House of Roses

Hello Hello

First Asagao

Hauling the Meat

dmm kindly biked out to Brookline to pick up the last meat share from Stillman’s Farm.

The goods were:

• 2 x 1 lb ground pork
• 1.5 lb porterhouse steak
• 1 lb bacon
• 1.5 lb knockwurst
• 1 lb leg of lamb
• 3.15 lb pork shoulder

Not as much variety as I had hoped, and no ground lamb, sadly.

(And it turns out I am not a fan of knockwurst.)

Give Up August

Amanda asked me if I was interested in doing the local-in-August thing and I said I was.

Recently I’ve been thinking about what that means we won’t be eating. We defined “local” as within 100 miles of Boston/Somerville and as far as I can tell, there aren’t any starches other than potatoes grown within that radius. (And I doubt there will be local potatoes in August.)

Here’s my list, so far, of things we won’t be eating:

• bread (no wheat)
• pasta (no wheat)
• cookies (no wheat, no chocolate)
• oats
• rice (no stir-fry! I can’t take it!)
• millet, barley
• canned beans
• condiments (from soy to salt to salad dressing)

That leaves us what we get at the farmer’s market, what comes in the farm share, and dairy only from Stonyfield farm (assuming their cows actually live in Londonderry, NH).

I think this may be too difficult. No starch? (No rice?!?!) I know that carbohydrates aren’t the best thing for you, but don’t you need some, even according to the USDA Food Pyramid?

Note to Self

Note to the gardener: start blogging eensy, teeny little posts when you plant things, so you have a start date for them, ok?

Over-day

This morning, when I watered, the container with the beans, squash, and watermelon (!) was a brown rectangle, slightly darker in the places in which I watered it.

Tonight, I found this:

WOW.

The spice jar is for your sense of scale. It’s either the squash or the watermelon; I can’t remember which I planted in the back of the container.

Shopping

This is what results when the House of Roses goes to both Ikea and Wilson Farms in succession:

Friends in the Plant World

I wanted to save and share this link from Jennie about companion plants from Golden Harvest Organic.

You Say Tomata, I Say Tomahtah

This year I’m trying out one of those hanging tomato plant containers. Although somewhat fancier than this, it gives you the idea.

Surprisingly, the poor plant in the hanging container isn’t as happy as the one growing right-side-up. Here’s the sun gold (a cherry) in the regular pot:

Here’s the one hanging upside down:

It’s smaller. It’s used more of the energy it’s gotten so far to grow out from underneath the shade of the container itself. Also, I know it needs more dirt, because I didn’t fill it full enough when I “planted” it. That’s the only benefit I’m finding: for the other plants, I don’t have to worry about lifting them, full of soil, over my head.

On another tomato note, the black zebra (another short-germinating tomato, about 79 days, I think) already has buds:

Blurry but amazing.