The Mystery of the Zero-Irrigation Squash

squash chairs

We can’t sit down until we eat our squash.

You guys might remember that last year our entire back yard was swamped with squash vines, as we were growing two types of large squash: Tromboncino and “Long of Naples”.  They were both tasty as juveniles, but our long wait for them to ripen was disappointing. Both were rather bland. Bland yet remarkably plenteous. We tried many things to make this stuff useful and/or tasting: pies, pickles, soups, but in the end we felt like we were always trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Though we had almost no rain this year, a couple of volunteer squash vines popped up out of the mulch near our raised beds, and we let them grow, because we wanted to eat the baby squash as we would zucchini–it’s good that way. We also didn’t think the vines would last very long without water. Well, they did. We couldn’t keep up with the baby squash (they’re so good at hiding) and ended up with a harvest of big, bland squash.

Again.

(The squash is a hybrid, by the way. They look like Tromboncino, but are bigger than the Tromboncinos we had last year. Squash cross-breed like crazy. Volunteers are rarely like their parents.)

I bring this up mostly because I am amazed how well this squash did without irrigation. And to be clear, that means they’ve had no water for months. The chairs in the picture above are holding over 100 lbs (45+ kilos) of food grown with zero water inputs! To top that, this was one of the healthiest squash plants we’ve ever “grown” or rather allowed to grow. How did that work? And more importantly, how can we make it happen again?

I have three thoughts:

1) Perfect timing. Volunteers know exactly when to come up. They’re rarely wrong. We humans schedule planting by when we finally buy our seeds and find time to trundle out into the garden. It’s not good enough. Masanobu Fukuoka had a good thought when he went out and just tossed seed all over the place and waited to see what grew. I really need to figure out how to work that man’s ideas into our garden. In times of stress and hard conditions, it seems best to turn to Nature as a teacher.

2) Mulch/compost basins may work well for some types of plants, and do a good job of retaining water. The area where the squash grew is the site of a huge hole which Erik dug out to harvest clay to make our oven. That pit has been filled with compost and the remains of last year’s straw bale beds, and topped with lots of mulch. The squash seems to really like this compost-y growing medium. We’ve not had many volunteers of other types, though, so I don’t think the appeal is universal. However, it may lead to hints of how to grow squash crops here successfully with little water.

3) Cheating. I do wonder if Mr. Squash stretched his roots under the nearest raised bed (about 2 feet/.5 meter away) and siphoned off some of the water. Certainly if I’d planted a seedling that far from the bed, and told it “Okay, you’re on your own. Just get what you need from that bed over yonder” that plant would never have made it. But volunteers are canny. And it may come down to timing. The squash might have used what little rain we had as a jump start, and got its roots over into the wet zone before the real heat set in.

Have you ever been amazed by a volunteer’s hardiness? Anyone from a dry place have any favorite squash/melon growing strategies?

Shoemaking workshop in Los Angeles, Oct. 16-19

turnshoes

The kid’s shoe is made of salmon skin.

If you’re a loon like I am, and want to make your own shoes, I have great news for you. This October, my friend Randy Fritz is coming down from Santa Barbara to teach a small 4 day class here in LA from Thursday 10/16 to Sunday 10/19  on how to make turnshoes, a medieval shoe style so called because it is stitched wrong side out and then turned to hide the seams.

As far as I know, no one else is teaching this kind of class in the greater LA area. This is deep North Coast hippie technology, imported guerrilla style to the land of tottering platform heels.

The shoes are made from custom patterns modeled on your own feet, so the shoe will fit you like no other. It’s a pricey class-but keep in mind how many hours of instruction you’re getting–and you’ll walk away with a pair of custom shoes and the know-how to make more.  In the end, it’s actually a great deal.

I’ll be there, and there’s only room for 4 more people. So save the date and register now! Email Randy at [email protected]

Here’s the official description:

You are about to embark on a journey back in time where everyone’s shoes were custom made because they made them for themselves.  We will start by making a 3D pattern of our foot and transferring it to the leather you select. Once the upper and sole are attached we move onto turning and hammering, closure and finishing and finally gooping the soles. You will get experience with patterning, cutting, skiving and various stitching methods you can transfer to future leather projects and of course, you will be leaving with a pair of handmade shoes. 

