Master Tinkerer Ray Narkevicius

...ins that he gets from the brewery feed the poultry. Poultry manure nourish fruit trees and the duck water waste hosts crayfish. All the water gets pumped around to a series of raised beds that grow herbs, dragon fruit and strawberries. His small yard overflows with the most delicious citrus you’ve ever had. And he’s a generous and kind neighbor who is always willing to lend a helping hand. Thankfully, the folks at Fair Companies, including friend...

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Ill advised grafting projects

...o cultivars. Tobacco grafting resulted in 5.0% and 30.1% increase in total fruit weight for cv. Sweet and cv. Elazig, respectively. Because the level of nicotine was within acceptable ranges, tobacco-grafted tomato fruits were considered to be safe for consumption. Self-grafted tomato cultivars also had flowering time onsets almost 11 days earlier. However, self-grafting caused 6.0% and 7.6% less total fruit yield per cv. It does remind me of the...

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Damned Figs!

...umble compound let a feral fig tree grow. Unfortunately this tree produced fruit with the texture of Styrofoam packing materials and the flavor of . . . Styrofoam packing materials. We tried everything from drying to making jam with these accursed figs but never got satisfactory results. During the day flies laid their larvae in the fruits yielding gooey masses that would drop to the ground to provide rotting fig feasts to visiting rats and possum...

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An Ancient Quince Recipe

...he browned part. Each year the question comes up as to what to do with the fruit. You can eat Karp’s Sweet quince raw, but the texture is still quince-like, which is to say somewhat gritty and course. And each year I promise I’ll pick up a copy of Barbara Ghazarian’s comprehensive book Simply Quince , but somehow I never get around to it. Last year I tried to make quince jelly, but overshot the jell point and ended up with jars of delicious tastin...

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Stern Sprouted Wheat Vegan Cookie or Health Bar Type Things

...I’ve put sprouting instructions at bottom of post) Raisins (or other dried fruit): 75 g/1 cup Whole raw almonds (or other nut): 75 g / 3/4 cup Salt: 1 g/generous pinch Tools: Some kind of device which can grind all this stuff up into a mush: a crank grinder or a food processor or a coarse metate and lots of patience or… ??? Cookie sheet Baking parchment (helpful) Rolling pin (optional) • Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix together al...

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