mudster's Profile
Fresh Cream, Monterey, closed?
Went by Fresh Cream today on a walk. Looks closed -- tables upturned, lights off, no menu posted outside. Anyone have an update?
Abalone in the Monterey Bay area
There's an abalone farm at (or under, more precisely) the commercial wharf. (http://www.montereyabalone.com/) You might call them and ask them who they're currently supplying.
Recommendations for a pressure canner
Presto is a good, easy-to-find consumer model. Would recommend.
Need recommendations for best taco trucks in San Diego
Asking for an acquaintance who already frequents Marisco's German and is looking to branch out.
Stop eating my veggies!
Try bitter apple spray, which you can get in a pet store, or in the pet section of a big box store/hardware store.
Just remember to wash the veggies really, really well before you eat them yourself.
(I suggested this to my uncle, who was having raccoon troubles, and it seems to have worked. I KNOW it works for keeping my kittens from gnawing off my toes. Mammals really, really dislike the taste of the stuff.)
Here's what the bottle looks like: http://www.bitterapple.com/
Salvaging bolted leeks
Good tip! Looking forward to hearing about the further experiments.
No Reservation Chile
In his 50s, drinking wine, AND he's shilling for Microsoft. There was a promo during the airing in which he and his producers bandied about location ideas. Turned out it was a commercial for Microsoft's new Bing search engine.
Who ever would have thought they'd see the day when Tony *!@$% Bourdain would do ads for *!@$% Microsoft?
I mean, I like him. But he's now going to need to tone down his disdain for [insert disdainful thing] a notch.
Ants in our Organic Garden
Boron is "organic" in that it's natural, but it's also pretty toxic. That's why it's used to kill bugs!
I agree with weezycom that you shouldn't try to get *rid* of the ants. If the problem is in transport, repeatedly dunking a bunch of chard in a bucket full of water would help immensely. Maybe keep a communal bucket in your garden that all gardeners can access?
Fennel Pollen
Yes, harvest! My partner and I take trips out into the country every year to harvest the pollen. It's good stuff, and worth more than its weight in gold.
You sort of need to manhandle the flower heads in order to release the pollen. Hold the flower heads over an envelope or jar, then rub. They'll come off.
My bronze fennel plant never produced viable pollen OR seeds, so I can't tell you if it tastes any different.
Ants in our Organic Garden
There's no reason that I can think of why ants would go for chard. More likely, the chard has an aphid infestation, and that's what's drawing the ants. (The ants feed on the sugary "honeydew" that the aphids secrete.)
Check for aphids. If (when) you find them, go after them with a garlic or soap spray. Apply daily until they're gone.
Black Jalapenos?
Congratulations, you have normal jalapenos!
It's nothing to worry about. Most varieties of jalapenos will get some black stripes or patches as they ripen. Absolutely nothing wrong with them.
Snow pea problem -- help, please?
Now it sounds like plain old die-off, probably from heat.
I think your plan of waiting until fall and direct seeding is a good one. (One problem with fall plantings, at least up here, an hour north of you -- once the sparrows and juncos roll into town, you'll need to protect the seedlings from them. Anything below 8" tall they'll eat right down to the ground. Around here, they show up in mid-September or so. Something to keep in mind.)
Snow pea problem -- help, please?
That's what it sounds like to me too. You might try looking for a resistant variety. Also, make sure that there's plenty of air circulation around the plants, and don't get the plants wet when you water.
(And it's a little late now to start snow peas, even in the SF Bay. Too warm. Wait until late August to plant again.)
What is happening to my cucumbers?
Yellowing leaves are often a sign of nitrogen deficiency. Plants in pots are particularly susceptible, because whatever nutrients/fertilizer was there gets washed away when you water, and there's no way for it to replenish itself.
Try giving the plants a weak mixture of a liquid fertilizer once a week or so.
Chinese in Davis?
You should also try Davis Noodle City next time. Very good and fresh.
http://daviswiki.org/Davis_Noodle_City
Green Bean germination time
One way to know for sure if it's your seeds is to sandwich a few between two wet paper towels. Keep them moist for 5-7 days. If they're viable, they'll sprout.
orange mold on strawberry plant
Has it been especially wet where you are? Strawberries can be affected by slime molds in wet or humid weather. If that's what it is, it's actually not harmful. You can wash the mold off the leaves or just wait for it to go away during a hot spell.
If your strawberries are mulched, that can exacerbate the mold. You can scrape the mulch away from the plants until the mold goes away, then put it back.
Make sure it's not powdery or downy mildew, though. Powdery mildew is white and powdery, downy mildew is white and furry. Both can kill your plants. (Doesn't sound like either, though.)
Compost your kitchen scraps, help save the earth and save money!
