Where Do Babies Come From?: A Truly Spicy Question

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When I eat an apple, a pear, or an orange I can easily see how these fruits reproduce.  The tree grows and eventually produces fruit, the fruit is picked or falls off the tree and some of the lucky seeds end up in the ground either by chance or through the back end of some satisfied animal.   Either way, these few seeds will spread out and some new trees will develop; a fairly well known and obvious process.  Now this got me thinking, what about the not so obvious plants like spinach, lettuce, mustard greens, turnips, carrots, radishes, etc, stuff that doesn't have such an obvious seed?  Well it turns out us city folk are missing out on all the good behind the scenes action.  If we rewind a bit and take these veggies from the supermarkets back out into the fields, we would discover...

Hay Is For...Oysters

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In the final spring installment of Have You Ever Grown A Mushroom, we take a look at The Captain's 3rd and quickest method for homegrown mushroom production.  While this is the fastest way to produce mushrooms, it also has a much shorter life span than the Oak log or Poplar stump production methods.  Nevertheless, depending on your home situation, any one of these methods will get you to your goal of...

Pic of the Week

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But seriously, have you?

Teamwork, Totem Poles and Oyster Mushrooms: Turning Lemons into Lemonaide

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Unfortunately, it's not very productive to complain about situations that are out of our control.  These circumstances can really bring us down, stop us in our tracks and slow the progress we believed we wanted so badly, but through these adverse situations can come some incredible new light, some opportunity we didn't even know was an option.  Whether it be the opportunity we wanted or not is another question, one I think may be less important in the end than we may initially believe.  Along the path, we are always picking up new experiences that come along for the ride.  Continuing on in our spring mushroom series, we look at the "totem" method for growing your own mushrooms at home.  Here a roadblock is literally turned into a wealth of opportunity, a perennial home for mushrooms.  The "Totem" method is...

Pic of the Week

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Drill, Plug, Mushroom

The Captain's Guide to Easy, Delicious Mushroom Production: So easy, even you can do it

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Mushrooms are often a topic of discussion, whether it be cooking with them, or simply reviewing the highly nutritional and medicinal benefits they can offer.  We've touched on a few gourmet varieties such as the Oyster and Shiitake, but this week I finally got my chance to take The Captain's annual mushroom class at Stone Barns.  It was a beautiful spring afternoon for inoculating some...

Garden in a Box: 7 Easy Steps to Making Something Out of Nothing

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Are you tired of buying all your fruits, vegetables and herbs, but don't have much arable land?  Is your rocky, clay-filled soil getting you down?  Well have I got a deal for you...

Pic of the Week

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Working Late

Raspberry's and Blackberry's: Turning Dimes into Nickels

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Last year The Captain taught us all about raspberries, we learned that they are biennial plants that fruit every other year on the floricanes.  If you want annual production you must plant primocanes and floricanes at the same time to stagger production.  This year I travelled all the way to Spello, Italy to learn just how unique and interesting these versatile berries really are.  While in Spello, I lucked into meeting one of the most interesting and knowledgeable people I've ever had the pleasure of working with and learning from...

Wine Breakdown: Brunello, Rosso and IGT (Super Tuscan)

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Lucky for me, I came to Montalcino at just the right time.  Handcrafted and straight from the heart, after 5 patient years, Casa Raia's Organic Brunello masterpiece was finally aged long enough to bottle and of course...