Gardening Thread

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 10:22 am

Dreamy!! I already eat my weeds, but it would be cool if they...tasted slightly better

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 11:04 am

I just picked a huge bowl of dandelion greens. I'm gonna make this awesome recipe from this cool book of Southern Italian down-home recipes friend-of-the-board Jae got me for my birthday. You make this quick cornmeal batter, bake it in a long thin sheet til it's crispy. Meanwhile you briefly boil a huge amount of greens--I'm doing chard and dandy tonight--and drain them. Then heat up in a big skillet a lot of olive oil and put in many smashed garlic cloves and a tsp or so of Calabrian Chile flakes. Sauté til garlic starts to brown, then add greens. Stir and cook til they are shiny and fragrant with oil and garlic. Then take your cornmeal thing and break off bits of it and stir the bits into the greens and garlic. You end up with an oily, spicy, garlicky, bready greens thing. It's so good. I shall serve with pasta with roasted tomatoes (first greenhouse toms are in!!!!! I got 3 pounds from the farm) and Beyond sausages for a fine feast. Got a cheap-ass pinot too

sorry this should have gone in the recipe thread

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 11:06 am

so many of the recipes in this book are just about how to use up stale bread. Apparently these little Southern Italian villages traditionally just do one huge town-wide bread-bake per week, at one huge bread oven they all collectively use. So by the end of the week you've got a bunch of stale-ass bread heels lying around. There is an amazing recipe for something I can't pronounce so we just call it "pizza cake." There is also a recipe for "bread meatballs" I haven't made yet.

RCH · Post by **RCH** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 11:09 am

Leaves from last autumn are still all over the yard and I don't give a FJCK!

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 11:15 am

it's good for the damn soil

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 12:14 pm

What is that old bread book called? I'm sicka Mark Bittman bread pudding. Just J.K.-ing, as if.

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 12:24 pm

Love a panzanella for using up old bread! Or just blitzing it in the cuisinart to make breadcrumbs and then tossing those with some herbs and lemon zest to add a little savory crunch to pasta dishes and salads.

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 1:11 pm

Food of the Italian South by Katie Parla. Beautiful book!!!!! Read the intro!!

The polenta thing is called “Pizz e Foje” which is fun to say

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Sat May 02, 2020 8:58 am

Garden friends: something “out there” is chewing my hearty lacinato kale plants into a fine lace. Slugs? I don’t want to poison a soul, is there something I can do? In all my enthusiasm for gardening reading I’ve skipped over pest control

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Sat May 02, 2020 9:02 am

My mom is friends with a true, deep, lifelong proper hippie named "Jan" who grows all her own food, and she sinks shallow plastic containers (like what sour cream might come in) into the earth around problem areas and fills them with beer. Overnight the beer fills up with slugs who get drunk and die. Then she feeds the slugs to her chickens.

JAN REPORT

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Sat May 02, 2020 9:03 am

Holy shit

RCH · Post by **RCH** » Sat May 02, 2020 1:48 pm

Hi everyone. I hope you are hale and hearty.

I did approximately 70 minutes of yard work and I feel like a total god. Thank you to my thighs, flexibility, and core strength, without whom I would have pulled a muscle. Namaste!

PS Claire, what I do to feel good about myself is to tell the pests up front my boundaries and that if they break that agreement they consent to their own death. At least the slugs can go out with a bang, like Charlie Sheen.

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Mon May 04, 2020 12:03 pm

[mention]RCH[/mention] love that. I’m about to do a mass genocide of earwigs tonight but I’ll warn them this afternoon.

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Mon May 04, 2020 12:31 pm

: earwig.jpg (41.79 KiB) Viewed 6721 times

willowowow · Post by **willowowow** » Mon May 04, 2020 1:48 pm

Claire another thing you can do is buy a big bag of hazelnut shells and scatter them in a thick band around the perimeter of your garden bed. When the slugs try to get to your greens the shells rip up their bellies and they die!

This is a much more gruesome death than the beer bath. Sorry slugs.

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Mon May 04, 2020 4:59 pm

Hooray!!!

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Wed May 06, 2020 3:46 pm

We just picked up a CSA box from a hyper-local little urban farm less than 5 miles from our house! A sweet younger couple who bought 1.5 of hardscrabble sunbaked East LA hillside and turned it into a mini farmstead. They both have full-time jobs but they grow a mix of stuff year-round, which they primarily sold directly to restaurants before the pandemic but now they've opened up to the public. It's a young farm and they're organic no-till soil minder hippie types. They've planted a food forest of trees that will mature over the next decade and keep on keepin' on with cool fruit, nuts, and deeper stuff like Sichuan peppercorns and caper berries. I'm so excited to get my produce this radically locally! They do volunteer harvests sometimes and I'm excited to learn something from them.

