Today on the farm

A great day soon to be followed by a relaxing decadent evening of altering and great music and videos while cleaning house....

I FINALLY got germination this spring from Ashwagandha (Withania somniferum) so today I potted up 15 seedlings to later give to friends and to add to the inventory of my Honor System Plants Sales tables on my front porch that helps much to keep the bills paid. It has a very long tradition in Ayurvedic medicine as an adaptogen and a POTENT aphrodisiac (especially in combination with Velvet Bean, to which I can personally attest!) and is a distant relative of eggplant.

After burying and deep-soaking the Jamaican Cherry,  I  today planted in the mulch layer around a banana by my south fence three EXTREMELY vigorous seedlings of a calabaza that in 2008, my friend Allen Boatman had bought a bag of AS A SNACK at an Hispanic store. I gave them and the banana a 30 minute soak using the "shower head" type sprinkler from Lowe's I am so fond of, then spread over the area three bags of oak leaves and catkins. My intent is to rehydrate that corner desiccated by years of drought with many buckets of kitchen graywater and a monthly deep watering with the shower head sprinkler in hopes of fruit production from the banana plus seeing if this calabaza bears desirable pumpkins.

In my late teens then again in my early 30s, poetry was my main creative vehicle and I recently found files of poems I wrote from both eras and will now and then share a few here and at my Starnesland blog. I'd love to learn how to make e-books of them to both share them AND, hopefully, add a bit to my income.

Tomorrow I pot into 4 inch pot seedlings of Holy Basil to share with friends and to sell, and then will continue to consider sowing African jack Beans as a nitrifying weed-choking summer cover crop in my west bed that last year got over run BADLY by a creeping CLIMBING grass that I suspect was 'Starre Grass'......one of my blog readers in Indonesia (as I recall) sent me great videos about efforts to cultivate this wonderful crop there and he REALLY has my gears turning. After seeing "Fresh" at a local raw foods restaurant I'd considered sowing that area with Bahia grass seed as a periodic poultry pasture, but I am now drawn even more to make it a dense patch of African Jack Beans. (Canavalia ensiformis)

This morning I slipped into the duck pen a shallow plastic storage tub I'd been using to bottom water plants for sale, then filled it with fresh water as the ducklings have grown a lot and I felt they'd enjoy daily swims. Soon I will post on YouTube the video I shot of this new feature of their pen that I hope gives them added daily pleasure and health and fun.

I noticed at a car forum I love to visit (too often) called http://www.gminsidenews.com/ that some stunning to behold cars were unveiled at the Shanghai Auto Show, some electric hybrids, so I will be sharing links and photos here and at my Starnesland blog.

Very dry and hot here with zippo chance for rain the next week...good thing I pee and shower outdoors plus save my kitchen graywater!

A baby chick hatched in the incubator today, where I saw that apparently yesterday two had TRIED to hatch but died with just their bills poking out of the shell.

Quite the day. John