Free Bedding for Backyard Chickens

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TszqkVTdOsM

Young Cow Pea (Vigna unguiculata) Leaves

I've used them for years in stir fry and omelets, but I am surprised it took me until this year to try them in summer salads and am now hooked. I just had a breakfast salad of young cowpea, molokhiya and Okinawa spinach leaves topped with a dressing of home made milk kefir blended with garlic, olive oil, sea salt and balsamic vinegar.....YUM! John

Lead Levels in Urban Soils

It has long been my understanding that keeping soil pH closer to neutral vs. being quite acidic also helps to keep heavy metals like lead and cadmium from being readily absorbed by crops.....I need to look into that further. John

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100927131714.htm

Extending the Autumn Growing Season in Chilly Climates

The same techniques that we Floridians use during winter frosts and freezes worked well for me in Denver each fall until the REAL cold settled in, and can be used to get further production from tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers when autumn nights get frosty. Just wrap the plants in old fashioned Christmas bulb strands as the heat source, then clothespin around it all bed sheets and bed spreads (NOT plastic sheeting as it transmits cold TO the leaves) to trap the heat. Use bricks and stones to secure all the fabric edges to the ground to keep cold air from oozing in and displacing the warm air. This technique works well plus can look pretty cool at night. I prefer to set this all up in the afternoon BEFORE the night chill sets in so as to trap ambient heat in the soil. Tucking a few gallon jugs filled with HOT water beneath the canopy just before you go to bed can add further degrees (literally) of protection. John

First Landing of Our Recycling Based Remote Controlled Airplane

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH7JmJqDcro

Question from a Reader About Sweet Potatoes

Hello Mr. Starnes,

We read your article in the Feb/Mar 2010 'Florida Gardening" magazine. So, for the first time, we planted organic sweet potatoes in May in our raised bed garden, that is normally empty during the summer. We've had wonderful vines completely covering the garden all summer. We've also had a LOT of rain all summer here in Homestead, Fl.

Well, we dug up our first two BEAUTIFUL sweet potatoes, roasted them in the oven, as usual, but they were very, very dry without much flavor! Did we sample our crop too soon? Some of the vines are just now starting to yellow but most are healthy green.

Sincerely,
Scott & Janice

Hi Scott and Janice

I sure hope you tried cooking the young tender leaves as a spinach substitute all summer! Yes if dug up immature, sweet potatoes can be very dry and bland with zero sweetness. Since the early 1980s I've preferred to wait until the vines have died back in late autumn before slowly beginning a months' long harvest. I think they taste best once it is winter and the ground has chilled somewhat. I am glad you gave this classic southern crop a try and hope my answer helps you out.

Keep me posted. John

Recycle-based Remote Controlled Plane

Farmers need to play too...check out this plane that my friend Dino Prashad and I made from an old foam glider I've had for years, a TINY electric motor I bought, and servos etc. that he already owned as an RC afficionado the last 31 years, plus recycled fishing pole tips and wooden kabok skewers for added strength in the wings and rear fuselage. I cut the winglets from the lid of a discarded margarine tub. The first planned flight a week ago got scrubbed by high winds, but yesterday the weather cooperated.....and BOY did our plane fly! Enjoy, John

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7AhoqFr3IQ

Easy, Frugal Organic Winter Veggies and Herbs Gardening Class

With it still steamy hot, now might seem an odd time to think about a classic Florida cool weather veggies garden. But autumn is in the air, so this is a great time if you are a super busy family person with either no garden site created yet, or if your past efforts yielded crops of disappointment instead of food for the dinner table, to get started. I had my first veggie garden here in 1967 when I was in 9th grade at Madison Junior High, and have learned since then core principals and techniques that make winter food gardening in central Florida both pleasant and productive. Forget pesticides, forget wasting money on plants and seeds and crops that fail, and forget thinking that you have a brown thumb. Learn how to create a fertile garden site that will bless you with fresh pesticide-free produce for the six cooler months of the year. I am teaching this class three times in October, on the 2nd, the 10th and again on the 23rd , from 11 AM until 1 PM. My address is: 3212 West Paxton Avenue, Tampa FL 33611, about 6 blocks south of Gandy and 1 1/2 blocks west of MacDill, jungly yard on the south side. Please park on my side of Paxton off of neighbors' lawns. The cost is $20 per student. You will receive two free packets of winter crops seeds. I will provide a handout, but be sure to bring a notepad and pen. See you then! John Starnes 813 839 0881

