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.