A NSFW Mushroom

June 3, 2024

...t enjoy looking at them (and occasionally eating chicken of the woods, the only one I feel confident enough to identity). This weekend in Pomona I spotted the notoriously NSFW stinkhorn mushroom which I’m pretty sure is Phallus hadriani. It fruits quickly with the tip oozing a slimy substance attractive to insects. I witnessed a pill bug and some gnats circling the morel-like tip. Stinkhorns use these insects to distribute spores. In short, a very...

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Ill advised grafting projects

Mr. Homegrown

January 21, 2016

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

4 Comments

...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 unsuccessful attempt back in the 1970s to graft hops onto cannabis root stock with the goal of creating a legal looking plant containing THC...

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Freezing Meat With Freezer Paper

Mr. Homegrown

February 4, 2013

Food, Food Preservation, How-to

21 Comments

A good question came in on Friday’s post about freezing fruits and vegetables about how to freeze meat products without using plastic bags. I don’t know of a way to avoid plastic with meat products, but you can use freezer paper instead of ziplock bags. The University of Georgia Extension Service has a handy info sheet on how to wrap meat with freezer paper: Freezing Animal Products. Correction: an earlier version of this post was entitled “How t...

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The recyclable/compostable Christmas tree

Mrs. Homegrown

December 9, 2014

Domesticus

25 Comments

...inexpensively made, and don’t have to be stored from year to year. Sturdy fruits and berries Popcorn/cranberry strings Paper chains Dried herbs and flowers Moss Feathers Cool looking seed pods Nuts Origami Paper snowflakes Homemade rock candy Gingerbread figures There’s tons more possibilities. What have I forgotten? Some of my ornaments This is a sugared white sage leaf. I added sugar because I decided the tree needed a little bling. Ditto with...

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Why it’s Better to Pressure Can Tomatoes

Mr. Homegrown

October 30, 2014

Food, Food Preservation, Gardening, Tomatoes

8 Comments

...ed and less acidic foods that need to be canned in a pressure canner. Most fruits have a lower, i.e. more acidic pH and can be water bath canned. Tomatoes, on the other hand, are often near the 4.6 pH level and USDA tested recipes will call for adding either bottled lemon juice or citric acid (I prefer citric acid as the taste is more neutral). I used to think that this issue was because different tomato varieties vary in their acid content. It tu...

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