Growing Food, Cultivating Freedom, and Harvesting Joy class

Growing and raising much of your own food can free you from an unsatisfying job and addiction to the New Serfdom of endless debt as a "consumer". Learn three basics of successful gardening in central Florida, see the ease of a few backyard chickens for fresh eggs, plus get two handouts with 30 key techniques, attitude shifts, and resources that can allow us to discover what we REALLY want out of life, how to live frugally, and ways to shed old, restrictive habits and replace them with pleasurable, expansive ones to create a self-perpetuating positive feedback loop of habitual joy and gratitude. People say my trippy livingroom exemplifies "thinking outside of the box that the box came in" so most of the class will be held in there after we tour my urban farm. I feel that happiness is a choice we can make daily, and that we can create our lives vs. them just happening to us, with productive gardening as the key. This class will be taught twice in October, on the 16th and the 24th, from 11 AM until 1 PM here at 3212 West Paxton Avenue, Tampa, FL 33611 813 839 0881 to RSVP. Please park on the south side of Paxton. The cost is $20 per student. Each student will receive 1 free packet of easy-to-grow seeds with instructions on their culture and harvest and use. See you then! John

The Basics of Urban Farming

There is no security more reassuring than daily harvesting fresh meals from your front and back yard, just feet from the kitchen, even if just potted arugula or snow peas or cherry tomatoes for starters, or a fresh chicken egg or meat. Learn easy ways to deeply cut your water use, to insure fresh salads and root crops and fruits year round, a super cheap solar shower, and more. You'll get a lesson sheet of 15 topics to be covered; please be sure to bring a notepad and pen. Feel free to shoot pics and video. You will receive two free packets of cool weather veggie seeds, plus instructions on their culture, harvest and use. I've taught this class many times and folks say it it thorough and intense. It addresses a way of life and a mindset vs. being just a gardening class. I am teaching this class again twice in October, on the 17th, and the 31st, from 11 AM until 1 PM, with a 30 minute Question and Answer session after. My address is: 3212 West Paxton Avenue, Tampa FL 33611, about 6 blocks south of Gandy and 1 1/2 blocks west of MacDill, jungly yard on the south side. Please park on my side of Paxton off of neighbors' lawns. The cost is $20 per student. Happy Gardening! 813 839 0881 www.johnstarnesurbanfarm.blogspot.com

Frugal Backyard Poultry Raising for Beginners

Many folks these days are considering, or have followed through on, pursuing a long time desire to raise backyard chickens for fresh eggs or even meat they know the origins of. I've had chickens on and off since the mid 90s, and can share how to raise happy, healthy, antibiotic-free chickens and eggs VERY frugally. I am teaching this class again on October 9, from 11 AM until 1 PM, with a 30 minute Q & A session after. My address is: 3212 West Paxton Avenue, Tampa FL 33611, about 6 blocks south of Gandy and 1 1/2 blocks west of MacDill, jungly yard on the south side. Please park on my side of Paxton off of neighbors' lawns. The cost is $20 per student. Please bring a note pad and pen as we will cover many points. You will receive a pack of winter greens seeds to sow this fall to provide raw green plant matter VITAL to having healthy backyard chickens. 813 839 0881 or e-mail to RSVP. See you then! John Starnes www.johnstarnesurbanfarm.blogspot.com

