[conspire] gardening

[Paul Zander]

I stand corrected.  In any event, you have some decades of experience.

I still find it magical to plant a seed and later harvest.  When I have a good crop I give thanks; when I have a bad crop I give thanks that there are places I can buy food.

I will save zucchini in a separate email.

>For those who don't have space for a vegetable garden, or want to sample
>things you don't happen to grow, I strongly recommend farmers' markets.
>You'll wonder why you put up with food that wasn't really fresh and
>didn't really taste right.

>http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/farmers-markets.html

I would encourage you to add the two produce markets, perhaps under a separate heading, especially since a lot of farmer's markets are not open in January.

As for really fresh and tasting really good, there is quit a lot of detail in picking produce at just the proper degree of ripeness and getting it to the market in a timely fashion.  The details depend on the particular food.

For the best corn, the time between harvest and eating should really be measured in minutes. However, following the introduction of Illini Xtra Sweet Hybrid, there are varieties of corn which don't immediately start converting sugar to starch. It is possible to find reasonably OK corn that picked the day before.  BTW, the produce stands rarely have corn on Mondays because it would have been picked on Saturday.

Bartlett Pears do not properly ripen on the tree.  I was skeptical when a nurseryman told that they need to be picked while quite firm and given several weeks of cool storage to develope the best flavor. A few summers later, I was looking at a tree full of almost ripe pears while preparing for an extended vacation.  Several weeks later, the pears in the garage proved to be delicious.

Most oranges can be left on the tree for several months.  They actually store better on the tree than any other place.  The disadvantages are that the skin might "re-green", but that is only an appearance issue. Also this discourages the tree from setting the next years crop.


      From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
 To: conspire at linuxmafia.com 
 Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2017 12:34 PM
 Subject: Re: [conspire] gardening
   
Paul, thank you for the compliment of assuming I grew up with a family
vegetable garden:  In fact, my family never had one.

One year in the 1980s, my former fiancee wanted to have an ~3 meter x 3
meter garden patch at our rental house in Concord, and the landlord was
fine with tearing up a hopelessly bad bit of rear lawn for that with a
tiller.  The garden did seem to effortlessly produce fantastic tomatoes,
and enough zucchini to meet the zucchini needs of Central Contra Costa
County.  I had to steal out at night and hurl excess zucchini onto
neighbours' lawns lest our entire property become one vast zucchini
herd.  I pleaded with bicycle clubs to hold more century rides so I
could give them more zucchini breads.

Oddly, we've been totally unable to grow the stuff here in Menlo Park.
I suspect the Peninsula breeds more-voracious snails.

That sad squash failure aside, the experience of gardening has been
amazing and magical -- even given that I have no real idea what I'm
doing.

For those who don't have space for a vegetable garden, or want to sample
things you don't happen to grow, I strongly recommend farmers' markets.
You'll wonder why you put up with food that wasn't really fresh and
didn't really taste right.

http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/farmers-markets.html
(Probably needs to be re-researched, as things change.)


_______________________________________________
conspire mailing list
conspire at linuxmafia.com
http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire


   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/conspire/attachments/20170118/9ca1d13f/attachment.html>