For the third time I boiled chopped leaves of the "Lagos Spinach" (Celosia argentea?) that I do not like raw (the taste/sensation feels like calcium oxalate vs. oxalic acid) along with some "Giant Green Callalloo" (Amaranthus gangeticus?) in 2 inches of water with rock salt and Smart Balance "butter"...cook time was about 20 minutes. Served it with flash fried squid dipped in flour, grits, sea salt, coarse black pepper. It is so pretty I will scatter seeds next spring in my flower beds near the street. Tom Carroll gave me the seeds a few years ago when he came to a seed swap potluck here. It glories in the humid heat of summer, loves damp rich soil.

Once again I see why I each summer get overwhelmed by weeds.....a house stood on this lot on my east side for over 50 years, was knocked down, lot scraped down to bare sand maybe 6 weeks ago....this morning it is solid weeds! John

Took my first sip after a 4 day ferment...no real fizz yet, barely any tartness, could not taste either the hot peppers or the powdered mustard seeds, will let it go a whole week as some suggest. I could easily taste the beet and carrots.

http://www.aartibatavia.com/blog/carrot-beet-probiotic-beverage-aka-gajar-beet-ki-kanji/

August 28th I made two quarts of spicy, garlicy, lower sodium green papaya kimchi that has been fermenting at room temp ever since....I enjoyed my first taste today with an omelet...came out wonderful! And I have OODLES of green papayas in the gardens and canning jars I got on sale.

This sounds delicious and I'll make a batch with store bought veggies...if I like it I'll make more using beets and carrots I'll be growing this winter.

http://www.aartibatavia.com/blog/carrot-beet-probiotic-beverage-aka-gajar-beet-ki-kanji/

Andy Firk has made me and others aware of this food bearing tree that he says oddly does well here...he's seen them thriving in Sarasota and Miami. He loves boiling the dried seeds like beans...great flavor. Turns out I had seeds I'd gotten earlier this year at the Tampa Rare Fruit Council meeting, will sow them in a cell pack. Nitrogen fixer too it seems!

http://woodsroamer.blogspot.com/2011/04/living-off-land-texas-ebony-beans.html

Doesn't look like I'll be testing any alternative weed killers this week thanks to the laundry on my clothesline! With the LONG dry season closing in fast this is a wonderful forecast.

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Tampa&state=FL&site=TBW&lat=27.959&lon=-82.4821#.VB7PXfldWUQ

I am getting very good germination from seeds of my "Filipino Mexican Tree Pepper" from pods that I let dry indoors for a few weeks...once they are taller I'll separate them and plant them around the yard as I now have a few in large Water Wise Container Gardens. I hope that the folks I mailed pods to get good germination rates also. Years ago Allen Boatman IDd it as a perennial form of Capsicum frutescens and devised this study name for it based on details from my Filipino Joe who gave me my seeds in 2001 as I recall. That original plant was in the ground, averaged 5' X 5' and made hundreds if not thousands of pods each year...the flavor and heat is on par with a good Thai pepper. That plant lived 8 years until a hard freeze nuked it

Mary Jo sent me this wonderful overview of garlic cultivars. Racombole was the one that took over my Denver front yard due to the scapes bearing and dropping vast numbers of bulblets that each became a whole new bulb. I tried both the bulbs and bulblets from my Denver yard here several times but they failed quickly...a shame as the flavor and aroma was wonderfully pungent. It is a true hard neck that needs winter dormancy. The scapes twisted oddly as they grew, much resembling those old "crazy straws" for kids.

https://www.seedwise.com/resources/

No wonder that fungicides and antibiotics so disrupt the ecology of a garden or farm! And no wonder why foliar diseases have been so very rare my 12 years back in Tampa and my 15 in Denver, even on my roses! But in both yards I ADDED fungi and bacteria.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140916102224.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Ftop_news%2Ftop_science+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Top+Science+News%29

My order of Creole Garlics arrived today.....I'd imagined 1 bulb each of 8 kinds, got 2 bulbs each of 4 kinds, will break them into cloves to plant and for limited sharing to see if we Floridians can actually grow garlics that form a bulb from a clove like northern gardeners take for granted. I sure took it for granted in Denver.

