Growing Wild

I've been told that it's #InsectWeek and that I should plug my work.

I'm so bad at marketing... Uhhhhh... Buy my books...!

Bonus pic below the cut of a beautiful bald-faced hornet who I rescued/relocated to a better nest location after using this book for ID:

Yes.

Came just in time to start some cabbage seedlings for this fall (plus some spinach for the cold frame in a week or two). Thank you Thank you Thank you!!!

Wasted no time. I figure a six pack of cabbage will be fine for winter eating given that this is a variety that gets big. There should be enough seed for several years, even with spring and fall plantings. Also started another six pack of lettuce. You can see all the Chinese broccoli has germinated, but the beets and last week's lettuce is also up. All done inside so they don't cook in the 100F heat (110-115F heat index ugh).

It was funny because Walmart delivered the seed packets tied into a plastic grocery sack that I didn't notice on the porch. I instead noticed that my smaller pot of Purple Heart had been knocked off its stand and had fallen on a pot of kalanchoe, breaking off a lot of tentacles/branches. The bag was underneath all that. So I can't confidently blame the wildlife for the mess this time :-D

It's fine though. I had just been thinking of taking more cuttings recently—just wasn't planning on quite this many all at once.

But got the longer ones stripped and put into a jar of water to grow roots.

I also had two branches of kalanchoe that I didn't know if they would root as I haven't tried before, but it's a fleshy plant...

Can report success after only a few days. I may need to have a look at the rest of my kalanchoe plants to see if any need pruning. Especially since I picked up a bunch of little pots this weekend scavenging.

Someone had put a bunch of pots in a particular place where people in the neighborhood put their "free, please take" items they don't want anymore. So good timing.

While I'm talking about free plant stuff, I picked this plant up maybe a month ago? It's not obvious, but that's a plant with a four foot long stem with that one leaf at the very end. There was some new growth at the base:

So I cut the stem at the edge of the pot and am letting the base growth take over this pot. I then cut the stem into three pieces and was able to get some roots forming in a jar of water.

So this week I went ahead and potted them up together. So far they are surviving and sending out some new leaf spikes. If it makes it a few months I'll repot in a larger pot, but for now this will do.

Every movement has some kind of visual identity. Every. Single. One. Now, those identities often evolve after the politics, but that’s not a rule.

Solarpunk was created as a way to directly oppose the grim, late stage capitalistic future we’ve been sold my cyberpunk for decades.

People saw this aesthetic and were able to look within it to see real change and action that could be made to get there.

Aesthetics give people something to identify with. But more importantly in this instance, they give us a collective vision to move towards.

Yes Solarpunk was an aesthetic, but no one said it ever had to stay that way. It is simultaneously our foundation and what we’re striving for.

Everyone should read Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown

So the zucchini that I was trying to nurse along after removing squash borers from the plant's stem and blocking the fruit off after being nibbled ended up rotting its inner chamber. So no viable seeds though it almost made it.

However! Hope is not lost.

There is another.

And it's as long as and bigger around than my whole arm. Crossing fingers that nothing messes with it and it makes it to ripeness.

Looks like I'm going to have to break out the hoops and insect netting a little sooner than I was hoping, but the replacement zucchini plants (different variety) are growing very well. Only minor nibbles from pillbugs. This 100F heat wave is supposed to break Monday now (it was originally forecast for today but got extended), so I'm hoping to put it off until then.

Another dozen carrots harvested. I think that makes 5 or 6 dozen now? There's probably 3 dozen left, so I should be able to pull the rest right on time to transplant the Chinese broccoli into that bed. With its own insect netting row cover because:

The cabbage moths have attacked the kale while I wasn't paying attention. Just when I said that I was surprised that it was still doing good. Ah, well. The kale is for the chickens anyway so they'll get a bit more protein than planned...

The whole-ass broken peach tree I found in the green waste dumpster a few months back and splinted the break is doing great where I transplanted it. Has a full set of leaves at the crown and some leaves on the lower branches. I think the true test will be if the crown survives the winter.

The two mimosa saplings I started from seed and transplanted to either side of the peach tree are also doing well. I still have a third sapling still in a pot because I don't know where to put it. Thinking maybe in the spot where the azalea died? Ugh. Have to decide soon so it has time to establish.

