I’m posting this here because facebook wouldn’t let me post the whole long thing.

Thanks for coming and taking all my stuff! Well, not all of it, but a goodly chunk of it. As a requested, here is my Great Grandpa Abe’s bagel recipe.

• 2 pkg yeast
• 2 cups warm potato water (boil a potato in water and eat it for dinner the night before or for breakfast, but don’t leave the - water on the stove all night as it will get fuzzzunky.)
• 4 eggs
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1 tbsp malt aka barley syrup (or sugar if you must) (at most health food stores)
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil (use decent quality, because you can taste it)

• Approximately 8 cups flour (you must sift the flour: a sieve is easy and fast) (On a damp day you will need more flour)

• 2 egg yolks beaten with 2 tbsp water (I make this one egg at a time, because it gets gooey if it sits on the counter between baking batches)

• Everythings for the tops: sesame seeds, poppy seeds, minced or dried garlic flakes, onion flakes, kosher salt, etc.

Soften yeast in 1/2 cup of potato water (heated to 100 degrees if leftover from the night before).
Beat eggs in a large bowl. Blend in softened yeast, rest of potato water, salt, malt syrup, oil, 2 cups flour.
Stir in rest of flour to make a soft dough.

Knead on a lightly floured board for 10 minutes, adding a little flour to make a firm, but not stiff dough. (I usually leave it a little sticky, and flour only the outside to keep it from sticking to my table.) If you add too much flour, the bagels will be dry and tough inside. Place dough in a greased bowl, cover with a clean dishtowel, and let rise in a warm place until doubled.

Punch down, and knead the dough until it’s smooth and not much more. Again, too much flour and maybe too much kneading makes the bagels tough. (I don’t remember what Grandpa said specifically, but I vaguely remember him cautioning against too much kneading with a dismissive hand wave, as per usual.)

While you form the bagels, bring enough water (dutch oven size pan) to a rolling boil with 1/3 of a cup of malt syrup. (”Enough water” was actually part of Grandpa’s instructions.) The malt syrup seems to make the skins more glossy and nice. Again, sugar is ok, but after using malt syrup today, I’m sold on Grandpa’s method.

This is the part that is more about practice and personal preference than instruction, but I’ll try. Divide the dough into small pieces. My recipe says 32 pieces, but that seems like way too few. I like small bagels for the best ratio of soft innards to crusty outside, and I think we got about 60 or 70 out of the batch today. I think I make my ropes of dough about 4 or 5 inches long. Form each rope into a loop, and don’t just pinch the ends together, they have to be worked together so they’re really one unbroken ring. Otherwise, they’ll come apart in the boil. Let them rise about 10 minutes before boiling, no longer. We learned today that you have to boil them right after forming them, or they over-rise and then get really soggy and gross in the boil.

When you have a rolling boil, drop (gently, no splashing) your bagels into the water. Only put enough bagels in each boiling batch to cover about 2/3 of the water’s surface. They expand in the water, so best to put fewer in than crowd them. If you crowd the bagels (Grandpa’s dismissive hand again), they won’t cook properly and they’ll be doughy and wet inside. After they’ve boiled for 2 minutes, flip them and boil the other side for 3 minutes. This step is something you learn by doing: you are cooking the bagels at this step until they are more firm. I touch the tops in the water to feel when they’re done, but you may develop a better method for you. I ruin plenty of bagels this way, but they always get eaten anyway.

Remove the bagels with slotted spoon to a greased baking sheet. Brush the tops with egg wash, and sprinkle your seeds, salt, garlic, etc on top.

Boil enough bagels to fill a cookie sheet. Bake at 425 for 20 minutes.

While you’re baking one sheet, boil the next batch, and so on, making sure not to let them rise too long.

Gorge yourself on bagel-y goodness and lay on the floor patting your distended belly. A good bagel doesn’t need to be toasted.

Of course, call me with questions.

We’re moving!

Our new apartment is in a coop building with a ground floor courtyard.
The owners are thrilled that I compost, are happy to let me to lead the composting effort for the building, and are letting me have at the yard to do what I want. They may even pitch in for plants and let me do flowers out front. I think petunias are the best, don’t you?

O happy day!

I’ll do a soil test to make sure 100 years of lead paint haven’t ruined the soil too badly, but I have high hopes, given the 2 miles we’re putting between us and the Gowanus. It’s at the top of the Prospect hill, so nothing’s been rolling down on it for a hundred or more years like the old spot. I will post photos at the beginning of April.

