Homemade Seedling Pots, Local Veg. Oils, & Other Homestead Updates
I just made twenty small plant pots out of old copies of the Park Slope Food Coop newsletter. They’re for the Victory Garden class I’m teaching tomorrow at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, but I’m making a few for myself, too. You can watch a short video about how to make them here. Here are some dill seedlings in one of the pots.
Another reused/recycled pot comes from the tomato can that came to me as a container for Meg‘s backyard eggs (she nestled them in straw inside the can). I punched out some drainage holes on the bottom, and now it’s holding cilantro.
These are some tomato seedlings growing in an old local milk carton. I cut off one side and made drainage holes on the opposite side. The rubber bands keep the center from bowing away from the potting mix.
Besides starting seeds and potting up seedlings, today I went to a tasting of oils made from locally grown squash seeds. In my new book, I bemoan the lack of local vegetable oils. If I’d known about these by Stony Brook Oils I would have mentioned them for sure. They had two oils at the tasting, one made from butternut squash seeds, and the other from delicata squash seeds. Both are absolutely delicious! Not primarily cooking oils (I’m keeping my olive oil exemption), but finishing oils with a buttery taste a little like a mild toasted sesame or walnut oil.
Last but not least, I am out of local garlic and well into the stash of lacto-fermented garlic that I put up last summer during the garlic harvest. To make it, peel and slice garlic cloves in half. Cover them with a brine of 2 teaspoons salt per pint of water and leave at room temperature for 2-3 days. Store in the refrigerator until you run out of the local garlic from last year’s harvest.
There’s also plenty of field garlic around, but although I’ve been using the leaves like chives, the tiny bulbs are a pain to peel. I’ll stick with my lacto-fermented garlic until the first green garlic shows up at the farmers’ markets next month.
Some food-related classes I’m teaching in April that you might be interested in:
April 17th Urban Foraging
April 25th Edible Weeds
April 25th The Thrifty Urban Locavore
Get Signed Copies of Leda’s Books! (credit cards okay via Paypal):
The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget
and
Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes
I’ll give you some garlic next week; I still have plenty from CSA. Guess I’m not such a heavy user.
Lovely and thanks!
Just purchased your book this past weekend. This is a great resource, but I wondered, don’t farmers grow beans in New York? Maybe it’s farther north Seattle but since a number of farms grow beans and some grow grains, it’s entirely possible to be a vegetarian even a vegan and a locavore and much more sustainable for the planet.
Glad you enjoyed the book! It is entirely possible to be a vegetarian locavore in NYC right now, and I think eventually vegan will become easier, too. But right now only one farm is offering dry beans, and no-one is doing nuts or seeds with the exception of toasted squash seed oil (delicious but too intense-think toasted sesame oil-and expensive to use as an everyday cooking oil). The climate here is good for beans, nuts, and seeds, so hopefully more farms will start offering them in the future.