The raised bed along the rear privacy fence is becoming jungle-like with cosmos and cannas and chartreuse sweet potato vine and blackberry canes. I love it. I think I have my preferred planting group for that spot now, though might try adding some ginger into the mix next year.

Bonus flower:

did you see they made jane prentiss from the magnus archives real

Okay, first you have to have a source of red ripe jalapeños.

If you can't buy them, you'll have to grow them. Or get given them by someone else who grew them if you're lucky.

Then you have to have either a smoker or a charcoal grill. I had a charcoal grill. Theoretically. Meaning when I went to move it out from where it's stored I found that the bottom was rusting out and the legs were falling off. But! I thought I could make it work one last time...

So I covered the bottom with slings of heavy-duty aluminum foil, made sure the legs were propped optimally, and doused the ground underneath with several buckets of water. We've had sufficient rain that all but the top inch of soil/woodchips are still very wet. I kept a bucket full of water nearby just in case.

Used the charcoal chimney to start about a dozen briquettes—just enough to support about a handful of cherry wood chips that had been soaking in water overnight. Waited until the briquettes were ashy grey and dumped them onto the bottom grate near the front.

And arranged the jalapeños on the highest cooking grate opposite the briquettes—you want them to smoke, not cook. Or at least as much as possible.

Handful of wet cherry wood chips on top of the briquettes. Wait until they begin to smoke, then close the lid.

The top vent is only open a sliver because with the foil slings the lid doesn't fit very well anyway. If you have an actual intact grill then you'll probably want to open it a bit more.

Then go do garden tasks or whatever that keep you in range of the grill so you can monitor for smoke and be sure nothing is on fire (or your janky grill collapses). In roughly 20-30 minutes, when you can't see smoke anymore, you're going to open the lid and throw another handful of soaked cherry wood chips onto the briquettes. Repeat until the desired amount of smoking has occurred. You may need to add a few more briquettes midway through. The source I looked this method up on recommended smoking for 3 hours, so that's what I did. I think it would have been fine after 2 hours though.

You can see a few of the ones closest to the heat got a bit charred after 3 hours, but that's fine. I then transferred them to my dehydrator and let it run overnight to turn them crispy instead of leathery.

My house smelled fantastic. Smoky and sweet and spicy—like barbecue sauce without the sticky.

I then removed the stems/caps (next time I'll do this before smoking...just twist them off without breaking open the pepper) and the seeds because I'm a spice-weenie.

The chickens loved the seeds. Then I ran the smoked, dried ripe jalapeños through a spice grinder. Which, since mine is old and sucks, means I also passed the results through a wire mesh strainer.

And here's the result! A bit more than half a cup of ground chipotle powder (here in a recycled minced garlic jar). This should last me quite a while (spice-weenie).

The bottom bowl is the chipotle powder, but the top is powdered red ripe poblanos. It's normally called Ancho powder but I'm not sure if that's only when the green immature poblanos are used?

Austria Fined Him and Threatened Him With Prison — His 'Weeds' Built a Mountain Paradise

In 1962, a nineteen-year-old farmer inherited a struggling mountainside farm in Austria's coldest agricultural region. Over the next three decades, government inspectors fined him repeatedly, threatened him with prison, and told him his methods were impossible.

Today, that same farm is studied by universities around the world.

This video explores the extraordinary story of Sepp Holzer and Krameterhof, one of the most influential regenerative agriculture and permaculture projects ever created. Located high in Austria's Salzburg Alps, where temperatures regularly fall below minus thirty degrees Celsius, the farm challenged conventional agricultural science by producing fruit, vegetables, and thriving ecosystems where experts said only spruce forests could survive.

Rather than following government manuals, Holzer observed natural processes. He used pigs to naturally seal ponds, created microclimates with rocks and water, built hugelkultur systems from buried wood, and developed a landscape that now includes more than seventy ponds, thirty thousand fruit trees, and one of Europe's most famous examples of ecological farming.

We break down the science behind this transformation: microclimate engineering, water retention landscapes, permaculture design, natural pond construction, soil regeneration, and how observation often outperformed conventional agricultural rules.

The fines and legal battles that made Holzer Austria's most fined farmer

The creation of more than seventy naturally sealed ponds

The transformation of a debt-ridden alpine farm into a globally recognized ecological model