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Jumat, 01 Februari 2013

JUMPING JUMPING !!!! Jump in your career

Getting a jump on spring

Adrian Higgins/The Washington Post - Brussels sprouts shrug off the cold.

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By Adrian Higgins, Published: January 31

Some winter tasks won’t wait — pruning sleeping trees, cutting back rosebushes and cleaning up ornamental grasses, for example. But many other jobs that are not so obviously pressing are still well suited to this time, even if the idea of gardening regularly in the winter is alien to many people.

Whether that pitiable rodent sees its shadow or not on Saturday, Groundhog Day, is beside the point.

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Adrian Higgins

Adrian Higgins has been writing about the intersection of gardening and life for more than 25 years, and joined the Post in 1994. He is the author of several books, including the Washington Post Garden Book and Chanticleer, a Pleasure Garden.

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(Adrian Higgins/The Washington Post) - The author’s community garden plot in winter.

On balance, we have had a mild winter so far — and we still have a couple of months to get things in shape. I am, by nature, a procrastinator, but even I have figured out that the more you do in winter, the more the early spring can be relieved of its mad scramble. Surely there is nothing more deflating on a weekend in April than to buy, say, broccoli transplants to take to a garden where the soil is heavy and weedy, the paths need re-edging or the detritus of last year’s garden is still in the way.

When you consider that for gardeners in other regions, winter is unavailable because the ground is frozen or sodden, we should count our season’s blessings.

This is my own temperature-activity table for winter gardening. In the teens: Don’t get out of bed. Twenties: Fuss with seeds indoors. Thirties: Bundle up and do what you must in the garden. Forties: Bundle up and go get ’em. Fifties: You’re in clover; make a day of it.

The watershed is at 40 degrees. Below that and it’s for die-hards, but above that, especially if you are generating heat through work, it’s agreeable. Rain and a stiff wind will drive you indoors, but a light drizzle (I find) merely adds to the ambiance.

There have been 18 Saturdays or Sundays since the beginning of December. Only two (last weekend) had high temperatures below that 40-degree line. Ten have been above 50 degrees. The mercury hit 62 degrees the Sunday before last.

Such days have their downsides, principally in having to see grown men wearing shorts, but the mildness also presents a fabulous opportunity to get stuff done and greet the spring on the gardener’s terms.

In the ornamental garden this winter, I have reacquainted myself with a distant and neglected corner of the yard, a stretch of bed 15 feet long and eight feet wide that I imagined to be sunnier when I planted it 15 years ago. Perhaps it was, but various trees have grown up around it. Part of the bed gets quite boggy after heavy rain. The plants I put there were either in decline or tired.

Because winter work has none of the worrying urgency of spring preparation, I could remove these spent plants at my own pace. Over two weekends I dug out three entrenched miscanthus grasses, five beautyberry shrubs, two climbing roses, a rose of Sharon and its seedlings and a large Prague viburnum that was slowly succumbing to the moisture.

Still left is the removal of ivy and wild strawberry, the digging in of leaves and compost, raking and replanting. I have three winterberry hollies ready to go in, the sort that dazzle with red berries in full sun or light shade (I think there is enough light to induce heavy fruiting). Around them, I see swaths of perennials that will carry the bed when the hollies are not particularly decorative. What exactly they will be, I don’t know, but I’m leaning toward some large hostas that I have yet to grow, epimediums and the persicaria Firetail. I have another month or more to think about it.

My other weekend incarnation is as a community gardener, and much of the past two months has been spent harvesting veggies that are still growing, namely salad greens, kohlrabi, carrots, parsnips and kale. The mildness has also permitted the sort of infrastructure repair that needs to be behind you come tulip season; for me that’s resetting the planks that edge the growing beds or replacing those that have rotted. The paths themselves are of wood chips that have broken down and need replacing. Using a sharp hoe, I have scraped away the old stuff to reveal the solid ground beneath, ready to receive a new layer of spongy chips for the year.

The other crucial chore made easier by a mild winter is the pulling of weeds. Weeds don’t hibernate, especially in a kind winter, and a whole gang of them is counting on you to ignore them in the cold months. Come a few days of warmth in early April and they will flower and seed in the blink of an eye. I have spent the past few weeks on my hands and knees pulling chickweed, bittercress and speedwell. This induces a reverie that is sometimes broken by the hearty call of a Carolina wren, perched on the fence above me.

Here is a winter migrant whose vitality is amplified way beyond its little mass. In the most improbable of seasons, it is calling us into the garden.

@adrian_higgins on Twitter

Read past columns by Higgins.