Human overpopulation is the core cause....Earth is like a closed petri dish with finite resources yet some people create FAR more children per family than the 2.O the planet needs. When I was 17 I was made hopeful by the Zero Population Growth movement with the goal of 2.O kids per family but at 61 I've abandoned optimism with so many people cranking out 6, 10, 12 kids as if there was no future those kids would inherit. It does no good to be "green" with token perky recycling permaculture efforts if people won't breed responsibly as if there was an actual future their children will inherit.

I used a short section of drinking straw and my finger tip to lift up a sample of my first effort to ferment home made apple cider vinegar by adding some Braggs to organic apple juice on August 23...very good flavor already. That day in another jar I inoculated the apple juice with potent kombuca and a bit of SCOBY...it too has a nice vinegary taste. Both quickly made very healthy looking SCOBYs. Now to choose a dedicated large glass container to make a whole gallon of vinegar from apple juice inoculated by the Bragg's version and its SCOBY.

Yesterday I was in my undies and ready to take my back yard 1 gallon solar shower, and I noticed in a pond in the food forest the first leopard frog I've seen here in years...I ran inside to get the camera, came back out and got two shoots with zoom before it hopped over to the dinghy duck weed pond.

The "fufu-ication" of the street bed is now done....mailbox and both bird baths painted, and now, today I re-did the flower pedestal beside the mail box. The original plaster of Paris roman style column, but luckily a few months ago I broke my "no scrounging" rule and brought home a curb side white sink pedestal. So I repainted the base and the planter.

The Raja Puri banana that Mary Jo gave me a few stalks of a couple years ago is THE most productive by far of the 17 kinds I've grown here...yet ANOTHER fruit stalk is emerging on the one out front! I've lost track...5th or 6th of the year?! I have SO many peeled ones in the freezer for smoothies!

I ended up making pickled ginger (vs. fermented) after all, though copied the idea of adding carrots. I'll date both jars once cool....I figure by mid November I'll sample one. MUCH cheaper than the store bought ones that almost always have added saccharin. I'll plant the left over pieces....hopefully within a year I'll never have to buy ginger again. John

I'd planned to make more green papaya kimchi today and add some fresh ginger, but instead I'll make my first ever batch of pickled ginger and add some green papaya.

http://japanesefood.about.com/od/sushiforbeginner/r/gari.htm

When Paul Zmoda noticed that I'd hope to find at Lowe's an acidic cleaner based on phosphoric acid, he suggested Coke! I checked...pH is 2.5...white vinegar is 3.5 and the pH scale is logarithmic, which means that Coke is 10 times more acidic than vinegar. You could not pay me to drink Coke but I'll buy some store brand to try as a weed killer. And the sugars would feed beneficial bacteria.

Lots of folks on FaceBook have been talking about weed control with other than Roundup....straight vinegar, vinegar based mixes, salt, boiling water, etc.. I got SOME kill in grasses in my brick driveway using that mix of vinegar, epsom salts and Dawn, but little effect on purslane and spotted spurge. I read all the labels today at Lowe's of gallon jugs of acidic cleaners, hoping to find one based on phosphoric acid.....sulfuric acid would be acceptable. But none. So for $7 I bought a gallon of ZEP tub and tile cleaner containing glycolic acid, which is made from sugar cane and is in many creams and lotions to deep clean skin and reduce wrinkles. I'll use up the rest the vinegar based spray on the driveway, then try the ZEP on my carpeted driveway where nut sedge has gotten bad. I'll keep people posted on the results.....$7 for a gallon of a natural acid would be great...IF it works!

I heard a brand new bird call in the Tithonia diversifolia outside my office window and spotted a very petite bird moving very quickly all over a branch, pecking off something all the time (ants?) and making short high-pitched "cheeps"...took a few minutes of googling to find it...Downy Woodpecker!