Grow Your Own Salad Bar Class

Many folks want more than anything to simply grow a luscious, crisp, pesticide-free salad to enjoy each day. The upcoming winter season is stellar for the classic salad crops like arugula, chard, romaine lettuce, broccoli, sugar snap peas, scallions, cherry tomatoes and more, plus our hot muggy summers boast their own unique salad crops. This class covers the basic of making a Water Wise Container Garden, creating fertile soil for it, crops selection and planting them from seeds to cut costs (most are VERY easy from seeds), pest control, proper watering and organic soil feeding. You will quickly recoup the cost of the class in your first dozen harvests of many many dozens to come this winter season. You will get two free packets of unusual seeds for vigorous, mild flavored leafy greens you will never see in the grocery store, and instructions on their easy culture. One nice thing about winter salad gardening here is that, except for the tomatoes, the crops not only are cold hardy they LIKE frosts.....makes them sweeter. I am teaching this class on October 3 from 11 AM until 1 PM, with a 30 minute Q & A session after. The cost is $20 per student. My address is: 3212 West Paxton Avenue Tampa 33611 813 839 0881 Please park along the south side of Paxton to spare the lawns of my neighbors on the north side. Thanks. Why buy pricey little bags of corporate salads when you can grow fresh salads for just pennies a day? John

Yet One More Reason to Address Human Overpopulation...

......AND use rain barrels, save graywater, and pee in your yard. Scary. John

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100923142503.htm

Waste not, want not.......dog fur for birds' nests.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bBKpQiYtTA

My Fifth Rooster Slaughter

He was disrupting the equilibrium of the flock by challenging "Mr. Rooster" plus being mean to the chickens, so I "manned up" for my fifth ever slaughter, again hanging him by his feet in a nylon rope on the telephone pole.....quickest most humane machete chop yet. And for the first time I did not have adrenalin shakes afterwards. But once again I got dry heaves when I reached my hand inside his body cavity and pulled out the still-warm internal organs. I put the gizzard, heart and liver back inside the body cavity with seasalt and garlic before baking. I once again was amazed at how fresh chicken/rooster meat has a texture of "flesh" vs. that in the stores that has been frozen once or more. I leave the feet on the "drumsticks" as a reminder of the living origins of the meat vs. it being an anonymous substance in a package. John

such staggering wastes of money and human life

http://www.costofwar.com/

Barter Requests with local blog readers

I can't find either of my tripods; suspect I left them in Denver when I was making difficult choices about what to keep on that last long drive home. I'd love to barter cool plants, fresh eggs or cool seeds for someone's spare tripod so I can expand my video shoots to hands-free ones for demos, etc.

I would like to make an arrangement with a local grocery store to swap my free range eggs and produce for their gallons of whole milk that expire on a given day as I very much want to expand my efforts at home cheese making since my Dad gave me a much bigger, brand new refrigerator. I'm thinking a dozen of my free range eggs per gallon, or perhaps potted one gallon edible plants. I live near Gandy and MacDill so the closer the better. I would also want to barter for certain expired cheeses like bleu, Brie, cheddar and Camembert (sp?) to use as "starter" for batches of fresh milk curds to make cheeses of my choice by introducing the molds and bacteria specific to each cheese type.

Thanks! John

Growing Food, Cultivating Freedom, and Harvesting Joy class

Growing and raising much of your own food can free you from an unsatisfying job and addiction to the New Serfdom of endless debt as a "consumer". Learn three basics of successful gardening in central Florida, see the ease of a few backyard chickens for fresh eggs, plus get two handouts with 30 key techniques, attitude shifts, and resources that can allow us to discover what we REALLY want out of life, how to live frugally, and ways to shed old, restrictive habits and replace them with pleasurable, expansive ones to create a self-perpetuating positive feedback loop of habitual joy and gratitude. People say my trippy livingroom exemplifies "thinking outside of the box that the box came in" so most of the class will be held in there after we tour my urban farm. I feel that happiness is a choice we can make daily, and that we can create our lives vs. them just happening to us, with productive gardening as the key. This class will be held again on September 26th, from 11 AM until 1 PM here at 3212 West Paxton Avenue, Tampa, FL 33611 813 839 0881 to RSVP. Please park on the south side of Paxton. The cost is $20 per student. Each student will receive 1 free packet of easy-to-grow seeds with instructions on their culture and harvest and use. See you then! John

