Trying to Connect the Dinner Plate to Climate Change - New York Times

Trying to Connect the Dinner Plate to Climate Change - New York Times: "The biggest animal rights groups do not always overlap in their missions, but now they have coalesced around a message that eating meat is worse for the environment than driving. They and smaller groups have started advertising campaigns that try to equate vegetarianism with curbing greenhouse gases.

Some backlash against this position is inevitable, the groups acknowledge, but they do have scientific ammunition. In late November, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization issued a report stating that the livestock business generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined.

When that report came out, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other groups expected their environmental counterparts to immediately hop on the “Go Veggie!” bandwagon, but that did not happen. “Environmentalists are still pointing their fingers at Hummers and S.U.V.’s when they should be pointing at the dinner plate,” said Matt A. Prescott, manager of vegan campaigns for PETA."

Chapin Bucket Irrigation

A cool low tech irrigation system.

Giant Swallowtail Butterfly

These Giant Swallowtails are so large I sometimes think they must be birds. They're finicky insects, and easily spooked -- thus difficult to photograph, as evidenced by my weak pictures.

Late-summer is far and away the best time for butterflies in Central Florida: My garden is full of Giant Sulfurs (drawn by a cassia), Zebra Longwings, a few Monarchs, and lots of Swallowtails of different sorts. Mid-mornings I usually have a dozen or more flitting about.

This one was drawn to the Russelia (Russelia rotundifolia) I got from Biosphere Nursery last summer. I really dislike the deeply-cut Russelia most people grow (Firecracker Plant, Coral Plant), but I like this species well enough. It blooms late in the season, and last year continued to bloom until January. I should try to start some cuttings...

An update: This Russelia has really started to bloom, and I've never seen a plant that attracts more butterflies. This morning it had three Zebra Longwings, a Monarch, a Swallowtail of some sort (I think a Black Swallowtail, but I didn't get a good look). And a few Sulfurs, who were there I think for the Cassia. They were all there at the same time. Fighting over a sip from the Russelia.

Local U-Pick farms..

A list of East-Central Florida You-Pick farms.

Cucumbers, tomatoes & figs

More typical late-August weather has returned to our area -- hot and humid with rain promised this afternoon. (Cross my fingers...)

I spent the morning sweating out in the garden, continuing my cleanup, getting ready for the transition to fall. I trimmed back some roses, weeded, mulched some beds. My glads are finally starting to bloom. I've been patient with the snapdragons that I planted back in December. They bloomed wonderfully all spring. Usually I pull them out and replace them with something that can take the heat and wet conditions. Since I was gone for so much of the summer, though, I decided to see whether they would make it through the summer. They did, it seems, but it wasn't pretty. They never quite stopped blooming all summer, but the display was weak. I hope they put on a display again this fall, and maybe even again in the spring.

I transplanted some cucumbers ('Bush Crop' (55 days) and 'Miniature White' (49 days), both from Pinetree) and some tomatoes ('Black Plum' and 'Jetsetter'). I continue to play around with my micro-sprinkler system. By next spring, I hope to have the whole garden under this highly-efficient, low-tech system.

My old neighbor, who has a huge fig tree planted between her sidewalk and the street, let me pick a bag of figs this afternoon. My wife makes a fabulous fig tart... My own fig has put on a burst of growth this month, and has set a bunch of figs which may or may not ripen in time to pick before the end of summer...

An update: It poured the day after I planted the tomatoes. More than an inch. Washed the little seedlings away. Oh, well, that's why you always plant more than you need.

A garden update in pictures...

'Our Lady of Guadalupe'. I understand why it was the favorite rose in a survey of Central FLA rosarians... Amazing blooms, almost hybrid-tea in form, but on a vigorous and well-shaped bush. And apparently pretty disease-resistance, since I don't see a spot of black-spot.

First day back to school...

My garden, ready for fall planting.

New micro-spray sprinkler in action... love it!

Silver Queen Corn growing amongst some Mississippi Silver Crowder peas.

Veg Garden Cleanup

I spent the morning ripping out virtually everything from my veg garden, excepting some peppers, crowder peas, one cherry tomato, an eggplant ('Little Fingers'), a patch of okra, and my sweet potatoes...

