Nick Husby

Lynn Wilson wrote:
Biggest challenge is a husband who prefers rice to any other starch (in northern Vermont) and in his 60s is regressing to us teen years food preferences, ie canned chili, canned hash, limited veg. Complains about the smell if I cook what I like. Very boring!

I like to add fresh garlic and peppers to my canned chilly.  Think he'd go for that?

Just something in the meal has to be home grown?  An herb garden could easily go a long way with that goal.  I put mint and basil in drinks. Basil goes in soups and with tomatoes.  Fresh oregano really peps up pasta.  I grow society garlic, so there is always garlic.  You could probably find at least one fresh herb that will add something to any kind of soup.  

Then there are tomatoes and peppers.  I'm happy to have sliced tomatoes and basil on the side of just about anything.  Peppers go in a lot of dishes too.  I'll dice up a fresh ripe jalapeno into my spaghetti-Os or chilli.  Or sweet peppers if it doesn't go with the dish, or I don't want the heat.  

Raspberries make a good desert.  Fresh greens make or add to a salad.  Cucumbers or pickles make a good side.  Snap peas I'll eat any time I see them.

If you were to make your own peanut butter, that'd go a long way too.

Of course it's easier for me to keep it fresh year round... in southern California I still have peppers ripening on the plant, I just picked some raspberries yesterday, and my Cara Cara oranges are just getting ripe (late this year.)  Although most of my annuals like basil and cucumber did finally give up.  I'm rooting on the cucumber to pull through even though I'll re-plant anyway.  

I'm in Southern California zone 10A, and I'm getting ready to order an apple tree or trees.  I did some research looking for "low chill" apple varieties.  I found some like Anna and Fuji.  Then I looked around a little more, and found info about Tom Spellman from Wave Wilson Nursery growing ALL KINDS of "high chill" apples in Irvine, CA zone 10.  

Pretty much all of the 30+ varieties they planted worked.  They all fruited in like 2 years.  If I remember correctly he said the trick is to use a semi-dwarf rootstock. I think he said he was using M111.  They also pruned and shaped the trees.  

I'm looking at either getting like 4 columnar varieties, 3 semi dwarf varieties planted next to each-other  "in one hole", or a single semi-dwarf with 5 or 6 varieties on it.  The latter two methods both require careful pruning to keep them all in balance with each-other so one doesn't dominate over the others.  It's good to get at least two varieties that have overlapping blooms, because even "self pollinating" varieties produce better with a pollinating partner.