Easy, Frugal Organic Winter Veggies and Herbs Gardening Class

With it steamy hot, now might seem an odd time to think about a classic Florida cool weather veggies garden. But autumn is in the air, so this is a great time if you are a super busy family person with either no garden site created yet, or if your past efforts yielded crops of disappointment instead of food for the dinner table, to get started. I had my first veggie garden here in 1967 when I was in 9th grade at Madison Junior High, and have learned since then core principals and techniques that make winter food gardening in central Florida both pleasant and productive. Forget pesticides, forget wasting money on plants and seeds and crops that fail, and forget thinking that you have a brown thumb. Learn how to create a fertile garden site that will bless you with fresh pesticide-free produce for the six cooler months of the year. Frugality food production is the basic mindset behind this well-received class.I am teaching this class again on September 25th , from 11 AM until 1 PM. My address is: 3212 West Paxton Avenue, Tampa FL 33611, about 6 blocks south of Gandy and 1 1/2 blocks west of MacDill, jungly yard on the south side. Please park on my side of Paxton off of neighbors' lawns. The cost is $20 per student. You will receive two free packets of winter crops seeds. I will provide a handout, but be sure to bring a notepad and pen. See you then! John Starnes 813 839 0881

Fun Project: Home Made Radio Controlled Plane

Got to my Starnesland blog to see a fun project a friend and I have been working on....I'd post the video here but it has ZERO to do with gardening and urban farming, though it does involve a fair degree of recycling. John

Home Made Probiotic Cheese: Waste Not, Want Not

Home constructed cheese press

Profile of kefir curd pressed overnight in a pillow case

the curd itself after being rubbed with sea salt

In day three of a ferment of one gallon Publix organic cow's milk to which I'd added Lifeway Kefir (as source of the ten bacteria species SO useful to broad spectrum human health that GERDS and Acid Reflux so often respond to with full remission) plus Old Orchard brand fruit juice as additional food source for those bacteria, I discovered firm cheese curds vs a new gallon of kefir as I'd come to expect. So I re-Googled home cheese making *(I made a pound of homemade limburger about a year ago) and strained the kefir in a newly laundered pillow case hung above my stove to drip the whey liquids into a bowl overnight before I crashed. It was an unexpected joy to find myself choosing cheese making recipes at 9 Pm.

I am really enjoying the experience....today I unwrapped the cheese curd "block" from the pillowcase it drained in, rubbed Dollar Tree sea salt into that firm block of probiotic cow cheese curd, then wrapped it in the other half of that same pillowcase, then tucked it into a loose, used plastic grocery bag then put it to age for 3-5 months in my fridge. The idea I gather it to allow SOME air flow to the microbes and fungi transforming the kefir curd into cheese while keeping evaporative losses low.

Pics to come of a process that MAY result in a firm, dry, Romano-Parmesan type home made probiotic cheese in 6-9 months. This is so much fun! John

Bad news about my six new baby chicks.....

This morning before sunrise I learned that all six of my new baby chicks hatched in the incubator had been somehow eaten overnight in what I'd THOUGHT was a safe haven bird cage laid on its side atop the quail pen four feet off the ground. Bummer for them and their last moments as what I feel certain was a snake ate them in their sleep. Hell of a way to be awakened. Plus I was looking forward to seeing what they'd mature into due to their very mixed parentage. So now I will wrap this entire transitional cage for baby chicks with swimming pool screen that a new friend dropped off here last week to keep (hopefully) both snakes and racoon paws out as new eggs develop in the incubator in my office. With coyotes now in many neighborhoods in the U.S. , backyard poultry raisers need to keep their eyes peeled for more than the stereotypical "chicken hawk". John

Question from a Reader

Hi John, I hope all is well with you! The velvet beans I got from you at the beginning of summer are starting to produce, and I have a very basic question: exactly what do you do with them to prepare for consumption, and how many beans should one consume over what period? When we speak of "beans" is one bean the entire pod, or one bean is one seed inside the velvety pod?Thank you! Sarah

