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hydroponic farm

This morning, my friend Sharon and I toured the Urban Oasis Farm in Tampa where veggies are grown hydroponically in a sterile soiless growing media. Since the purpose of the "soil" is for root support and not for nutrients, such material as pebbles and mulch are sometimes used. Urban Oasis chooses to use a growing media consisting of coconut fiber and perlite. I surmise that this particular mixture has an added benefit of absorbing moisture from the water soluble fertilizer applied to provide the plant's nutrients. The farm's owner explained that the fertilizer they use is OMRI (Organic Materials Review Institute) approved. 

 
The styrofoam planters are stacked in sets of four with a plant in each of the four corners, thus allowing sixteen plants to grow in each vertical unit. The corners of each planter are inserted in notches to hold the pot above the "soil" line of the one beneath it. An irrigation system on a timer supplies liquid fertilizer to the top planter which then runs into each planter beneath it.   

Florida soil is less than ideal for vegetable gardening, which was a reason given during the tour for using this method. I will not be convinced that this is a good alternative to gardening in soil that has been enriched with good quality compost, cover crops, and mineral amendments along with utilizing crop rotation until I investigate further. My research will be part of a project I am working on in my Gardening for Good Nutrition class that I am taking this present term.

At the farm, I bought tatsoi, dandelion greens, and flat-leaf parsley which I blended to make a green drink. 

   

tatsoi

 
dandelion greens

To prepare the green drink, I roughly-chopped a handful of each the three kinds of herbs, added 1 cup water, 1/2 cuke, 2 stalks celery, and an apple and whirred it up in a blender. If you happen to be out of apples, I sometimes add apple juice (preferably raw unfiltered). I have also prepared the green drink using my juicer. You can drink it as is or strain it. Straining the mixture makes it prettier for serving, but the pulp adds fiber. 

 

gardening course

Yesterday marked the end of my first term towards earning my Bachelors Degree in Holistic Nutrition. I completed all tests, projects, and exams in my two courses Fundamentals of Holistic Nutrition and Basic Herbology. That is why my posts have been so few and far between the past few weeks. I have been one very busy student! Today, I began anew with my second term's courses of Gardening for Good Nutrition and Vegetarian (and Vegan) Diet and Lifestyles. The spring gardening bug has already bitten me, so I began the day with my gardening studies.

 
If I follow the method that the author suggests in one of my three gardening textbooks, I won't be spending the winter months dreaming about spring planting. I will be harvesting instead. In simplistic terms, he explains it this way. "Only the harvest season and not the growing season needs to be extended." This distinction is important because the harvest season can be extended by planting cool-weather and cold hardy crops using succession planting and crop protection. Extending the growing season involves greenhouses, grow lights, etc. It's about not fighting the seasons but working with them by choosing appropriate plants for each season. If you haven't read the book Animal Vegetable Miracle A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver, I highly recommend that you do. It is about how a family challenged themselves to eat only food raised on their own property or from their locality... even throughout the winter months. I don't recall that they used four season gardening, but it certainly would have been useful in their challenge. They put up food to carry them through the winter months by utilizing a root cellar, canning, and freezing. The idea in both of these books is to plan meals around what is fresh and in season. It just makes simple sense. 

roosters and hens

This afternoon, I discovered a set of dishes while sorting through some boxes we had stored in the attic of our pole building. (The design looks black in the photo... at least it does on my computer's screen, but it is really a very pretty green.) I remember boxing them up. The newspaper pages, that I had wrapped around each piece to protect them, were dated March 1998.  Eleven years is long enough for them to feel fresh and new again and ready for another go round, so into the dishwasher they went. I switched them out with ones I had in my cupboard which I boxed up to take to the local thrift shop. 

 

After digging through six more boxes, salvaging a few beverage glasses, and loading the remainder into the trunk of my car to donate, I grabbed a flat shovel and my wheelbarrow and headed to the chicken coop for some fall cleanup. It was sad and lonely there... no hens clucking, no hens at my heels anticipating veggie scraps, no freshly laid eggs to gather because a couple weeks ago we transported our hens to a neighboring farmer who will care for them over the winter months.

But the coop is cleaned and ready for their return in the spring...

