January 2011

USDA Caves To Big Ag. Again.

by bdunn on January 29, 2011

in Big Ag, Factory Food

I was too angry to write about this the other day, but the upshot is that USDA has given Monsanto permission to bully farmers into using genetically engineered “Roundup ready” alfalfa, just as the company has bullied farmers into using its genetically engineered soybeans and corn. Simply put, Monsanto bases much of its business on [...]

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Ready, Fire, Aim: Containers As A Last Resort

by bdunn on January 28, 2011

in Garden Planning, Vegetables

Each winter I plot out how many tomato plants I have room for in my garden, and then whatever space is left can go to other herbs and vegetables. That’s because ripe garden tomatoes are by far my favorite vegetable (OK, fresh sweet corn is a close second; I have eaten ears raw standing right [...]

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Winter Transplants

by bdunn on January 24, 2011

in Propagation, Vegetables

The sun showed itself briefly yesterday, long enough for me to thin out a row of spinach and make half a new row with the transplanted thinnings. In years past I would’ve just discarded the thinnings, however, I find myself liking spinach more and more (Popeye syndrome) and becoming more of a miser with my [...]

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Who Do The Jujube?

by bdunn on January 22, 2011

in Fruit

That’s right, the UPS guy brought a box yesterday, containing the three bare-root jujbe trees I bought a few weeks ago from Roger Meyer out near San Diego, a consensus expert on this not-so-well-known fruit if ever there was one. This morning I dug three small holes behind our back garden, on semi-level spots along [...]

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Accidentally Off The Grid

by bdunn on January 22, 2011

in Self-reliance, This Damn Old House

I’ve explored the idea of installing solar panels on this damn old house, as it has a great roof for it, oriented south. All I’d have to do is take down one pecan tree growing up through the middle of the driveway. But it doesn’t make economic sense, not even if electricity from The Man [...]

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Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?

by bdunn on January 21, 2011

in Fruit, Garden

Actually, more likely breakfast. Meet Hylocereus undatus, more commonly known as the pitaya, bearer of one of those faddish pop health-food cure-alls: Dragon Fruit. The pitaya is an epiphytic cactus of southern Mexico, Central and South America. I have grown other ornamental epiphytic cacti and, in the spirit of trying to aim my plant-growing tendencies [...]

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Spring Push-ups

by bdunn on January 20, 2011

in Nature

We’re apparently scheduled for at least a week’s worth of lows in the mid- to lower 30s here at the One-Acre Ranch, which can get a little hard to take what with tomatoes and peppers sprouting obediently in what we call the Jethro room upstairs (the un-renovated one with the switchable 1,000-watt remote ballast, Yield [...]

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