Hi Sarah, Harvest is tricky as at first the pods are all flesh inside with no or just tiny "beans". Wait until they look plump and you see swelling where each "bean" ( seed ) is....break open one weekly to monitor progress. When they are the size of a small lima bean, pick the pods, boil them 20 minutes, and freeze. For medicinal use I thaw and zap one pod daily, eat one daily for three weeks, then stop 3 weeks, then repeat back and forth so the L-dopa can stimulate the pituitary gland to make more HGH (Human Growth Hormone). If you buy the Velvet Bean capsules at health food stores the label also mentions the need for this three week cycling. For years I've relied on memory and feel I've seen benefits, including zero gray hair at 57 just as was mentioned in the double blind research studies I read years ago before growing this crop esteemed by Ayurvedic medicine the last 4,000 years. But the last couple months I've used my CALENDAR and the strength gains I am seeing at the gym make my jaw drop! Who knows, by year's end I may more closely resemble the lean built guys I am attracted to!! John

Sexing Your Papaya Plants

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UevsZ2Llk-8

Video of a Mizuna hybrid from my yard. John

Oddly heat tolerant, it germinates readily in the humid August heat! John

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcVSW-beNOc

Thai Lemon Hibscus: Hibiscus radiata

Answer:

Maylin that is how this tart-leaved, cannabislook-alike annual hibiscus grows...do NOT cut it back else you will prevent the lovely burgundy blooms that will appear in about a month that are followed by the tan seed capsules that will drop seeds to the ground that will germinate on their own next April and May. The plant will die after dropping the seeds in November and December. John

Question:
Hi John
We got the Thai Lemon Hibiscus baby plant and it’s like 6 ft high now.
Should we cut it down so it can get bushy or does it just grow straight up?
We have put it in our salad and soups and so yummy. Maylin

A lovely Beatles video for a heartwarming song...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aBet3JPd_c&feature=related

Breast Cancer Protection from Watercress?

Makes sense to me...it is related to the Brassicas. John

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100914115240.htm

Time to turn the Empire's swords into plowshares.....

"It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear." General Douglas MacArthur, Speech, May 15, 1951 (obviously a tree hugging, un-American, hippie-liberal)

Today on the farm.....

Opuntia cochenillifera

Purple Kosaitai

Purple Kosaitai

I just love a sunny, breezy productive early fall day! I transfered the new baby chicks to their big spacious transitional cage atop the quail pen, posted the video of them plus that of urban farmer Pat's Saturday launch of his handcrafted cedar canoe to YouTube, rooted more edible thornless Opuntia cochenillifera cacti to sell in several weeks via my front porch Honor System plants sales cottage business, started Arbol hot pepper seeds, put two of today's eggs in the incubator with today's date written on each, prepped 1 gallon Lesbos basil plants for sale, and created and buried in my east street bed a 4 gallon Water Wise Container Garden each for my new Heliconia starts and a hybrid Louisiana Iris.

I checked the brand new Muscovy duck nest for eggs (nicely feathered with down but no eggs yet though she acts in heat), weeded and other chores, then incorporated into my new late afternoon bike ride down Bayshore Blvd. for cardio and weight loss a side trip to Britton Plaza to shop where I splurged on a gallon of Publix "organic milk" ($4.29 vs. $3.29) for a new batch of home made kefir. Recipe: 1 gallon milk, 1 quart Old Orchard Blueberry Pomegranate juice to further feed the bacteria, then about 1/4 cup plain Lifeway kefir as the starter, all mixed in a super clean glass 2 gallon glass cookie jar I dumpster dived last year, then rubberbanded a clean white towel over the top to keep out dust while letting the 10 bacteria species breathe. I will stir it daily with a clean knife. This time I plan on doing a 3 day ferment in my warm, un-air conditioned laundry room where the two previous batches turned out SO good from a 2 day ferment. My friend Avena is enamored with my home made kefir.