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Wed May 06, 2020 5:26 pm

Amazing!!!!

matthew · Post by **matthew** » Wed May 06, 2020 11:25 pm

joey introduced us to sluggo which is entirely gross and melts the fuck outta slugs.

I have like a _dozen_ avocado pits under a grow lamp with varying levels of sprouting. They won’t bear me any delicious fruits but fun to make something out of nothing.

Had little success with celery stuck in water (weird mush) but good success with green onions (close to my second “harvest”).

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Thu May 07, 2020 8:16 am

I love how everyone’s got a windowsill scallion situation going these days

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Thu May 07, 2020 10:45 am

I made the most disgusting earworm trap last night (recipe courtesy of [mention]mrbrown[/mention] aka BREAD DAD): take a plastic container, fill it with half a cup of cheap cooking oil and a few tablespoons of soy sauce or fish sauce. Bury it to the brim in the offending area at dusk and the morning it'll be full of earworms who drowned in oil. Strain and repeat until the population is under control. A nightmare but they've been living in my planters and lopping the heads off every new seedling that pops up. I must feed my family radishes!

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Thu May 07, 2020 10:19 pm

I just realized they're called EARWIGS not EARWORMS lol I'm losing my mind

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Fri May 08, 2020 12:58 am

Way to get rid of earWORMS: Hum a song that is too short to repeat on itself, like Byyyyyy Mennen or N,B,C... Apparently, songs only stick if they have the ability to loop and start again. It theory these wash the earworm away without sticking themselves!

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Fri May 08, 2020 5:16 am

I did initially think by "earworm trap" you meant a way to get rid of an earworm. Which excited me because I've had an earworm for almost a week and it is making me psychotic. You know my very good Gen X playlist I made? Friend of board Katy Davidson collaborated on some of it, and most recently they sent me that song RUSH by Big Audio Dynamite. We were laughing and laughing about this song because I had completely forgotten its existence but as soon as I started listening to it it all came rushing back to me (no pun intended, actually, how annoying that I said that). What the HECK is that song? It's so crazy and hilarious (Katy: "I think it is so cool that we loved this music"). Anyway but now....it's many days later and the song is just BLASTING in my head, day and night. It's the first thing I hear when I open my eyes in the morning. I'm being haunted by a ghost from the past.

So now I come here and see that Molly has actually invented an earWORM trap! How long do I have to hum By Mennen? And do I hum it over and over, or try to string different sonic logos together? I need help! CURSED BY FRIEND OF BOARD KATY DAVIDSON

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Fri May 08, 2020 5:19 am

Earworms are so fucked up. What are they? Now I am getting stressed out thinking about them. I had the Game of Thrones opening credits theme stuck in my head for almost a year. Now I get scared every time I even think about that show.

Did you know people who go deaf (i.e. who are not born deaf) often are tormented by earworms? Kind of like phantom limb syndrome or something. Diana Mitford had an earworm for like 8 years that haunted her really intensely and kind of made her old age a misery.

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Fri May 08, 2020 7:10 am

I read about the phantom earworm in that Oliver Sacks book (one of them? Musicology maybe?)!

I didn't invent the earworm cure. Only passing along what I have heard from those wiser than myself. Let us know if "by mennen" cures you of "RUSH" and if so, how!

meadows · Post by **meadows** » Fri May 08, 2020 5:19 pm

well, curiosity led me to listen to the rush song and now it's wormed into my brain. kind of into it so far!

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Fri May 08, 2020 5:48 pm

Try burying half a cup of cheap cooking oil and two tablespoons of soy sauce DIRECTLY into your brain. The earworms’ll drown in the oil!

meadows · Post by **meadows** » Fri May 08, 2020 6:12 pm

okayyyyyyyy, here goes!!!

RCH · Post by **RCH** » Fri May 08, 2020 6:24 pm

My neighbor showed me a video of Rush and it looked like they were all playing 3 instruments, which I thought was pretty darn cool. I liked how intellectual and complicated their music was while still being arena rock.

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Sat May 09, 2020 3:52 am

Earworm update: Now I have the snippet of the Rush song still playing on a loop, BUT I've ADDED "By Mennen" and "NBC" to it!! Tragically, all three have the same basic structure--you can make them all do the same cadential formula if you line them up correctly. So now I have this new, more complicated counterpoint version of my earworm going. It's horrible

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Sat May 09, 2020 4:04 am

I'm sorry. Maybe this only works on people who aren't professors of music?

RCH · Post by **RCH** » Sat May 09, 2020 8:17 am

how utterly... Borgesian!

