottages all over the entire island, though it would appear that most of these cottages are only inhabited for a couple of months out of the year. After walking around for several miles, we realized that the vegetation of the island seems to be in the midst of a significant transformation. The island used to be home to mostly shrubs, grasses, and native pine trees. Now, exotic trees and Bamboo shoots seems to be taking over the entire interior of the island. Upon further inquiry, it appears that these exotic were intentionally planted decades ago by the vacation cottage owners for ornamental purposes but has since then spread beyond their control. As we walked around the island, we noticed bamboo "forests" growing 15, sometimes 20 feet high all around us.

And as our journey continued, we noticed that the island was infested with deer. The Deer herds can be found everywhere, in people's backyards, in groves of trees, wandering the beaches. They were walking along roads, blocking pedestrians, even begging children for food scraps! After hours of walking, we met up with William, a fellow New Yorker temporarily vacationing on the island. We went to his cottage and had several hours of splendid conversation and wonderful pastries! :) During that conversation, we learned of how the deer problem came about. Apparently, the deer themselves were released onto the island by game keepers during the 70s. Lacking any natural predators, the deer population exploded during the subsequent decades.

When the authorities finally talked about culling the deer populations to control the spread of diseases, the local property owners balked at the suggested animal cruelty and passed laws to prevent the killing of any deer on the island. As such the deer population surpassed their natural holding capacity and either had to be fed by people or die from starvation. On our journey, we noticed a deer with it's leg broken and horribly infected. It was surviving on a bowl of food scraps that a little boy placed along the road. This experience was disturbing and yet strangely touching at the same time.

Update from the Suburban Garden

My father has been maintaining the Suburban garden back in Pennsylvania for the last couple of months. During the past several weeks, he dinner table has been inundated with delicious vegetables from our garden beds.

The tomato harvest has begun!

The summer greens we had planted months ago continues to produce.

My father is still getting some peas due to the unsually mild and rainy weather in July.

And finally, a whole lotta squash! :)

Urban Garden Update!!!

My little fire-escape Garden

continues to produce peas like crazy. From 1 planter-box and a single pot, I'm getting large handfuls of peas every 2 days. Still, peas are cool season crops which can't endure excessive heat for long. Already, some of the smaller pea shoots are beginning to dry up and turn yellow. I expect my pea plants to complete their life cycle by the end of July. After the peas die, I intend to plant some pole beans in succession at the same location.

All of my lettuce plants have bolted. I always find bolting to be such an fascinating part of the Lettuce reproductive cycle. The plant undergoes a profound metamorphosis. What was once a ground hugging leafy plant shoots up 2 feet into the air within a matter of a few days. The lettuce leaves become bitter as tiny yellow flowers crown the tips of each plant. Upon closer examination, I realized that our friend, the lady bug, has decided to make the lettuce pot her temporary home. The Lady bug was voraciously devouring the aphids on these leafy plants.

The single tomato plant is now 4 times it's original size. It has 5 Green tomatoes growing on it. Tomato plants consumes enormous amounts of water. I'm watering it just about once every day. That one plant alone takes upwards of half a gallon of tap water per day. There are many little yellow flowers blooming all over the tomato plant, harbingers of a great harvest in a couple of months!!!

The tomato flowers along with the onion, lettuce, and pea flowers are attracting honey bees and even a couple of bumble bees to my little garden in the sky. Along with the bees and ladybugs, I've seen 5 different species of birds resting themselves in the shade of the garden: Sparrows, Robins, Pidgeons, Finches, and a single Bluejay!