Being ORGANIC!!!!!

Organic begins with seed

Reneesgarden.com - Beets grown from organic seeds from Renee's Garden.

By Barbara Damrosch, Published: January 31

A seed purveyor needs to be right on top of the trends, and Renee Shepherd is no exception. She sells seed packets to home gardeners online at Reneesgarden.com and through gardening retailers. The “hot new trends” she identifies in her spring media kit include heirlooms, rainbow vegetables, container plants and ones that nurture beneficial insects. Leading the list is organic seed, of which she has a new line.

She’s not alone. Most sellers highlight their organic varieties, alerting farmers for whom organic seed is necessary for organic certification. But the demand from home gardeners is growing. What’s behind that? If you grow a plant organically, why does the tiny speck you start with have to be organic, too?

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(Reneesgarden.com) - Squash grown from organic seeds from Renee's Garden.

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How does your garden grow?: Share photos of your garden, whether it’s a few potted plants or a vibrant backyard oasis.

Aside from the disconcerting pink coloration of pea and bean seeds treated with chemical fungicide, the issue isn’t the seed itself as it drops into your furrow. (Seed treatment might be appropriate for seeds like peas and beans that are prone to damping off, and some companies now use nontoxic coatings.) It has more to do with how the seed was grown and how it will grow for you.

Vegetables and herbs for seed harvest spend more time in the ground than those for eating. That means more time for them to be sprayed with pesticides and other pollutants — practices less restricted for seed crops. So growing organic seed is much better for the soil, the water and the air. Some shoppers surely make that connection.

But there’s another part of the puzzle that’s a little more subtle. Traditional heirloom seed varieties are favored by organic growers not only because they often have better flavor, and because growing them helps to preserve seed diversity, but also because they were developed over the years in conjunction with nonchemical practices. Modern hybrids, on the other hand, were bred in conjunction with industrial agriculture and its use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers high in soluble nitrogen.

With the renewed popularity of organic produce and organic methods, some breeders are looking at the subject again and developing varieties — including hybrids — for organic production. This isn’t that hard to do. For example, if you see a tomato in a catalogue advertised as a “greenhouse tomato,” it’s been bred to withstand the moisture in a greenhouse. Similarly, if it’s been bred as an organic variety, it’s more likely to resist certain diseases that ordinarily beset tomatoes in an organic garden or field. Bravo for that! Buying organic seeds supports that kind of research. A few companies, such as High Mowing in Vermont and Seeds of Change in California, sell only organic seeds. Many others, such as Harris, are increasing their offerings. Support them in their efforts and we’ll all win.

Damrosch’s new book, “The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook,” will be published in March.

Tip of the week

Pruning or cutting back spring flowering shrubs will remove all or much of this year’s flower display. Wait until after blooming to trim and thin out overgrown plants such as forsythias, azaleas, rhododendrons, lilacs, viburnums and bigleaf hydrangeas.

— Adrian Higgins

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/organic-begins-with-seed/2013/01/29/fac63826-64ce-11e2-85f5-a8a9228e55e7_story.html

How do you know oncom?

Oncom is a food that mostly is produced and eaten in West Java. It is a fermented block or sheet made from the pulp of nuts, beans and other foods that have been exposed to a particular type of spore and allowed to ferment for one full day. There are two main types of oncom, black and red, with the difference sometimes being the cultures used and sometimes being an indication of the type of pulp used. Many dishes can be made from oncom, and it is very common to find it cut into thin pieces and deep fried to make a snack called krupuk or wrapped in banana leaves and roasted to make a variation of the food known as pepes. Once the pulp has been fully inoculated with the spores, it can be allowed to ferment for a longer time to make other foods, such as dage.

The material used to make oncom is the pulp of different foods that are left over after being processed for their liquids. The most common types of pulp, also called presscake, are soybean, peanut, coconut and cassava. Each imparts a slightly different texture and flavor. Most often, black oncom is made from peanut pulp and has a softer texture than other types. The pulp that is used can be gathered from industrial processing plants, or it can be made by boiling the raw ingredients, straining out the solids and grinding them.

Source

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-oncom.htm

About Poverty in the world

31 January 2013

THERE IS MUCH MORE TO POVERTY THAN ADDICTION TO DRUGS AND ALCOHOL

Iain Duncan’s Smith speech on measuring child poverty today focused on addiction. While it’s a serious problem, Chris Goulden argues there is much more to poverty than addiction.

The main criteria for judging any poverty strategy should be whether it is firmly grounded in evidence about what policies and practices are effective and finding the mix that provides most impact for least cost. That’s the starting point for JRF in our new anti-poverty programme.