In the meantime, it’s a great time to get your soil tested, and CUNY is now doing it for cheap in the 5 boroughs. I’m pretty sure that students and scientists are using the data for research, which is always nice. Also, their turnaround time is only 2 weeks.

In other news, Wednesday is St. Patty’s Day, which as we know from last year, is Pea Planting Day. I can say with certainty that it was effective to plant that early. I’m gonna put my peas in a little late because of the move, but if you can, plant early. My peas were in containers, and even with a pretty heavy snow after sowing, they were bountiful early.

If urban gardening interests you, check out a video of Leslie’s garden in Braddock, PA. She’s across the street from a steel mill, and has done amazing things designing her garden with Permaculture principles to maximize water retention, etc.

Several folks have asked why there haven’t been more updates: the skeeters have driven me out of the garden. Even running down with DEET on for two minutes to dump compost and grab as many tomatoes as I can, I get bitten all to hell through my clothes. I seem to be allergic to these f**ers and get quarter-sized lumps from them. Maybe one of those beekeeper outfits would do the trick? Are they mosquito proof?
Totally depressing.

In good news, the rogue squash growing from the compost pile has been identified: it is a butternut squash.

Since I took these photos on Monday, the visible squash is almost full size, though still green. I think we’re gonna be making and freezing butternut ravioli again! Yay! Lowfat, filling and delicious. And cheap. Did I say cheap?

The tomatoes don’t seem to have late blight, but I’m watching them as much as I can. Another pound of tomatoes today, some fugly cucumbers and more beans. The beans have been surprisingly bountiful, and very very pleasing.

And today, the grapes are ready.
Harvested for 20 minutes, lazily in the heavy rain (no mosquitoes) and got 3.5 lbs of grapes. They’re sweet and grapety grapey. In Cat News: Gary is a fan of grape detritus.

I’m gonna see which grapejuice extraction method is going to be best, as the Interweb is divided evenly between juicer and boiling. Then, in the next few days, any and all are welcome to come to my house for harvesting, stemming and canning of grapejuice. Then, popsicles with the new popsicle mold Paul found on the street.

Two red tomatoes today! Sarah at the store got one, I’ll have the other with dinner.

They’re the ones all the way to the right. I looked at the tag, but forgot the variety on the way upstairs.
I know they’re from Silver Heights Farm Nursery, and that I put them in on Memorial Day. I bought them at Union Square market, and it was the leggiest specimen there.

That seems to be how the plant looks, though. I just looked at the Silver Heights catalog, and think it might be the Silvery Fir Tree Tomato. (All organic nursery! Yay! And lovely ladies working there too.)

Something is eating the leaves of the red flowering beans. I turned over lots of leaves looking for the culprit, but couldn’t find anybody. Lots of cut leaf margins, and a couple vinelets stripped wholly of leaves: could it be ants?

Today’s harvest is the last of the peas, First Beans (!), rosemary, chives and thyme to take to a party. In addition, I’m bringing bounty from the Borough Hall farmer’s market: Eightball Zucchini, sweet potatoes, garlic scapes, red spring onions, beets and more for grilling.

Everything local, and everything gorgeous. I have more pics of yard, but it’s been raining a lot a lot (26 of last 28, I believe). So not much fruit, but much greenery. Hopefully, July will dry out some.

The herb stairs are very pretty, and the Lemon Balm is ready to have balmy babies, so let me know if you want some.
Happy 4th!

I was just passing messages back and forth with Christa about hating to harvest. As seen below, my veggies look so happy that I am loathe to bother them.
The Cascadian peas are sweet and dripping with rain:

I don’t know when to harvest the Red Russian Kale, but it looks so pleased next to beany buddies.:

Happily, I need not worry about the tomatoes

or the grapes (which are trying to get into the guitar store) until much later in the season.

Note the bright blue planters that I built. They are made of old shelving units, my former neighbor’s nightstand, and some cedar wainscoting that was on sale for having a ripped package. They are painted with AFM Safecoat Very Low VOC Exterior paint in Cerulean Blue. I love this paint and the people behind it are lovely, upstanding folk who make their product in the US and have gone about it the right way, by not putting any toxic garbage into it. I thought the blue would be very nice against the green, especially once the marigolds and petunias pop up everywhere. So far, not too many flowers, but that will change (I hope).

The grapes flowered last week, (maybe 5/29?) and I believe I am allergic to the pollen, but only sneezy. Hopefully the bees and wasps and whatever pollinates them went nuts, because it has rained most days this week. If we get as many grapes as there were flowers, we will have a bumper crop and possibly, a collapsed grape arbor.

