More cool plant art

So here's a great place to look for nature mixed with art: trendhunter living furniture designs.  Remember I was thinking of planting lettuce on my indoor walls?  Well, here's how it would look (only I wouldn't put it over my couch):

And who wouldn't want a light like this...????

Gotta love it.  And once again kudos to Shirley for finding this!  You eco-rock!

Second citrus scale treatment

Here are some pictures of the effects of scale on my Meyer lemon.  This might help you diagnose your citrus.

Sticky scale secretion:

Affected lemon:

The scale itself (brown spots):

Had to treat the tree again obviously - this time I used rubbing alcohol instead of Absolute vodka.

Organic coffee

Trying to live as sustainably as possible I grow all my own veggies, eat meat raised organically and free range from Farmer Nick's LLC - a local farm - and try to buy organic and local for most of the rest of my purchases.  Local turns out to be very difficult for coffee.  And I like my one cup in the morning.  Very much.  And it's great to spread around organic coffee grounds in my organic veggie garden.

I decided I didn't want to buy the organic coffee from the grocery because it's expensive and usually not fair trade - plus I want to buy so that as little as possible goes to the middle store.  So I started looking around for a source, and not being able to help myself I went to Amazon - they have free shipping after all, and usually a great selection of stuff.  So we first tried Coffee Bean Direct.  As the reviews stated, it was dry and not very flavorful, probably due to little oils left in the beans.  That was too bad, apparently if you order direct from Coffee Bean Direct it's better, but I was ready to be on to the next thing.  This weekend we had Equal Exchange.  What a difference!  I knew it as soon as I was pouring the beans into the grinder - they had a rich color and their oils were apparent.  The taste is great, and I will order Equal Exchange coffee again.  But I'm still searching.

I've decided to try Pachamama Coop coffee next.  I read about this group in Hobby Farms Magazine (I don't know why they had so many things I lusted after this month) and you can find them here.  I haven't tried them yet, but will write about it when I do.

If you have tried their coffee I'd love to hear about it, and if anyone has a favorite source for organic, fair trade coffee that they love please let me know.  I am trying to create as small a footprint on this earth as possible, and I know that the shipping is a huge drain on natural resources, but I'm hoping to offset that with paying fair prices for the coffee bean farmers.  One day, I'm hoping others will want to pay me fair prices for whatever I'm producing, and what goes around comes around after all.

More seeds started

Yesterday:
24 Basil (Thai, Emily, Genovese & Lettuce Leaf)
8 Celery (Tango & Self-Blanching)
8 Parsley (Flat Leaf & Plain)
6 Cilantro (All Slow Bolt)

I realize that I have to plant more though - I have space in the garden for 16 celery plants (4 square feet with 4 plants per square foot), and obviously I will need more cilantro.  The good thing about cilantro though is that it self seeds and comes back every year, so I am just planting these as supplemental cilantro to the plants I know will grow in the herb garden by themselves.

The plants from Monday are already coming up - Thai Sai, Bak Choi, Early Jersey Wakefield, Kale, and three types of broccoli are up (Nutri-Bud, Calibrese, & Purple).  The cauliflower isn't up yet and neither is the DiCicco broccoli.

And today I also started saving my coffee grounds again.  I had almost no snails in the garden last year after I started spreading the coffee grounds around the lettuce and cucumbers!

Winter cole slaw

So today I finally cut down the cabbage I had taken out of the garden and planted in containers at the end of the season.  They've been growing over the last few months in the basement, near a window.  Basically I think I've just been saving them for fresh greens in the winter - they really didn't grow much at all from when I transplanted them.  But I don't mind.  It snowed yesterday, there is snow covering the ground outside, and inside I was chopping cabbage, basil, shallot and garlic - and squeezing the rangpur lime over top. 

I altered the cole slaw recipe in the Alice Waters cookbook "The Art of Simple Food" and added my red clover sprouts.  It turned out great - now it's in the fridge, flavors mingling.  I can't say how much I enjoy my basement greens in the winter.  I will do this again even though the cabbage never formed a head.  The lettuce, sprouts, and now cabbage are the only fresh veggies I get the whole winter.  All the rest are the veggies blanched and frozen during harvest season and obviously they're cooked.  Growing up in southern California and Florida I really ate mostly raw veggies.  Winter up here kills me, so this is a true treat. 

If you want to do it too, just transplant your fall cabbage into large pots and put them somewhere in your house where it's cool and they get sunlight.  Apparently they stay healthy and ready to eat for months.  I'll be doing this again next year!

Confused garlic

I worked from home today, which meant that I had time to feed the birds this morning.  I have 9 bird feeders so it takes a while, and usually during the week I do this after I get home when it's pretty dark.  Considering that and the fact that I was on vacation all last week, I really haven't been in the garden during the daylight much in the last couple of weeks.  As I was out in the back I saw that the daylilies had started coming up.  Ah oh.  Immediately I went over to look at the part of the garden where I planted the garlic.  Sure enough.  The garlic was up.  Brown tops from where it froze.  And this evening - more snow.  Poor, confused garlic.  I wonder how my harvest will go this year.  For the last two years I have grown enough garlic to get us through the entire year.  I don't know about this next year.  I planted 48 cloves - more than enough if the weather was normal.  The question is, will they do OK with all this fluctuation in temperature.  They are just coming up way too early.

In fact, it's been so warm that the garlic in the basement is already starting to grow.  It's early for that too.  I'll probably have to chop and freeze the garlic so I can keep it.  Look at how it's growing!

But not the hanging garlic as much:

Inspiration

So this evening and today, every spare second I had, I was daydreaming about what kind of artistic eco-friendly design I could do at our house.  I started thinking about plants on walls.  I've seen that.  How about lettuce on walls?  Inside.  I could grow my lettuce and herbs right in the kitchen.

My partner thought this was funny and proposed that we wouldn't have to use plates anymore, just walk up to the wall and graze like deer.  LOL.

But I looked up plants on walls anyway.  There are some interesting websites out there, and to purchase the equipment really isn't that expensive.  The problem is the price per square foot of edible plants - it would be cheaper to buy more grow lights...and then there's the fact that I don't need the extra lettuce or grow space, I have plenty of room for it downstairs.  Oh, never mind.  I'll look for a new inspiration and let you know...