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/downy_woodpecker/id

I know folks who rely a lot on smoothies, but my zero sweet tooth makes them challenging, especially chocolate ones. But this new type based on pineapple juice and green peeled papaya, with several Vitamin C tabs tossed in for added nutrition and extra tangyness, has great flavor and texture. Since it takes me three days to drink my largest Ninja blender full, I wonder if the bromelain and papain enzymes pre-digest the soy protein? I add zinc, iodine, moringa leaves, turmeric powder, food grade DE, L-arginine, strong kombucha tea, dry oatmeal, chia seeds and other nutrient sources to make these smoothies very nutritionally dense. Some of us have lots of green papayas now, so I want to share this use along with using it raw in salads or to make kimchi, or added to soups and stir fry.

What a shame that this inferior strain of Cereus peruvianus sets so few fruits from so many blooms, and those that do form are small and have just so-so flavor.

Jon and Debbie Butts, I just dug up from a front roses bed a clump of your "EcoFarm Replicating Onion", got 7 divisions from it and planted them in an old Water Wise Container Garden made from a storage tub on the back patio and labelled them. They are the only alliums in that garden to avoid any confusion. If they did that well in a very dry and rarely fed low care rose bed I wonder how they will do in these lush new conditions getting plenty of kitchen gray water. Thanks for giving me a new perennial-in-Florida allium to study! I ate the two divisions that had no roots...very good onion flavor.

Very interesting ideas and crops here!

http://www.wired.com/2014/06/potato-bean/

This was the last one to be held at the Bayshore Garden Club...good turnout, speaker was Chris Rollins of the Fruit and Spice Park in Homestead...his topic was fruits of southeast Asia. I got cool seeds, chatted with friends, got to taste my first ever black Muscadines, and was reminded that some Longans can be very flavorful (like the ones that Chris brought MANY clusters of to share), others very bland. I will be curious as to where future meetings will be held. As always the potluck was wonderful and I was surprised how many people tracked me down to say how much they liked my vegan spicy Indian curried rice. (After many years of using garam masala I am getting very fond of tanduri masala).

http://www.fruitandspicepark.org/

This family business is a great source for cool seeds by the pound (especially brassicas) plus rhizobia bacteria for legumes...I've been buying from them for years.

http://www.welterseed.com/

A LOT of Googling this summer has me hopeful that the purple garlic that came from Mexico and was sold by Publix briefly July into August was one of the "Creole Garlics" that can set bulbs in mild southerly climates...one variety even thrives in Cuba! I gave one to Mary Jo, I have 5 more in the fridge, will wait until October to begin planting in stages. I'll break them up into cloves, plant some in the ground, plant most in various Water Wise Container Gardens...fingers crossed. In Denver I took garlic bulbing for granted!

http://www.filareefarm.com/cre.html

http://www.gourmetgarlicgardens.com/creoles.htm

On the left is organic apple juice inoculated a little over a week ago with Bragg's Apple Cider vinegar, including some "Mother".....a SCOBY is forming. On the right is apple juice inoculated with very strong vinegary kombuca tea and a small piece of SCOBY.....a SCOBY is forming there too. My goal is to make my own organic apple cider vinegar one way or the other.

Cool looking car that could be a real game changer! Be sure to watch the video!

http://www.intelligentliving.co/salt-water-powered-car-gets-european-approval/

My perennial alliums for Florida obsession unexpectedly got a boost today.....I went to south Tampa's wonderful Vietnamese owned DoBond Market where I buy my 'Lila' taro tubers to grow in summer to get some culinary and galangal ginger to grow....scored. Then I spotted these bags of "shallots"...after a LOT of research and obsessing the last couple of years I THINK that regular shallots are taller than wide (that is what I see in every grocery store) and are grown all over as an annual from seeds....."Potato Onions" are actually a sub-species of shallot that are wider than tall and in the right climate and conditions multiply under ground as a perennial. For the first time ever I saw "shallots" wider than tall so I bought a bag to sow in stages this fall once we cool down a bit. EVERY bulb in the mesh bag is wider than tall...have I FINALLY scored "red potato onions"?! Bag says 'Product of China'.