My friend Blogger Dave who religiously manages the content of my blog has been after me to let you all know what I do every day on The Urban Farm.  Well I work at YourGuideToGreen.com full time and only get small snippets of time to actually play in the yard.  Most of my yard time these days revolves around picking some wild growing veggis in my yard and feeding the chickens.  That said as I come across interesting tasks I will share them.  woohoo.

So my problem today is that I have an uber abundance of broccoli.  A few months ago my girlfriend Parri said I LOVE broccoli - well that was all I needed and I went overboard in my ‘Greg” fashion and planted, and planted, and planted.  So now we are reaping the rewards AND we can’t eat it fast enough.

So yesterday I did a google search and found the steps to preserving my bodacious broccoli bounty.  It is quite easy.  

1.  Harvest always the fun part.  I cut the broccoli a fair bit down the stem as the stem is great to eat, but I leave the plant in the ground as it will produce more florets.

2.  As my garden is organic we have a few bugs and I really don’t want to find them on my plate.  So search the florets for any freeloaders.  One site suggested that the broccoli be soaked in a salt brine.

3.  Cut it into bite size pieces.

4.  Lightly steam it.  Suggested 3 to 5 minutes - apparently it helps it last longer in the freezer.

5.  Then I spread the chopped broccoli on a cookie sheet and froze it.  The cookie sheet allows the florets to be frozen individually and not in clumps.  THIS lets me freeze them in gallon olive jars that I have collected from the local pizza joint so I don’t have to freeze them in plastic.

6.  Then when I am ready to eat - I pour just the right amount of broccoli into the steamer.

In the past I have also used this freezing process quite successfully with peaches.

I’ll keep you posted on the taste.

Farmer Greg

Technorati Tags: broccoli, David Spade, Preserving food, winter crops

Actually, Blogger Dave probably won’t be doing much of the farming. The green thumb in the family belongs to Blogger Dave’s Wife, Merry Ann.

The landscapers are done. Part of their work was to create two raised beds for vegetables. (Yes, the raised beds were necessary. Six inches below ground level it’s like concrete.) The black tubing you see is T-Tape and it’s connected to the automatic irrigation system. It’s a couple of months late, but we are going to try:

Beets
Carrots
Leeks
Peas
Swiss Chard
Romaine Lettuce

One of the blogs I read every week is Rachel’s Tiny Farm and this week she planted new six trees.

“We now have 27 or 28 different varieties of fruit trees for a total of around 32 trees on our 1/5 acre lot.”, she said.

By using preservation techniques like canning and freezing, such an orchard should keep you supplied with fruit year-round. Add a small vegetable garden, and you can eat far healthier, far better, for far less money. Think about fresh fruit smoothies for breakfast every morning!

OK, I admit it: My childhood memories of eating home-grown Kale are not that pleasant. Perhaps it was the way my mother cooked it, I don’t know.

I found an article on the Off-Grid Blog that causes me to have second thoughts though:

Click Here to read it

Farm Fountain is a system for growing edible and ornamental fish and plants in a constructed, indoor ecosystem. Based on the concept of aquaponics, this hanging garden fountain uses a simple pond pump, along with gravity to flow the nutrients from fish waste through the plant roots. The plants and bacteria in the system serve to cleanse and purify the water for the fish.

This project is an experiment in local, sustainable agriculture and recycling. It utilizes 2-liter plastic soda bottles as planters and continuously recycles the water in the system to create a symbiotic relationship between edible plants, fish and humans.

Click Here to read more

Courtesy of addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yourguidetogreen.com%2FTheUrbanFarm%2F2008%2F09%2F23%2Ffarm-fountain%2F'; addthis_title = 'Farm+Fountain'; addthis_pub = '';

An interesting article about mushroom compost in the Daily Herald expounded upon the benefits of mushroom compost, but is failed to tell the whole story.

What is mushroom compost?

No, it’s not compost made from mushrooms. It is the specially-prepared medium in which mushrooms - typically those white button mushrooms you see in the supermarket - are grown.

It starts with a mixture of straw, manure, gypsum, peat moss, and almost any organic material. The bacterial activity causes the material to heat up - just as with normal compost - to about 160 degrees, killing any weed seeds or pathogens that might have been present.

Now, unlike your home garden pile, they don’t let the compost sit and age at this point. They take the compost, load it into planting beds and then they steam pasteurize at about 140F. This pasteurization is vital to mushroom growing process because it kills any surface disease-causing organisms and pests. The downside however is that it also kills off all those wonderful micro-organisms that are so important to your garden.

Mushroom compost is normally used to grow three crops of mushrooms and is then considered ‘used up’ by the mushroom-grower.

It is typically steam-pasteurized once again and then sold off to nurseries, landscape supply firms and general contractors

Mushroom Compost Is Not Like Regular Compost

Adding microbiology to your soil is one of the primary advantages to compost, and that microbiology is vital to the disease prevention and and supplying nutrients to your plants. Spent mushroom compost simply does not provide these benefits.

Even though the mushroom compost does not come with the biology present, it is still provides a good substrate and food source for that biology. One tactic is to let it sit and ‘age’ for a season before using it. Other ways are to mix in a batch of compost tea made from regular compost, or simply mixing the mushroom compost with regular soil.

Here are some additional links about mushroom compost:

http://extension.oregonstate.edu/news/story.php?S_No=28&storyType=garde

http://squtch.quiet-like-a-panther.org/story/mushroom_compost-34

http://www.taunton.com/finegardening/how-to/qa/mushroom-compost.aspx