Well, I know that sounds like a lot is left, but the garden looks empty. (I'll try to remember to post a picture of it tomorrow.) I laid down about one-hundred pounds of well-aged compost from my bins, a thick layer of newspaper of that compost, and then a thick layer of pine needles (the needles are more aesthetic than functional). In a patch of crowders that I started a few weeks ago, I transplanted the corn I started in jiffy-cups a couple of weeks ago. (Kind of an abbreviated version of the 'three sisters' approach to growing corn.) Next week, I'll plant out the cukes and tomatoes.

It's very dry here, but I've been irrigating and the growing conditions are otherwise perfect. My new 'Lady of Guadalupe' roses are just amazing -- the form of hybrid-teas on a floribunda bush. The cuttings I started last month are coming along well, too. Everything but the agastache rooted.

Gardens in Russia

These photos were taken while I was on a business trip to Russia in late-August 2007. The market pictures were taken at the Vykhino Market, located outside Vykhino metro station. It's widely considered the best and cheapest market in Moscow. Many fruits, veg, meat and preserves make it up from the south of Russia and the Caucasus this time of year, belying the notion that all food in Moscow is drab old meat and taters. The prices in a market like this, though expensive for many Muscovites, are much lower than you'll find in the many Western-style supermarkets that have sprung up in Moscow and other European-Russian large cities over the past decade.

The country pictures were taken in a tiny village called Yasnaya Polyana, in the Tula region, about 200 kilometers (120 miles) due south of Moscow. Yasnaya Polyana is Leo Tolstoy's ancestral estate, and is also the name of the village that sits alongside his estate. (Such was the common practice in pre-Bolshevik Russia -- most villages in Russia are named after the nearest estate.)

For a full-screen slide show, click here.

Sweet potatoes...

Note to self: I planted sweet potato slips on May 7, which means I need to harvest sometime after September 7. That gives me six weeks to solarize my bed, if I decide it's necessary, before the fall crop goes in.

Fall 2007 tomatoes...

I started, in paper cups with plastic cup liners, the following tomatoes for my fall crop:

• Nepal

(OP) 80 days
A high quality, intensely flavored, meaty, deep red 12-ounce beefsteak. This Himalayan heirloom produces well even under cool growing conditions. Indeterminate vines.

• Black Plum

(OP) 70 days
Tall indeterminate vines produce sweet, deep mahogany morsels perfect for backyard grazing. No other tomato quite like it--we are pleased to offer this rare and very special variety.

• Jetsetter

64 days. Lycopersicon esculentum. (F1) Plant produces good yields of very flavorful 8 oz tomatoes. Tomatoes turn red when mature and have a very rich tomato taste. This variety matures very early offering those in the South a great early harvest. Excellent in salads or sandwiches. Disease Resistant: VFFNTA. Indeterminate.

These varietals were recommended on GardenWeb. The 'Nepal' and 'Black Plum' seeds are from Swallowtail, the Jetsetter I got off of eBay.

I have also started various Torenia from seed (they germinated very quickly -- maybe five days, though the seed packet warns of slow germination) & a bunch of sunflowers for my daughter's flower garden.

Florida Counties Try to Contain Phosphate Mines - New York Times

Your corrupt, corporatist and inept federal government, looking out for the best interests of the highest bidder. If this kind of thing doesn't rile you, then WAKE UP.

Florida Counties Try to Contain Phosphate Mines - New York Times: "Two large companies, Mosaic Fertilizer and CF Industry Holdings, operate most of the open pit phosphate mines in Hardee and Polk Counties... The mines pump on average more than 100,000 gallons of water a minute, according to the Florida Institute of Phosphate Research, an industry-financed organization.

The Environmental Protection Department regulates the mines. The counties say that state officials have granted too many mine permits and that many permits do not meet federal standards.

Mining companies have been allowed to destroy streams and wetlands, according to the counties, and areas they have reclaimed remain damaged and scarred.

“We found out through consultants that none of the permits complied with the environmental regulations on the books,” the natural resources planner for Charlotte County, Bill Byle, said. “We thought all these agencies were protecting us.”

A study by the Environmental Protection Department found that the forestland in the Peace River Basin had declined, to 17 percent from 60 percent in 1940. Wetlands declined to 16 percent from 25 percent

Asexual propagation...

In addition to starting a bunch of seeds for my fall flower & veg beds, I'm propagating a lot of plant cuttings: pentas, agastache, basils of all sorts, roses, ice plants (sunroses), torenia, Okinawan spinach, firespike, scented geraniums, zinnias... With high humidity, warm temperatures, and daily showers, starting plants this time of the year is very easy here in FLA. My torenia, for instance, rooted in three days.