Since the October veggie planting season for central Florida is closing in, tomorrow I'll do a rough sort of my vast winter veggies seeds collection (fills both produce drawers in my fridge) to select mostly various brassicas plus herbs and root crops that love the cooler, drier winter months. I already have Roma tomato seedlings in a pot, and as soon as the seed displays return to stores I'll get me a packet of 'Sweet 100' cherry tomatoes for me and friends. One brassica I have grown VERY fond of is a Chinese one called 'Purple Kosaitai'....the lavender-green leaves are tender and mild and sweet, raw or in stir fry. In cold climates, it would be sown in spring with other brassicas like broccoli and mizuna. Get their seeds and MANY other superb Asian veggie and herb seeds from: http://www.kitazawa/ Seeds.com

"Autumn Mania" in Tampa, vs. warding off "SADS" as I had to in Denver each fall and winter using light treatments, is for me a treasured part of the annual cycle of living and gardening in central Florida. There's no place like home.

John

"The age of warrior kings and of warrior presidents has passed. The nuclear age calls for a different kind of leadership....a leadership of intellect, judgment, tolerance and rationality, a leadership committed to human values, to world peace, and to the improvement of the human condition. The attributes upon which we must draw are the human attributes of compassion and common sense, of intellect and creative imagination, and of empathy and understanding between cultures." William Fulbright

South Tampa urban farmer Pat Lawhead

Pat and his wife Lynn were urban farmers in south Tampa in the 1970s long before that label was used....they raised rabbits and chickens, then built a lovely log cabin on a farm in Dade City where they farmed for over 20 years. Now they are back in south Tampa, right behind my old Madison Junior High, gardening and crafting and fishing and enjoying their kids and grandkids. Check out this lovely canoe Pat built over a period of two years with patience challenging that of Job. Enjoy, John

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYD31zzA3Ew

"Cheep Cheep" CHEAP Baby Chicks Raising

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Acd32K866pw

Velvet Beans Coming into Bloom

The shorter days of early fall are switching my Velvet Bean vines from rampant vegetative growth to flowering.....my friend Pat has young pods on his already. My soil here is very nitrogen rich due to years of free range chickens and growing Velvet Beans (they are a very effective nitrogen fixer) so I guess that is why my vines dwarf his but are flowering and fruiting later. I'll be sure to post in a few weeks how to harvest, cook, freeze and serve the L-dopa rich beans inside the velvety pods. Cooked, they taste sort of like boiled peanuts with a touch of lima beans. I'll also share the recipe I've devised for a sauce to be poured on the cooked pods that are then eaten like edamame soybeans that friends love. To me these flowers are beautiful in a surrealistic way, like wisteria blooms on acid. Enjoy, John

Lakota

Kabocha

Thai Small Pumpkin

La Primera

Part of a harvest one fall

In the northern hemisphere, autumn is the time to harvest for storage the various "winter squash" so called because of their ability to to be stored for many months indoors without refrigeration. The idea is to wait until the vines begin to age and decline to insure that the fruits are of maximum nutrition and maturity. In colder climates, waiting until the first LIGHT frost can insure the squashes store a good long time. Cut them from the vines, leaving a good length of stem attached, and let those sweet storehouses of carbs and vitamins and beta-carotenes sit in the sun a couple of days to further harden the rinds. Store them in your coolest, driest room....don't let them touch as each contains a latent electrical charge. A bacterial spot can develop where two squashes/pumpkins touch.

There is nothing like a big steaming pot of freshly made Jamaican or Thai pumpkin soup on a cold winter day! I make mine very spicy and like that they both rely on health giving coconut milk as a key ingredient.

John

Healthy Choices on My Urban Farm

I've set a goal of hitting 147 lbs. (lose 10 lbs.) by Oct. 15 with two behavior changes....no more seconds ( I love my own cooking right from my gardens) and as I did last night, substituting a vigorous multi-mile bike ride along Bayshore Blvd. for enjoying my ritual of a certain herb and some brews, and the inevitable munchies. I may make that a sacred weekly event on a fixed day vs. "when I feel like it". Since I drink no sodas, my only fast food is a few bean burritos per month from Taco Bell, and I have no sweet tooth, the main caloric culprits for me are those brews, munchies, plus eating too much of my healthy home cooking. I am making massive strength gains at the gym with a new routine followed by protein and amino acids, am taking L-arginine mainly for cardio health but it also adds muscle mass, along with my usual 3 week Velvet Bean cycles. A guy at my gym with a chest I'd kill to have AND grope does ONE THOUSAND pushups daily along with his 3 day a week gym routine....I have begun a very modest 50 daily using the deep pushup bars I've owned for years but rarely used....I now hang them from my bedside table as a reminder. My goal is to more closely resemble the guys I lust after....once I lose this 10 lbs. more I will be much more defined on my torso. Just making these decisions feels very healthy and exciting!

