a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Month: August 2016

  • What’s for Lunch? Not an Issue

    WhatsForLunchA

    What’s for lunch? It’s not a dilemma to ponder. The answer is in what I found in the garden while weeding: fresh kohlrabi, potatoes still warm from the ground, red tomatoes, kale leaves, and more. In less time than it takes to go through a McDonald’s drive-through lunch is served, and on fine china no less.

    WhatsForLunchB
    GiantRomaine

    What else did I find in the garden today? How about giant romaine lettuce? I’m letting a few go to seed. They are as high as my chest. Soon their flowers will be out. This is what romaine strives to be. Just a few lucky ones ever get to experience the joys of blooming.

    PotatoInterest

    Nine potatoes which grew from an overwintering potato. Talk about interest. What are banks paying in interest these days, 0.01 to 0.02 percent? You might as well throw your money away. Plant a quarter of a potato, and in a year you could easily have nine, that’s 36 times the potato you started, or 3,600%. Don’t put your money in the bank, put it in potatoes in the ground.

    ShiroHanaMameHarvest

    And white flower beans 白花豆, yeah! This year’s harvest of these wonderful beans is on. I’ll have some for sale on Thursday at Bow Little Market.

  • Dog Is My Gardener

    DogIsA

    Ena 枝那 is exhausted. What could tire out a dog so much? How about digging up onions and beans? I hadn’t planned on digging up this row of onions and beans today, but she decided it was time for them to come out of the ground.

    DogIsB

    She left a moonscape of elbow deep craters. She hasn’t learned yet to pile up the onions at the end of the row. Oh well, I was needing a bed for fall peas, I might as well put them here.

    DogIsC

    The trouble with gardening with dogs is that they don’t ask you first where you want to plant things or what things need digging up. When dog is your gardener, you’ve just got to go with the flow, and laugh a lot.

  • Hatching Time

    MiAsa-A

    Mi-asa-hime’s 美朝姫 chicks hatched yesterday and today. Before I saw a chick, I knew they had hatched because when I got close to her, she let out a low growl to warn her chicks that danger was near. Hens never make that growl if they are sitting on eggs, just after their chicks hatch.

    MiAsa-B
    PotatoSeeds

    My first picking of potato seeds is over, and I have thousands of seeds to plant. Potato seeds are tightly embedded in potato fruits. To free them, you mix the potato fruits with water and break them apart in a blender. A few pulses does the trick. You don’t want to destroy the seeds. Then you let the mixture ferment for a day or two. Potato seeds won’t readily germinate without fermenting first. In a few days, the mashed potato fruits float and the seeds settle on the bottom of the water. You strain out the seeds and dry them.

  • Fresh Homemade Tofu – 新鮮手作り豆腐

    TofuForSale

    After experimenting with making tofu for over twelve years, I’m satisfied enough with the result that I’ve started selling it at Bow Little Market each Thursday. For the market, I’m making it on Wednesday, so if you come to the market, you can get fresher tofu than you’ll find in any grocery store. Or, if you’d like even fresher tofu, contact me and I can make you tofu, so that it is fresh out of the press for you. My labels always state the date it was made, something no one else is willing to tell you.

  • The Beauty of Food

    Wheat

    Before your wheat is ground and made into bread, this is what it looks like, golden sheaves of spiny heads of wheat.

    SwissChardStalks

    Swiss chard stalks look like candy sticks. The colorful stalks are worthy of their own dish. The Costata Romanesco, a ribbed variety of zucchini, is beautiful too. I much prefer it to the smooth, regular varieties of zucchini.

    Zucchini