A Free Healthy Meal Seven Days a Week for Children and Youth in Albuquerque

12:33 PM in a, albuquerque, and, Aqua, children, days, for, free, healthy, in, meal, seven, week, youth

Are you between the ages of 3 to 18 or have a child who is in that age range? If so, you can receive a free healthy meal at the Presbyterian Hospital cafeteria between 1:00 and 7:00 p.m., seven days a week.

The cafeteria is located on level 5-2, north side of the hospital, located at 1100 Central Ave. SE (map)

No identification is necessary, and any child or youth of 3-18 years of age qualifies.

You will need to order from a cashier and sign a log showing that you received a meal. The meal must be eaten at the hospital. A voucher is not necessary. 

The program is sponsored by Presbyterian Community Health.

Read more

Small Tomatoes with Large Taste and Free Seed Offer

2:44 PM in and, Aqua, free, large, offer, seed, small, taste, tomatoes, with

I just love small tomatoes!  They are perfect for sneaking a taste when working out in the gardens.  You can be hot and sweaty but that burst of juice in your mouth and the combination of sweet and acid on your tongue can be mighty refreshing.  Even when it comes in a very small package.

I read one time that there are about 10,000 varieties of tomatoes.  They fall into two categories:  determinate and indeterminate.  The determinate plants are a bush variety and grow until they set fruit (yes a tomato is a botanical fruit) on the terminal bud.  Then all fruit ripens over a 1 to 2 week period.

I like to grow indeterminate tomatoes.  For most of the country, this means that they will grow until killed by frost.  Since I live where we never have frost, we plant in the fall and our tomatoes grow until they are killed by the heat and moisture from our rainy season (sometime in May).

Most varieties of the smaller tomatoes are of the indeterminate variety.  This means you can enjoy their goodness all season long. 

Right now I am crazy for Yellow Pear and Everglades tomatoes.  Lets face it, who wouldnt be crazy about a tomato that has a waist? 

 

Just look at these little gems from the garden. Scarlett OHara herself would be green with envy of that small yellow waist!  And no corset was needed.  No pear has ever been as adorable as my yellow pear tomatoes.  They originated in Europe in the 1700s and fell out of fashion for a bit but have come back in a big way for such a small tomato.  While considered a "sweet" tomato, I think they are on the acidic side and taste tart.  They are yummy when tossed in salads, as a topping for frittatas, or simply enjoyed with a few leaves of basil, a pinch of salt, and a dash of oil and balsamic vinegar.

The other tomato that I am crazy for this year is the native Everglades tomato.  This is the only tomato that is native to South Florida.  Not only is it indeterminate but it can stand up to the heat and torrential downpours of our rainy season.  I have Everglades tomato plants in an aquaponics flood and drain bed that are almost a year old!  They grow on sprawling vines and produce in clusters of 8 or 9 like a cherry tomato.  I dont think you can kill an Everglades tomato.

If you look at this photo, I set one Everglades tomato on a quarter so you would have perspective on the size of this mighty tasting tomato.  It might be a small tomato but it has more sweet taste than any large beefsteak

These are addictive when eaten in the garden. It really is hard for me to get them to the house.  But if they make it, they are perfect in a salad.  Or eaten out of hand.  Good thing I have them everywhere...which leads me to the free offer.

I want to see the Everglades tomato get the attention it deserves.  If you will email me at allergycheryl@gmail.com and in the email subject put "Free Seeds" I will email you back with my address.  You can send a self addressed stamped envelope and I will send you some free Florida Everglades tomato seeds.  Then you can enjoy this awesome small tomato with a very very large taste

Read more

Book Review Naturally Bug Free by Anna Hess

5:17 PM in anna, Aqua, book, bug, by, free, hess, naturally, review

Anna Hess new ebook, Naturally Bug Free, is an excellent resource for gardeners who want to combat garden pests, but not with man-made chemicals.  It has a lot of the same advice as other books like Good Bug Bad Bug, and Organic Gardeners Handbook of Natural Pest and Disease Control, but at a fraction of the price.  The main difference is that Naturally Bug Free covers only the most common garden insects in detail (and not bacterial, viral, or fungal diseases at all) , but gives a systematic approach that can be used for the rest. Also, Hess photography is much better. 

The cover, featuring (clockwise from upper left) a tomato hornworm parasitized by a good wasp, a movie-star praying mantis, an industrious honey bee, and an aphid farm managed by ants (which sometimes make poor life choices).

Hess lays out a number of steps gardeners can take to develop a well-functioning garden ecosystem, starting with an exhortation to know thy bugs.  If an unknown bug arrives in your garden, you must find out its function.  Is it a pest?  Is it benign?  Is it a beneficial insect that moved in to feast on a pest? What and where is the pest its hunting?  Hess gives a number of resources she uses to identify new bugs in her garden.

After covering a number of garden pests common almost everywhere (based mainly on a Mother Earth News survey), Hess moves on to methods for encouraging friendlies in the garden, from good insects and worms, to birds, amphibians and mammals.  (Spoiler alert not needed by permaculture enthusiasts: maximize landscape diversity and provide habitat for the good guys.)  Some of the beneficials Hess sees in her garden are more prominent in her local environment--with nearby wetlands and high groundwater--than many readers will find in theirs (such as turtles and underground crayfish), but she gives a few pointers that readers anywhere can try.  Hess also points out that a lot of the beneficials have some annoying quirks, such as box turtles that eat tomatoes or birds that take one bite of a strawberry, but notes that their presence is net positive after considering the number of slugs theyll eat.  Even deer, which are definitely net-negative for a garden, can be a valuable source of meat for the gardener.

Hess also gives advice for the time period between establishing a garden and having a balanced ecosystem to keep pests in check.  In this regard, judicious timing of plantings and planting trap crops can be helpful.  Other helpful approaches can be choosing bug-resistant varieties from the get-go (the same approach is  helpful for non-bug pests, too, such as fungi and bacteria) and employing more labor-intensive direct methods of pest control like row covers and hand-picking.

A couple examples of strategic succession planting that Hess uses to time harvests away from peak periods of pests such as squash vine borers and cabbage moths.

The book wraps up by pointing out that even fruits and veggies that arent grocery store-quality (i.e., that have some cosmetic damage), can still be delicious and nutritious with a little extra trimming.  We whole-heartedly agree, and we wish more authors would tout such an approach.

An excellent epilogue is an excerpt from another of Hess books, Homegrown Humus, which is especially appropriate given the key role soil health plays in plant health, and consequently plants ability to fend off pests.

Our only criticism is that, because Hess advocates ecosystem-level management of garden pests by encouraging beneficial predators that depend on a certain minimum population of pests to eat (i.e., a biological equilibrium), the book would more appropriately be titled Naturally Bug-Optimal.  But bug-free definitely rolls off the tongue better.


Have you read Naturally Bug Free?  What did you think?  What methods do you use to naturally control pests in your garden?  Let us know in the comments section below!

Read more