Class begins at 9 am Thursday, October 16 and runs till Sunday, October 19. The location is the Silver Lake area. We’ll end at roughly 5pm with a 1 hour-ish lunch break each day, and we’ll celebrate our shoes with a pizza party on the last day!

All of the tools and materials are included in the price but if you have a favorite pair of fingerless gloves, leather working scissors or an awl please feel free to bring them along.

The cost of the class is $325.00, half of which is due when you register. I’m really looking forward spending time together and I suggest  you all get a good nights rest before class begins… standing around the table using what will most likely be  “new to you” tools and focusing very intently on your work can be really exhausting!

For more information, and to reserve your space, please email Randy directly:  [email protected]  Please don’t try to register via the comments! Email Randy directly to reserve your space.
I don’t know how many people will be interested in this class, but if you know in your heart that you really want to do it, be safe and register right away. If there’s lots of interest, Randy might come back to teach a second class.

Turnshoes2

Movie recommendation: DamNation


This weekend, Erik and I went to a screening and discussion of DamNation, hosted at the Natural History Museum. DamNation is beautiful environmental documentary about the history and impact of dams on our watersheds, and the growing movement to decommission “deadbeat dams.”

I don’t know if it was the PMS, but I was teary-eyed through much of it, moved by the beauty of the waters, the struggles of the salmon, and the passion of the people who love the fish and their rivers. Days later, I keep thinking particularly of one man who for the last twelve years (if I recall correctly) has lived in a camper six months out of the year to guard a special resting place for trout on their migration. He has Parkinson’s disease, and knows he will not be able to carry on his mission as long as he had hoped, but has faith he’ll find someone to take his place when the time comes.

I also learned a lot about dams–starting with the simple fact of how many of them we have. Holy cow! Like “No Child Left Behind”, it seems we had a “No River Left Undammed” policy for quite a few years. I also never understood how fish hatcheries work, but I now see them as a well-intentioned but misguided attempt to manage nature.

At any rate, Erik and I both give it the thumbs up. According to the producer who spoke at the screening, DamNation is available for sale as a DVD and Blue Ray. It’s also in the iTunes store, and the cable On Demand services, and will be on Netflix within a couple of weeks. It has been doing the festival circuit in the U.S., and will be doing more tours abroad. Finally, they also have a program to help community groups host a screening.

Quick Tip: DIY Decaf Tea

cat and tea cup

EDITED  8/6/2014

It appears we have been taken in by a popular Internet myth.  A reader comment  (Thanks, Laura!) brought alerted me to an excellent post on tea myths and includes findings from (apparently) the only two studies to every test this methodology of reducing caffeine levels in tea.  These show that the reduction from a short steeping would be more in the 9-20% range, as opposed to 80%. To achieve 80% the steep would have to be over 5 minutes. It’s an interesting article, worth a read–it also addresses the complex subject of how much caffeine black and green teas actually have.

I’m not sure if this is common knowledge or not– my acupuncturist told me about it years ago–but you can decaffeinate your own tea.

As someone who loves (loves loves) hot black milky tea, even in summer, but who no longer gets along well with caffeine, this is a very good thing. Commercially decaffeinated tea is indistinguishable from dishwater. The DIY version doesn’t taste as good as “real tea”–the undiluted kind– but it’s better than the store bought stuff.

An additional advantage is that you don’t have to stock two types of tea–one type becomes two, saving shelf space. Note that this works best with loose leaf tea, but can be used with bagged tea, too.

All you have to do is brew your tea as you normally would, but start counting as soon as you pour the hot water. After at least 30 seconds but no more than 1 minute you pour off all of what has brewed so far. And yes, that’s all the good stuff. But by doing so, you are pouring off about 80% of the caffeine. It’s sad, but being all headachey and jittery is sad too, so I do it. Then you top off the tea leaves with fresh hot water and start the brew again. This one you drink.

Commercially decaf tea is lower in caffeine than this homebrew–just to be clear.  According to the Mayo Clinic, one cup of commercial decaf black tea can contain anywhere from 0 to 12 mg of caffeine. A regular cup of black tea ranges from 14 to 70 mg.  With this DIY process, a 70 mg cup would be reduced to 14 mg. A cup of regular green tea ranges from 25 to 45 mg, and can be decaffeinated by this method as well.