Archives for November 2010 | This Organic Process

Your Christmas Lights Are Hurting Your Trees [Gardening]

November 22, 2010 | 4 Comments | by Ben Czajkowski | Gardening

Christmas Lights On trees could be causing damage

It’s that time of year again: the time for massive light displays that sound like cash registers ringing to electric companies. That’s right; it’s getting to be the Christmas season (even though retailers would have you think it starts in September).

Listening to always agitated Mike McGrath on the You Bet Your Garden podcast, he said something interesting on the episode from November 14 (Indoor Citrus). It’s stuck with me over the last several hours, and the more I thought about it, the more it makes sense, especially this time of year:

Christmas lights can, potentially, awaken outdoor, dormant trees when the lights are strung around them.

A lady called in to ask about whether or not she was doing too much damage to her hydrangea trees. During the time that her phone call lasted, she mentioned that she trimmed her tree after removing the Christmas lights. This prompted McGrath to comment that having the lights on there for 6-8 weeks, for potentially 10 hours a night; this could easily bring the trees to break dormancy.

Trees begin going dormant around 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and during this period, growth is halted and you can prune most trees. However, if you bring that tree out of dormancy, and it starts creating new cells for growth, as soon as the lights are gone or there’s a cold spell that overpowers the warmth of the bulbs, it’s going to start doing damage.

Now, when I say Christmas lights, I am referring to the incandescent bulbs, not the LED ones. It’s the warm of the bulbs that we want to pay particularly close attention to. So, when you run your lights this year, make sure you think about what you’re using and how much you care about your trees.

Centennial IPA

November 20, 2010 | Comments Off | by Matt Hufford | Homebrew, Homebrew Recipes

I made a Centennial IPA today. I kinda made up the recipe to use up stuff that I had on hand.

12 lbs Pilsner malt
2 lbs Vienna malt
0.5 lbs CaraVienne

2 oz Centennial at 60 min
2 oz Centennial at 20 min
2 oz Centennial at 5 min
2 oz Centennial dry hopped

Apple Tart

November 16, 2010 | Comments Off | by Matt Hufford | Cooking

A couple weeks ago, I had some apples that were close to going bad. They were delicious hand picked apples that my mom had picked from an orchid in Michigan. For those who might not be from that far North, the Northern Spy variety is a wonderful cooking apple. It retains its shape much better than a Granny Smith does when cooked. It also has a great balance of flavor that I find wonderful for baked goods. They also taste great to just eat without cooking. If you can get a hold of some, I would highly recommend them.

Now, usually when I get some apples from my mom, I use most of them in apple pie. I had made an apple pie with them, but I also wanted something new to make with them just to keep things interesting.

While perusing the internet for a delicious looking recipe, I found this recipe over at Smitten Kitchen. It looked simple enough, but I tweaked it a bit to match the level of effort I wanted to put in and for my personal tastes. Continue reading “Apple Tart” »

Updated: Fruit flavored beer

November 16, 2010 | Comments Off | by Matt Hufford | Homebrew

Over the weekend, I brewed a beer that I plan to make into a fruit flavored beer.

The recipe so far is as follows:
10 lbs base grain (I used a mix of 2 row, pale ale, and pilsner to use up what I had on hand
3 lbs malted wheat

1 oz Centennial hops at 60 min

Nottingham yeast

In a week, I plan on putting 4-6 pounds of some frozen fruit (probably raspberries or blackberries) in secondary.

I will update this post when I add the fruit to the beer.

Update:

I added 5 pounds of frozen blueberries after primary fermentation. Before adding them, I pasteurized the blueberries at 160F for 10 minutes (or was it 20?). This also helped them to break up a bit. As usual for when I add fruit to beer, I wish I would have added some pectic enzyme as well to better break up the fruit.

Blueberries

The beer turned out very well. For the amount of blueberries I used, I wished that it tasted more like blueberry, but I liked how it turned out. IMO, the taste was perfect, exactly what I was going for.

And The Beer Turned Green, Homebrew Saturday [Homebrewing]

November 14, 2010 | 2 Comments | by Ben Czajkowski | Homebrew

India Cream Ale with Spalt Hops

Beer generally comes in a range of golden-yellow ales to dark-as-night imperial stouts. Occasionally, you run into an Irish red, and on St. Patrick’s Day, you can expect your BMC beers to be dyed a Slimer shade of green.

Well, today isn’t St. Patrick’s Day; nor is it even close. The ending effect wasn’t intentional, but after SEVEN ounces of hops, it was bound to happen. The wort, as it came out of the mash tun, was extremely pale, almost ghost-like in its fashion. For an India Cream ale, both of these were to be expected. I fully think that once the hops have a chance to settle out in conditioning that this batch will be quite clean.

