Lots of blooms
Guess which flower is not edible!
Right! The pink orchid is toxic and should not be eaten.
Green Spaghetti Squash
This winter squash is not only edible "green" but delicious eaten as a summer squash.
Barley Bread
I haven't bought bread in over 3 years and I am so grateful to have a really great bread machine. I almost always use the ferment cycle.
Until recently, I usually replaced the liquid in my go to recipe with pureed (cooked) spaghetti squash, which in addition to adding nutrients, acts as a natural dough conditioner.
However, after trying pureed fermented pearl barley water, I found that works just as well, and gives the loaf more flavor. I dilute the pearl barley 1:1.
Lamb Chops from Good Chops
Bone in, 4 hours at 135° F in sous vide water bath. I normally would have used my Neovide 100 bagless and waterless sous vide cooker for these, but I put them into the water bath that I was using to cook a couple pounds of bacon. I like to precook bacon for up to 12 hours and drain off the fat to use separately.
All of the meat I buy from Good Chops comes in sous vide ready packaging, which is very convenient.
After refrigerating the precooked lamb cops overnight I browned them for a few minutes on each side in the Crownful countertop air fryer. Tender and tasty.
Papilionaceous Flowers
Say what? According to the Grain Legumes Portal , plants that have "papilionaceous flowers and pods containing seeds" are grain legumes. That is where I first encountered the term "vetch" so naturally I had to go look that one up too, and this site helped:
Vetch Research
Although I was hitherto unfamiliar with their name, the purple-flowered vetch plants grow wild in the hills above our summer home in Northern California, and one of the most remarkable things I've noticed about them is the way the leaves fold up into cup-like circles that retain moisture well into mid-morning. Once I was hiking without bottled water and was able to collect 1/4 cup of dew drops from the vetch. The flowers were gorgeous, just like those pictured here: Purple Vetch.
We had several bags of dried soup beans around, and reading about the vetch, and particularly its butterfly-shaped flowers made me decide to sprout several different varieties of pulse:
In the center are fast-growing Anasazi beans and clockwise around the circle are mung beans in the nine o'clock position, then Adzukis, lentils, pintos, and finally kidney beans. PLEASE NOTE that although I show these in sprouters, certain bean sprouts are NOT advised to be eaten raw. The kidney beans, for example, will produce common snap bean pods which are delicious and nutritious when eaten at a tender young stage, but the adult beans must be thoroughly cooked to avoid toxicity.
Anasazi Beans
Vining (pole type) take 55 to 60 days to flower and produce green beans, bush type sooner. Bush grow up to 2 ft high and do not require staking.
Comparison of Indoors vs Outdoors Lettuce
Here is proof that the Aerogarden gives plants a headstart.
Repurposed Shower Doors
A couple of 40" x 40" raised planter kits were on sale cheap at a local store, but I wanted 3 more things that their design did not offer:
1) More height
2) Toe room underneath the planter
3) Ledge to lay tools down, etc.
So here is what I came up with:
Those are 12" square brick "pavers" with 4 standard bricks as spacers. This brings the height up to 28" and I inset the pavers, so that I can stand right next to the planter without stubbing my toes. The glass ledge is made from two tempered glass shower doors that my good neighbor was going haul away as trash after remodeling a bathroom. I took the frames off, expecting sharp edges on the glass that would have to be sanded down, but this glass was nice and smooth on all sides. This gives me 5" of ledge spare all the way around.
More photos coming after I've gotten to the store for more potting soil and put some plants in. Seedlings started indoors in my AeroGardens for this project and about ready to plant include Swiss Chard, Beets, Romaine lettuce, Fennugreek, Basil and Black Beans. I bought a few flowering plants to provide color and fill some space until my crops start to fill out.
I think this looks great and will work well and the best part is the cost of building it came in under $100. That does not include the potting mix, which will be $30 or $40. But there is room in my postage stamp sized backyard for a small composting bin, so the potting mix should be a one-time expense.
Another Berkeley Botanical Garden
When traveling one of the things I love most is visiting botanical gardens. Recently, I remembered that having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area 40 odd years, I somehow managed never to have visited the wonderful garden in Tilden Park atop the Berkeley hills.
It has charming paths and bridges and stepping stones going up and down and around the attractions which include a tropical rain forest, among other habitats.
I think I could spend a whole week in Tilden and not be bored. On the way up you might want to stop and see the Berkeley Rose garden as well. Of course, the flowers there are most prolific in May, but I took this photo in August.