Park Seeds, Swallowtail orders

From Park Seeds:

• Corn Silver Princess Hybrid
• Chrysanthemum Gold Sticks Hybrid
• Coreopsis tinctoria
• Pepper Ancho
• Green Onion Parade

And from Swallowtail:

• TOMATOES, HEIRLOOM--NEPAL
• TOMATOES, HEIRLOOM--BLACK PLUM
• EPAZOTE

Tropical Corn

I'm going to give a shot at growing a small patch (sixteen square feet) of sweet corn this fall, sowing sometime in August, hopefully harvesting some ears for Thanksgiving. After a lot of searching, I chose Silver Princess Hybrid, since it offers very early harvest, good disease resistance, and sturdy plants. I poked around the 'net for advice on growing corn in a sub-tropical climate (which ours is, kind of...) and came across this great picture of tropical corn in Peru from Breeding Field Crops.

Corn used to be grown extensively here in Central Florida, but that period ended with the Lake Apopka cleanup effort, which involved buying out hundreds of acres of field, many devoted to corn. The phosphorous and nitrogen run-off from these farms, combined with degraded wetlands caused by wanton development, destroyed the ecosystem supporting Lake Apopka,. When I moved here at the end of the 1990s, wading birds were (no exaggeration) falling dead from the sky and Apopka's shores were lined with dead bass...

There is at least one farm -- Scott's -- around Zellwood, FLA, which grows significant crops of corn, and, even though I wince at the ecological harm and the amount of pesticides and fungicides, I buy some every fall and again at the end of spring. Zellwood grows seriously good corn, for sale from the backs of pickups on byways at fifty-cents an ear. One of our family fall/spring traditions is to hold a shrimp boil made of Zellwood corn, potatoes and freshly-caught shrimp. We also find the time to visit the Zellwood Corn Maze in October to buy pumpkins and corn.

Walk Score - How walkable is your house?

Walk Score - How walkable is your house?:

"Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc."

An interesting site. We're in "downtown" DeLand, right across from Stetson University. We scored 60 out of 100 -- neither here nor there. Many of the entries are inaccurate (like listing a Japanese restaurant as a clothing store...), but all tools have their inadequacies, and results are only as good as data.

Subjectively, I'd rate our neighborhood as quite walkable, particularly for Florida, or generally the southeast. Many students here do without cars, and I've had short-term colleagues live here without a car.

What's your score, Floridians?

FPL Group, Boca start-up join in ethanol fuel project -- South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

FPL Group, Boca start-up join in ethanol fuel project -- South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com: "A tiny Boca Raton start-up got a big boost on Thursday from FPL Group, which will partner with Citrus Energy LLC to make ethanol from discarded orange peels.

The two firms will build a first-of-its-kind plant designed to produce 4 million gallons of ethanol a year to be blended with gasoline for vehicle fuel.

'It's great news,' said David Stewart, a former computer engineer who founded Citrus Energy last year. He said that the state now has very little ethanol in its gas. 'This would be a start in Florida.'"

Yellow Sunrose

Aptenia cordifolia. This yellow one has proved to be a very good, dense, low groundcover for full sun. I got it at the DeLand "Plante Fair" for a buck. It roots extremely easily. I have a pink and a red, but the flowers are much smaller and the plant is generally not nearly as vigorous as this yellow one.

Tuscan Sun Rose

I got a bunch of these roses from Merrygro. Very pretty, apricot color, almost metallic, that (in the summer in FLA, anyway) fades to a pale pink. I have it in a central bed, near a bunch of the very pretty "Our Lady of Guadalupe."

Froggy Heaven... or Froggy Doom?

A frog house that also serves as a froggy death motel...

The end of (full sized) tomatoes...

I couldn't deal with the stinkbug invasion, and decided to call it quits with my two remaining full-sized tomatoes. I'd planted these using the modified post--hole method, and they've been providing us with plenty of tomatoes since March. Absolutely no signs of RKN.

I plan to start tomatoes the middle of next month, for transplant into the garden the middle of September. For my fall crop, I'm going to try: Black Plum, Jetsetter, and maybe Nepal. All recommendations from the Florida Forum on GardenWeb.