This morning started off at a beautiful 55 degrees in the Miami Valley. “Wait Wait Let Me Guess” was on NPR, and Matt Hufford and I cruised to fill the propane tank and picked up some lunch before really starting out. Today, I brewed a recipe from Radical Brewing: Recipes, Tales and World-Altering Meditations in a Glass by Randy Mosher. (As an aside, if you use this book, please consult its errata. They clearly did not edit this book, to start.) I finally settled on “Hinky Dink India Cream Ale” recipe:

7.5lbs Pilsner malt
2.0lbs Munich malt

0.75lbs corn sugar (I used a little more because I had less than a pound, but greater than three-quarters. No use for a small amount)

1.5oz Spalt @ 60 minutes
2oz Spalt @ 30 minutes
3oz Spalt @ 5 minutes

For yeast, I settled on a strand of Octoberfest Lager Yeast. My basement stays at a constant 60-66 degrees, so leaving this one in the fermentor for three weeks is a must. Maybe four, if I’m lazy.

Now, this was my first time using Spalt hops, a traditional German noble. These little green pellets of joy come from a place called Spalt, a region south of Nuremberg, and it is a traditional hop that is known as a landrace variety. Spalt is a perfect lager-style hops; it was extremely aromatic. It had moments where it smelled almost like a pine forest, to me.

As you could see in the picture above, after the sixth and seventh ounces of hops at the five minute mark, it gave the beer a nice green tinge. When I poured the wort into the primary fermentor, the soon-to-be potent potable was sludgy. I need to think of a good way to bottle this batch without clogging up my bottling wand.

Hand Made Udon

November 7, 2010 | Comments Off | by Matt Hufford | Cooking

I decided to make my first hand made noodle. Since Ben Czajkowski and I love udon (and I had seen a few recipes for it that seemed pretty easy), the noodle of choice for this would be: UDON!

For those not in the know, udon is a Japanese noodle that is thick and chewy. It is typically served in dashi (fish and seaweed stock) with a variety of toppings (only certain combinations of toppings are traditional).

Not having made udon by hand before, I kinda felt my way through the noodle making process by reading through a few blogs and watching a couple of videos on the subject. I have made udon from pre-made noodles bought from a store, so the broth and toppings were really easy for me. The recipe I ended up using was taken from here.

To start, weigh out your flour, water, and salt on a kitchen scale.

Kitchen scale: never use flour without one.

Continue reading “Hand Made Udon” »

Cherry Bombed [Gardening]

November 4, 2010 | 1 Comments | by Ben Czajkowski | Gardening

Cherry (Bomb) Peppers

Pictured above are what I believe are cherry peppers, marketed as cherry bomb peppers, when I bought them. Not a whole lot of difference in the name, but they really do pack a solid punch in your mouth. So I tend to lean toward the latter when referring to them.

This plant turned out to be an impulse buy, on my part. Actually @mhufford may have been the one that coughed up the cash for it when we were at a farmer’s market in beautiful Toledo, OH, back at the beginning of the summer. I was absolutely taken by this cherry pepper plant when I first picked it up. At that point, my adventure into peppers this year had just been a bust. This quickly turned it around, for the summer.

Sadly, though, it looks as though my cherry pepper plant is stricken with a crippling disease. I noticed this the other day when I went to fill its sub-irrigated chamber and it quickly overflowed. I was a little taken aback by this, considering that I hadn’t watered the plant in quite some time. The soil was still moist to the touch. I touched the leaves, and they felt brittle. Much the same way when you touch a trees leaves that are red/gold and quickly turning brown: you can just feel that it’s game over. At first, I just attributed this to the change in weather, with it being Fall and all.

After some Googling, I came upon this article that has lead me to believe that my cherry peppers are infected by Phytophthora. Just sounds disgusting. Wikipedia does very little to make me feel better about it:

Phytophthora: from Greek phytón, “plant” and phthorá, “destruction”; “the plant-destroyer”

This is a plant-damaging Oomycete (water mold) that is capable of causing enormous economic losses on crops worldwide, as well as environmental damage in natural ecosystems. Or just an unhappy container gardener. Phytophthora has, apparently, become a problem in Ohio, which is where these plants are located.

So, what can I do for it? Exploratory surgery, but the prognosis is bleak at this point. Over the weekend, I am going to remove the plant from its pot, discard the soil, and examine the roots. If the roots of the cherry pepper plant appear to be in good condition (doubtful), meaning that they are mostly white or creme-colored, I will trim anything that appears to be decayed. Next comes some bleach and water, with a ration of one part bleach and nine parts water. Soak that bad boy for a bit. Then let it dry and replant it in fresh soil.

If this plant doesn’t make it, I’m not extremely worried. I harvested some seeds from it from before it was infected. I’ll gladly start some in late January.

The Spider Mites All in Tune, The Evening of the Moon [Gardening]

November 1, 2010 | Comments Off | by Ben Czajkowski | Gardening

Spider Mites On My Cherry Tomatoes

Rage! Spider mites have infested my cherry tomatoes! To arms! To arms!

How to handle this: isolate the offending plants and keep them humid! Spritz them with water 2-3 times a day until the problem resolves itself.

Personally, I like the 1:1 or the 1:2 rubbing alcohol to water mixture for killing these little guys. Like anything with a decent amount of alcohol, it kills and does it quickly. The great thing about the rubbing alcohol part is that it evaporates quickly, doing very little to no damage to the plant. Rubbing alcohol is cheap, too. Or you could just turn to Korski vodka. It’s about the same thing.

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