 

 

fall garden cleanup

A day long break in the rain and a balmy high temp of 43 degrees were the deciding factors in determining what Dick and I would tackle today. Fall garden cleanup completed... except for a little corner where there are potatoes to be dug yet. Dressed warmly and with continual movement, it really was a very pleasant day to spend outdoors.

dragonfly on borage

Click on this photo to see the adorable little dragonfly in the top left corner resting on my borage.

fall cleanup and computer giveaway

After breakfast this morning, I grabbed my vacuum cleaner to get on with the first thing I wanted to accomplish... to clean the floor and reorganize the furniture on my front porch. I gingerly worked around bees going in and out of a beehive that we should have removed before it grew so large. It is neatly tucked next to a rafter underneath the tin roof. They have worked so hard. We're going to try to remove it intact and relocate the colony.

    

Next, I dug up an existing  flower garden directly in front of the porch. It had been taken over with quack grass and Creeping Charlie... both very nasty invasive weeds. I had attempted to pull them out, but realized that a harsher tactic was needed and it was time for an updated look anyway. I left a patch of perennials that had, for the most part, been able to fend off the invading weeds. In the spring, I will plant the area in annuals.   

 

A brief downpour halted my progress, so I slipped inside to check the status of a free laptop computer giveaway that I entered on September 4th via a cooking site I stumbled upon called thepioneerwoman.com and her spinoff tastykitchen.com, which is a site where you can share and search for endless recipes. The site's creator presented her idea to Windows and a collaboration formed to get all the technical stuff in place to make it happen. Additionally, Windows generously donated a Dell laptop computer to be given away in a one-day drawing. All that was required to enter the drawing was to share a recipe that I had tried from any site/blog on the Internet. That was easy so, at 4:42 p.m. on Friday, I submitted my entry... number 12,153 in a one-day drawing! Five minutes later at 4:47 p.m. the number of entries had increased to 12,197 and the drawing didn't close until midnight! And the winner is... entry #1648 Elisabeth! Congrats!! What an amazing prize!!!

labor day

Today, on this Labor Day, I salute the hard-working farmers in our country. This photo dominated one-third of our local newspaper's front page on Friday. The sky... look at the sky. It looks like it was painted with watercolors.

 

i shan't go to town

No, I shall stay home today. The most beautiful pale pink hollyhock burst forth... a late bloomer on this final day of August.

 

...and my cosmos is so lovely, too. Yes, pink is my favorite color... for today anyway.

spud patch soup

As I walked down my garden path to dig a few potatoes to make a pot of soup, I noticed that my "Autumn Joy Sedum" has ever so slightly begun to take on its fall coloring. Sedum ranks just behind sumac as a marker of autumn's approach. A bee and a daddy long leg happily shared space together. (Click the photo to enlarge it.)

  

Look how the cherry tomatoes hang so neatly on the vine as they ripen. I started these Organic Sweetie Tomatoes from seed last winter and transplanted them into my garden this spring. They live up to their name... so very sweet. 

 

I purchased the perfect metal pail from my friend Sandy, who owns "Country Roots Greenhouse" and a gardening gift shop 7 miles east of Brainerd, to gather each day's harvest. It has a flat lid with a little round loop in the center just large enough to slip your finger through to lift it off. So fun...

 

gift from a friend

Last Sunday morning, I discovered this beautiful unbelievably creative arrangement of unique annuals on my side porch. Scrawled on a plant marker inside an old metal pail that held the arrangement were the words, "Thanks for the strawberries!" Les and Sandy. Sandy, who owns Country Roots Nursery 6 or 7 miles east of Brainerd on Highway 18, has been my friend for 40 years. I had dropped off some strawberries for her earlier this month when I picked berries down the road from her. She must have gone through her greenhouses and chose the most unusual plants she had, since she knows I find great joy in oddities. The tall spikes are "Joey" Ptilotus. The plant to the right of it is "Blackie Sweet Potato Vine" Ipomoea. The groundcover with white blossoms is "Sundial Mix" Portulaca and the large-leafed plant with cylindrical shapes shooting upward is "Ballerina Purple" Datura. I know this because she thoughtfully tucked the plant identification markers into the soil. What a precious combo!   

 

Look at the magnificent blossom that burst forth from one of "Ballerina Purple" Datura's cylindrical shapes! Sandy told me that she waited for just the right day to bring the planter to me so that I could see the bloom unfurl. She timed it perfectly... except that I missed her visit because Dick and I had gone to the community theater "A Don't Hug Me County Fair" production.