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Sat May 09, 2020 8:24 am

Still going

Post by **joni** » Sat May 09, 2020 11:57 am

Big Audio Dynamite is grossly underrated

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Mon May 11, 2020 1:10 pm

[mention]joni[/mention], [mention]tomcarroll.online[/mention] and I availed ourselves today of the city of Los Angeles’ best-kept freebie: ZOO DOO! The department of sanitation takes herbivore waste from the LA Zoo, mixes it with city plant trimmings, composts it, and then just sloppily dumps it in an unmarked pile for whoever wants it! It’s weirdly mysterious to locate but we filled a dozen buckets and now I have a whole new planter going in my backyard vegetable garden!

willowowow · Post by **willowowow** » Mon May 11, 2020 1:25 pm

WHAAAAT?? That's a real thing?! Please tell us more more more! How often do they make poo piles? Where do they sloppily dump them? How do you learn where to find them? Do all city zoos do this??

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Mon May 11, 2020 1:38 pm

Yeah! It’s part of the city’s mulch program—there are compost & mulch drop-offs all over the city, but it’s pretty unclear which ones have what & when. You kinda roll the dice. It’s extremely poorly advertised, to the point where the city department of sanitation’s own website doesn’t mention it. But it’s a thing I’ve heard about in the gardening underground for years. I think many city zoos actually do this! When I was googling around trying to find the drop-off spot I got results for several other cities’ zoo doo programs. It’s so cool! Elephant shit! In *my* garden!

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Mon May 11, 2020 1:47 pm

How did you transport it? Buckets in your car?

alexshred420 · Post by **alexshred420** » Mon May 11, 2020 2:58 pm

Hopefully there's some turtle pee in your compost too!

freddy · Post by **freddy** » Mon May 11, 2020 3:15 pm

yourfriendclaire wrote: ↑Mon May 11, 2020 1:10 pm @joni, @tomcarroll.online and I availed ourselves today of the city of Los Angeles’ best-kept freebie: ZOO DOO! The department of sanitation takes herbivore waste from the LA Zoo, mixes it with city plant trimmings, composts it, and then just sloppily dumps it in an unmarked pile for whoever wants it! It’s weirdly mysterious to locate but we filled a dozen buckets and now I have a whole new planter going in my backyard vegetable garden!

Claire! This is amazing!! Can you give me more info to share with an LA colleague who loves to garden?

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Mon May 11, 2020 4:26 pm

[mention]freddy[/mention] this PDF has all the various drop-offs:

https://www.lacitysan.org/cs/groups/pub ... 008922.pdf

We went to the Lincoln Heights location, which is just a small parking lot surrounded by active construction. According to the above PDF it should only be a mulch spot, but they had compost this morning. It’s all very vague & there’s no signage or anything but if your colleague sees a mountain of compost, they’re in the right place!

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Tue May 12, 2020 12:43 am

BUT HOW DID YOU GET IT HOME? I will not rest until I can visualise this operation.

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Tue May 12, 2020 4:25 am

THIS IS SO RAD

freddy · Post by **freddy** » Tue May 12, 2020 8:47 am

I love the Zoo Doo chronicles so much. Perfect example of something that, were it in a TV show or movie, one would dismiss as being "too unrealistic."

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Tue May 12, 2020 10:05 am

m o l l y wrote: ↑Tue May 12, 2020 12:43 am BUT HOW DID YOU GET IT HOME? I will not rest until I can visualise this operation.

A Home Depot bucket, a giant cooler, a champagne bucket, three tote bags, two plastic storage buckets and two old planters

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Tue May 12, 2020 10:11 am

Ahhhhhh. Love it.

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Mon Jun 15, 2020 6:31 pm

My victory garden is starting to get to the point where it’s producing food, and it’s just...very satisfying. I’ve got pole beans that won’t quit and a lemon cucumber that’s starting to go wild. I love sitting with it every day and doing deep observation of overnight changes. It doesn’t matter how much time I spend watching it—it surprises me all the time with the sudden appearance of blossoms, fruit, or pests.

I’ve also gotten super into the sculptural aspects of building a garden: bean pyramids, trellises, and the like, fashioned spontaneously with lengths of bamboo and bits of twine, in a kind of ongoing conversation with every given plant’s growth. I made some hoops to fit over one of my planters using 1/2 inch PVC pipe; when the summer starts beating down on us in Southern California, I’ll drape them with shade cloth like a covered wagon to protect my lettuces. Just freestylin over here.

Has anyone else been following the garden that’s being installed in the Seattle CHAZ? They’re sheet-mulching the lawns of Capitol Hill and transforming them into free vegetable gardens for “black and indigenous folks and their plant allies.” It’s really beautiful:

https://instagram.com/blackstarfarmer

matthew · Post by **matthew** » Mon Jun 15, 2020 11:04 pm

Fuck that rules

meadows · Post by **meadows** » Thu Jun 18, 2020 10:39 am

I <3 gardening structures so much
Making cages and trellis and lifting plants up!

My only veg (tiny space here) is a cucumber, but it's getting SO big and I'm very excited to see actual cukes on it. Herbs are goin crazy, sweet peas are smelling so good, and all the summer flowers are budding: salvias, coneflower, nicotiana, chocolate cosmos, etc.

Garden rules. CHAZ garden!!!!!