I planted the tomatoes from greenmarket sixpacks on Memorial day. I spent 20 bucks replacing the seeds that didn’t germinate well or don’t grow well from seeds. All told, I believe only $5 of fedco seeds weren’t successful, which is a million-fold increase over last year’s results. (75% have been successful, and wildly so.) Yay Fedco! (To be fair, some of last year’s failures were 100% successful this year with better planting habits and timelines, such as Cascadia Snap Pea from Seeds of Change.) I probably should’ve thinned the peas, but can do next year.

In other big news, the white Bleeding Heart plant that I rescued from a garden project in the Bronx has come back from the dead. Good to know, as it was totally flattened by the wind in the back of the truck. It resprouted all over the place, and should be healthy enough to put in a prettier container soon.
The Liriope and Lemon balm looked good the next day, but I knew they would be forgiving.

Next week I will post pictures of the Herb Stairs I made, as well as the rain barrel which I am acquiring from NYC DEP’s Rain Barrel program. If you are at all intimidated by rain barrels, I assure you they are easy peasy pie, and only make your life better and cheaper. I hooked up (and will again) connect a drip system to it, which makes your life even more betterer and cheaperer.

I am off to harvest, tenderly and lovingly, some mint and peas for dinner. Maybe we’ll have Kale too!

So much news makes me despair. I think this project is one of the most hopeful I’ve seen in years.

From their website:

The Farmer-Veteran Coalition seeks to help our returning veterans find employment, training, and places to heal on America’s farms. At the same time the Coalition hopes that some of these young men and women may help address our country’s critical need for more good, hard-working people entering the field of agriculture. The coalition is acutely aware of the high number of soldiers entering the military from our rural communities and the need to improve both job opportunities and veteran services in these areas. We believe that our family farms, the sustainable farming movement and growing support for local and regional agriculture could all be well served by people already accustomed to hard work, discipline and dedication. If given the opportunity, our returning veterans can benefit from and help to stimulate the growing green economy, even in these hard times.

Donate here.

The garden is coming along, but I underestimated the work involved in rebuilding all the containers and the volume of dirt needed to fill them. I used almost a full bale of peat moss in the big blue bin, but I didn’t think I could do the beets and beans in a shallower container. I think I may put one hill of squash and/or cucumbers in that one to take the place of the kale once that is done.

Seedling notes for next year:

• The cold frame definitely worked to germinate, but they really slowed down after that. I think I should have maybe transplanted when the first set of true leaves came in, or else made the germination mix an inch deeper.
• More than half the beans rotted in the soil even in the cold frame. Maybe plant later? (I planted a second batch to see if they fared better, but then it rained for 9 days, so that might’ve been a bust too.)
• I think the plexi might work better, since the glass door was tough to vent because it was so heavy and bent all the hardware and had to take it off earlier than I thought I should. (Perhaps reason #2 they grew slowly)
• Even with the coldframe, early eggplant seeds didn’t sprout until it was very hot a couple weeks ago.
• Borage seedlings are terrifically susceptible to overcooking as well as rotting leaves from top watering. Maybe direct seed or plant in cups in the cold frame and remove as soon as they’re sprouted. The direct seeded ones are almost as big as the transplanted seedlings.
• Red Kale looks like it’ll be a weed based on every single seed sprouting. Yay!
• Thyme grows really f-ing slowly.

I think it’s almost time to start a new compost pile. Will move the old pile to the side fence under the utility pole, perhaps where last years carbon pile was.

I wish I had access to some sort of small chipping machine. Last years grape prunings are about 3 feet tall but haven’t decomposed at all. It would make beautiful mulch, because I don’t think the cats would like walking on it. Also, chipping would be a great solution for the big giant Trees of Heaven. The trunks are just too big to decompose on their own without some help. Anybody out there have a chipping implement?

The peas are all up, looking lovely with lots of leaves ready to unfold. Snow yesterday, so the lids stay on the boxes.

Today I can build more in the backyard, since the garbage is all gone. Yay! I don’t have to scramble over a busted toilet to get to the garden anymore.

First, I will make a taller frame so that I can start transplanting seedlings into larger containers next week. The Kale is very tall already, and the beets, I think will want to be moved as well.

I hear tell that the dogwoods over on Union street are in bloom, I will post pictures if it is true.

Kale I think. Too dark and cold for photos. Mixed beans have sprouts coming off of them.
Tomorrow pictures and list.