Plain Gardening Notes from 8 Dec 2013

Beau and I luv to listening to Bill Finch's Plain Gardening on the Gulf Coast when we return from Mass on Sunday Mornings.

I wasn't able to listen this weekend while it aired, so I listened to the first hour of the podcast today and made a few notes...

Great Bill quotes:

• "Take advantage of Life on the Gulf Coast" -- Grow Citrus!!
• "The Gulf Coast is the world's sweet spot for Satsumas!"  I couldn't agree more Bill!!
• "Don't tell our friends in Louisiana this...they are a sister state...they do satsumas well, we just do them better along the Gulf Coast."
• "The citrus trees are our Christmas trees of the Gulf Coast."

Regarding Citrus...here are few varieties we need in the citrus orchard:

• Satsumas...we need more...as I have been saying for some time!!
• Clementines
• Ponkan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponkan
• Hamlin Orange (also called Louisiana Sweet): http://www.ultimatecitrus.com/Story/varieties/hamlin.html
• Meyer Lemon (a cross between a lemon and an orange)
• Calamondin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calamondi
• Kumquat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumquat
• Bill mentioned someone made baked Chicken and Kumquat

Grasses...why not try a few native LA grasses:

• Broomstick (also called bushy bluestem): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andropogon_glomeratus
• Big Blue Stem (this is a fave of mine after living in Iowa):  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andropogon_gerardii
• Broom sage grass

Still time to plant:

• Turnips
• Potatoes
• Rutabaga
• Garlic
• Beets
• A few bits about beets: Beets like alkaline soils....so down in our neck of the woods, where the beets are planted, they really should be planted in a well-prepped bed that's been limed.  Also, don't be afraid to eat beet's greens - Bill swears by them!

As far as color in the woods goes these are the trees to look for (apparently one doesn't see them in the city too often):

• Red Oaks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercus_rubra
• White Oaks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercus_alba

There are lemons all around ripening...specifically Meyer Lemons.  One caller called in with his recipe for Lemoncello...I think I wrote it down correctly.  If I didn't, of if any reader of this obscure blog has another recipe, please share.  Here goes...

Lemoncello

15 or 20 Meyers Lemons

Soak the lemons in a sink full of water for ~30 Minutes, making sure all the unwanted matter is removed.  Do not scrub.

Take a mircoplain and zest only the colored part of the lemons.  It will take ~ 45 minutes to do this.

Put zest in an mason jar and add some sort of pure grain alcohol, ~ 190 proof.

Cover the jar with a lid and place in a cool, dark, dry place for a month.

Stir every couple of days.

At the end of the month, remove the jar from its place of storage and decant the contents into another jar.

To serve, make a simple syrup, let it cool.  Add a bit of the lemoncello to the simple syrup and serve in a cordial glass for an after supper digestive.


Random Thoughts

Bill suggests that the Royal Scam on Royal Street in Mobile is a great place to dine on locally grown produce.

Apparently I need to keep a garden journal

Annette here...

Please allow me a bit of type space to reminisce at first...

I remember in my younger years Miss Gloria would get these Southern Living daily planers - this was well before Franklin Planners made their way to Underwood Printing and Office Supplies in Foley - and she would pimp David E for whatever information he would care to provide about what happened on the farm that day.  She would dutifully scribe what he said and there those words reside within those faux white leather bound calendars to this day.  Granted, this exercise of journaling only lasted for about the first 5 weeks of the new year, but those words still sit in those old planners.  I'll have to grab them one day and share some of the comments on the blog.

If you read this and know any of us Bittos first hand, you'll understand when I ty[e that I can honestly say there are more things going on at the farm on a daily basis that I can possibly write about consistently.  But that is not the intent of this blog.  Bitto Farms is business.  While I was at the farm a couple of weeks ago, Beau decided that someone need to keep a garden journal for us.  That would be code for, "Annette, time to keep a garden journal so we know what we did when."  I agree. This blog is about our (mine, Dad, John, and to a lesser degree Miss Gloria and Jen...and our four legged family members) trials, tribulations, excitement, and joy spent working in the garden.  We luv to garden and hope you will enjoy reading and commenting as we grow across the seasons.

I thought seriously about keeping the journal in a moleskin notebook...similar to how I keep my notes for work...but decided it would be best to keep our journal a living, breathing, visual document that we can share between us...and still have some sort of repository for our random thoughts.  Therefore, I deem the Bitto Farms blog to house our garden journal.  And since I have the passwords to the blog, I can say that officially!!

For those of y'all poor folks who happen to have nothing better to do than read the absolute chaos that reigns around the area we know and luv as Bitto Farms, I hope you enjoy reading about our gardening adventures.

Please don't hesitate to comment...Beau and I need all the help we can get!!

War Eagle and All the Best,

Annette and John (aka Beau)