The context is important too of course – negative public attitudes and media stereotypes about poverty are important barriers to taking action. But it is a mistake to allow public attitudes, or ideas about what those attitudes superficially seem to be, to drive anti-poverty policy.

As part of the child poverty consultation process, the Department for Work and Pensions have published the results of a public poll. It asked: “Could you please tell me how important you think each of the following are when deciding whether someone is growing up in poverty?” Respondents were given a list of possible answers such as parental drug addiction, bad housing, not enough income, poor services and so on.

I’ve no doubt that the survey (of 1,000 adults) genuinely reflects public opinion on the specific question. The percentage deeming different factors 'important' ranged from:

90% for parental drugs or alcohol addiction;
79% for insufficient income;
53% for parental lack of skills for employment.

There’s been focus on the first point about addiction already. This survey by itself doesn’t show that addiction is the cause of 90% of child poverty, or even that it is a major cause (or a cause at all). Helpfully, we have reviewed some of the evidence.

This finds that 0.9% of adults are problem drug users (heroin/crack) and 3.8% are dependent on alcohol. So, less than 4.7% overall. We don’t know how many of these are in poverty or how many are parents but about ¼ million people on benefits are problem drug users and 160,000 are dependent drinkers (7% and 4% of claimants respectively). Nearly one in twenty people is not a tiny problem and addiction can be terrible for those affected, particularly the children, but it’s a statistically small number of people in poverty.

The scales of the problems of poverty and addiction among parents are of different orders entirely. That’s not to deny any link between the two: clearly poverty is a risk factor here, but there is much more to poverty than just addiction. Most people in poverty are not addicted to heroin, crack or alcohol but are just struggling to make ends meet. Can’t we all agree on that?

WIKIPEDIA shares ON COM

Oncom

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Closer view of red oncom mold.

Oncom cooked as pepes dish.

Oncom (pron.: /ɒnˈtʃɒm/) is one of the traditional staple foods of West Javan (Sundanese) cuisine. There are two kinds of oncom: red oncom and black oncom. Oncom is closely related to tempeh; both are foods fermented using mold.^[1]

Usually oncom is made from the by-products from the production of other foods -- soy bean tailings (okara) left from making tofu, peanut presscake left after the oil has been pressed out, cassava tailings when extracting the starch (pati singkong), coconut presscake remaining after oil has been pressed out or when coconut milk has been produced.

Since oncom production uses by-products to make food, it increases the economic efficiency of food production.

Red oncom reduces the cholesterol levels of rats,^[2] suggesting effects in humans.

Black oncom is made by using Rhizopus oligosporus while red oncom is made by using Neurospora intermedia var. oncomensis.^[3] It is the only human food produced from Neurospora.

[edit]Toxicity

In the production of oncom, sanitation and hygiene are important to avoid contaminating the culture with bacteria or other fungi like Aspergillus flavus(which produces aflatoxin). Neurospora intermedia var. oncomensis and Rhizopus oligosporus reduce the aflatoxin produced by Aspergillus flavus.^[4]However, aflatoxin-producing molds (Aspergillus spp.) are often naturally present on peanut presscake. Furthermore coconut presscake can harbor the very dangerous Pseudomonas cocovenenans, which produces two highly toxic compounds - bongkrek acid and toxoflavin. Shurtleff and Aoyagi address toxicity in their book section on oncom.

While it is known that soybeans are the best substrate for growing R. oligosporus to produce tempeh, oncom has not been as thoroughly studied; the best fermentation substrates for producing oncom are not yet known.

[edit]References

^ "Production of High-Quality Oncom, a Traditional Indonesian Fermented Food, by the Inoculation with Selected Mold Strains in the Form of Pure Culture and Solid Inoculum", D. D. Sastraatmadja et al., J. Grad. Sch. Agr. Hokkaido Univ., Vol. 70, Pt. 2: 111-127 (2002), at [1]
^ 'Plasma cholesterol reduction by defatted soy ontjom (fermented with Neurospora intermedia) in rats fed a cholesterol-free diet.'
^ Ho C.C. 1986. Identity and characteristics of Neurospora intermedia responsible for oncom fermentation in Indonesia. Food Microbiology 3(2):115-132 (April 1986).
^ 'Effect of Rhizopus and Neurospora spp. on growth of Aspergillus flavus and A. parasitus and accumulation of aflatoxin B1 in groundnut'

Also, There is an appendix on oncom in Aoyagi and Shurtleff's _Book of Tempeh; Professional Edition_, online at Google books.