Each fall here I get a delicious "autumn mania" that I employ to enact healthy positive choices, and I am liking a lot this fall's manifestations of that. John

Growing Food, Cultivating Freedom, and Harvesting Joy class

Growing and raising much of your own food can free you from an unsatisfying job and addiction to the New Serfdom of endless debt as a "consumer". Learn three basics of successful gardening in central Florida, see the ease of a few backyard chickens for fresh eggs, plus get two handouts with 30 key techniques, attitude shifts, and resources that can allow us to discover what we REALLY want out of life, how to live frugally, and ways to shed old, restrictive habits and replace them with pleasurable, expansive ones to create a self-perpetuating positive feedback loop of habitual joy and gratitude. People say my trippy livingroom exemplifies "thinking outside of the box that the box came in" so most of the class will be held in there after we tour my urban farm. I feel that happiness is a choice we can make daily, and that we can create our lives vs. them just happening to us, with productive gardening as the key. This class will be held twice in September, on the 12th then again the 26th, from 11 AM until 1 PM here at 3212 West Paxton Avenue, Tampa, FL 33611 813 839 0881 to RSVP. Please park on the south side of Paxton. The cost is $20 per student. Each student will receive 1 free packet of easy-to-grow seeds with instructions on their culture and harvest and use. See you then! John

Making and Eating Probiotic Foods like Kefir

My first batch of milk kefir came out YUMMY...I used 1 gallon milk, about a quart of cranberry juice to help feed the bacteria, about 1 cup of plain Lifeway kefir to add the 10 bacteria species. No AC in my laundry room so the fermentation urns are in there....I did a two day ferment. Yesterday I started a new batch but this time added 1 cup sugar in place of the fruit juice to feed the bacteria. I'd LOVE to make a batch using raw cow or goat's milk! The benefits of probiotics for GERDs, acid reflux, constipation, and more have all been demonstrated in people I know, so the findings of abundant studies do not surprise me. John


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100823172331.htm

Velvet Bean progress

As the days shorten, my rampant Velvet Bean (Mucuna pruriens) vines are adding increasing numbers of very small immature bud clusters that are a fraction of their eventual size. The mature bloom clusters are surrealistically beautiful, like wisteria on acid. Somehow, the six previous years I've grown Velvet Bean medicinally, I've neglected to photograph the flowers......I won't make that mistake this year! John

"No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear."

Edmund Burke

Free to Hyper-Frugal white landscape accents

A ten foot length of white plastic rain gutter is about $6 these days.....for the last ten years I've loved using them as sturdy, attractive, functional edgers for garden beds, like this one by my mulched driveway. They are very easy to cut with a hack saw at a wide range of angles. I personally love white landscape features to add brightness and color contrast as a very affordable color tool. A scavenged concrete birdbath, even if acquired in two stages (keep your eyes peeled for broken birdbaths out with the garbage......harvest the unbroken half and stash it. Then keep your eyes peeled for an unbroken OTHER half). A coat of fresh white paint ( a common curbside find if you keep your eyes peeled) can transform old lawn furniture, a beat up old wood fence, or a tired looking shed into a prime focal point for your landscape for very little, if any, money. Check paint stores for their deeply discounted "mistints" in various cans and types of paint, usually with a dab on the lid of the paint inside as a color swatch.

When I think about it I realize that since childhood I've loved the simplicity of Mark Twain's references to a simple lime whitewash for wood fences but I have never made it....do you have a favorite whitewash formula?

John