Bacteria will find it regardless. Earthworms won't. They're a pretty important, though not strictly necessary, part of the process. You could always buy some red wiggler worms, though. They're easy to find online (though a tad expensive). A cheaper route would be to call around to some bait shops. Some carry them.
Zucchini Questions
lotuseedpaste has got it -- you're just seeing male blossoms right now, which is normal. Female blossoms will have a tiny little zucchini attached. This is true for all cucurbits -- squashes, cucumbers, pumpkins.
Check the plant for the tell-tale miniature zucchini. If you don't see any, there's no reason not to harvest the male blossoms for eating. And when you do start to get male and female blossoms at the same time, you can harvest all but two or three of the male flowers. The fruit should still get pollinated by wind or insects. (You can hand pollinate, too, by picking a male blossom and rubbing its pollen on the inside of several female blossoms. I think I've heard that one male flower can pollinate up to six female flowers.)
Best way to harvest the flowers is to do it in the morning. That's when they're open fullest. Store them in a ziploc bag in the fridge and use as soon as possible.
How long do they stick around?
That's sort of an unanswerable question. They'll stick around as long as there's food. Or, if a strong wind comes along, they might fly off with it. They also might abandon a territory in order to search for a mate. If the female deposits an egg case in your garden, she'll stick around to guard it. They can take three weeks or three months to hatch, depending on the weather, so she'd try to stick around for that long.
Even if they stick around, though, you might not know it. They're masters of camouflage. (That said, when I was a kid, there was one that would show up every night on our kitchen window, just as we were doing the dishes. Every night. Same place.)
One thing that's really cool to do with kids (and adults!) is to buy a praying mantis egg at the nursery. Make a screened in cage for it, provide some leaves for cover, and wait for the little ones to hatch. You'll wake up one morning to find hundreds of miniature mantids staring out at you, waiting for their breakfast of aphids. You can release most of them, reserving a couple in the cage to nurture. They actually become very tame. You can handle them, and sometimes they'll even take food from your hand.
The eggs might be hard to find now; it's a little late in the season, at least at my local nursery. It might be worth checking, though.
Compost your kitchen scraps, help save the earth and save money!
It's not a "hot" fertilizer, like fresh manure would be, so you can basically use as much as you want. I'll often just fill up a jug and give all my veggies a good watering with it. It's also a very good foliar feed.
I'd maybe be a *little* hesitant to use it on flowers that are in full bloom, because it's going to be very nitrogen-rich and might therefore encourage them to grow, rather than bloom. But that's your call!
Also, this might go without saying, but as tempting as it is to drink the stuff -- don't.
Cantaloupe
It sounds like the plant might have a nitrogen deficiency. Try giving it a little bit of liquid fertilizer.
A primer on fertilizer, if you need one: Their strength is measured by 3 numbers. So you'll see something like 6-4-4 or 8-5-5 on the packaging. The first number represents nitrogen. (The second and third represent phosphorous and potassium.) Nitrogen promotes healthy, green growth. Phosphorous encourages blooming. You therefore want a fertilizer with a larger 1st number, since what you want is to green the plant up.
Follow directions on the label. Most liquid fertilizers are to be mixed with water. Too much fertilizer that's not diluted can burn the roots of the plant. Then you won't have a yellow melon, you'll have a dead one!
How to harvest parsley
Snip it at the base for two reasons. 1) The stems are perfectly edible (provided that they're not flower stalks, which tend to be tough) and are a shame to waste. And 2) if you just snip off the leaves, the stem will dry out and die and it'll be ugly!
Parsley is a biennial, so whether it will last through the summer depends on how old the plant is. If this is its first year, it should last. And even if it starts to bolt, you can prolong its life by repeatedly cutting the flowering stalks. You'll recognize them -- they emerge from the center of the plant, and are thicker and more upright that the rest of the stems.
Started a small herb garden -- insects?
Garlic/soap spray can be used to kill aphids, but I wouldn't put much stock in it as a repellent. The essential oils that may or may not repel the bugs would wear off so quickly that you'd have to be constantly re-applying it. Plus, on herbs, a constant onslaught of garlic on the edible leaves is going to be kind of funky when it comes to dinnertime.
Honestly, with planters on the fire escape in the city, I don't think you're going to have many pest problems at all. Instead of trying to head off every bug, I think a better approach would be to just keep an eye out and treat problems as they occur. (But again, since you're not really in a garden setting, I don't think you'll have many pests, period.)
What are you picking?
Try sprinkling diatomaceous earth around the strawberries. It's effective on all three pests you mentioned.
Compost your kitchen scraps, help save the earth and save money!
Actually, I've often thought that refrigeration might help, but I know that if I tried storing compost tea in the fridge, I'd magically end up sleeping on the couch, so I've never tried it. If you do, please report back!
