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Seedling Waterer!

March 16th, 2011 by Borealis
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Problem: do not have a watering can with holes small enough to water seedlings, without washing them away;

Problem: misters do not deliver enough water with the frequency that I can get round to using them;

SOLUTION: create a seedling waterer

Materials:

==>Small, mabe pint-size, take-out tub.  Preferably one of those ones that you never can find the lid for.
==>1/16″ drill

Method

Drill 5 or so holes in a rosette pattern around the bottom of the tub.  Now, hold it over your seedlings and pour water in from a pitcher or flask.  Watch raindrop-sized water droplets fall onto your seedlings.

As near as I can tell, the only problem is that when the tub is less than half full, the water pressure is about equal to the surface tension over the holes, so the water doesn’t flow out.  The workaround is to pour in more water.

Post is categorized “outdoors” even though it’s indoors, because the garden goes in that category.

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Cider Update

March 13th, 2011 by Borealis
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3/12/11 Racked all 12 gallons. Dry (continental) cider is now in the Better Bottle; sweet and super-sweet are in 6.5 and 5 gallon carboys, respectively

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Swordfish Steak with Blueberry Salsa

February 28th, 2011 by Borealis
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This is a recipe inspired by something I ate long ago at Maxi’s Supper Club in Ithaca, that I cooked up tonight with ingredients I had lying around the house.  It was an absolute win.

Recipe After the Jump

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South Africa: Arrival and Pretoria

May 24th, 2010 by Borealis
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On May 8, I left Boston to visit my sister in South Africa.  On May 11, I arrived at Johannesburg OR Tambo International Airport.  The airport was renamed in 2006 to honor Nelson Mandela’s long-time friend, law partner, and one-time secretary general and president of the ANC.  [Read more →]

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Radish!

May 5th, 2010 by Borealis
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Tonight: first produce of the season: a ‘French breakfast’ radish!

The ones in the back garden have been attacked by slugs; this specimin was container-grown.

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Summer Dinner: Tom Yum and Thai Salad

March 21st, 2010 by Borealis
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I wish I had taken a picture. Last night after observing the Vernal Equinox with a vigorous hike at the Middlesex Fells, I felt obligated to cook something light and summery.  I had thai bird chiles and brown beech mushrooms in my fridge, so I wanted to do something Thai.  It worked out well, so I’m posting it here.

The recipe is very nearly vegan.  You’d have to omit the fish sauce, but it would still be tasty.  If you don’t have access to a thai grocery you may not find bird chiles or brown beech mushrooms, but that’s okay.  You  can use any other small hot pepper, and any other culinary mushroom.  I imagine shiitake would work well.

[Read more →]

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Spring Gardening 2010

March 17th, 2010 by Borealis
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A few notes:

1) I had a conversation with my landlady yesterday about how we might not have any more conflict about the garden. We agreed that I can plant anywhere that I want to, so long as a) I put a border around my garden, and b) I do not use the fence as a trellis again this year.

2) The hops are budding aggressively, so I am now thinking about what sort of trellis they might like this year. I have a few weeks before I have to decide.

3) Today I planted mustard greens and sage around the hops, as well as a few perennial wildflowers.

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OpenID Authentication

January 13th, 2010 by Borealis
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We appear to be having problems with openID authentication. This should be fixed within the next few days. For now, I may be the only one who cares anyway.

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Cranberry Tofu with Coconut Cream Asparagus

January 13th, 2010 by Borealis
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Though recipes aren’t subject to copyright, I will mention that I got this from The Vegan Cook’s Bible, and what is listed here has only minor modifications. Meatatarians can probably substitute chicken breast for the tofu with good results.

This may also be the meal that sealed the deal on my three-month vegan experiment. Recipe below the jump.

Total prep time: about an hour.
[Read more →]

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State of the Blog

December 23rd, 2009 by Borealis
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If you’ve been to Mostly Plants in the past several weeks, you may have noticed that things were a bit odd. You may have noticed that the “permalinks” (links to individual posts) were broken, and looked weird.

It should be back to normal now. The blog got hacked, and in the process of fixing it I messed it up a bit in a totally harmless way. If you had an account at mostly plants and can’t log in anymore, I probably deleted it in the process of getting un-hacked. Unless you are a certain college roommate who can still log in, you’ll need to re-make your account. Sorry about that.

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