Spring Planting has Begun

Hopefully slightly more relevant than my last post about The Crooked Car Dealer.

At long last. The first seeds of the season have been sown.

It's been a very sullen, cold and slow Spring so far. I know that some of my neighbours have taken their chances and sown their first Summer seed a couple of weeks ago already. I refrained, but we all agree on one thing: we greatly fear a repeat of last year's oddly fucked-up season. Last year Spring sprang pretty early, so we all leapt in and planted. Then it all collapsed. Through an unusually cold and damp October and November all the baby plants went dormant, and never really caught up with the growth we'd normally expect through Summer. Yields were way down, and some of the sunlight-hungry crops - Chiles particularly - barely produced any fruit at all until well into early Winter!

So this year, despite some promising weather a couple of weeks ago, I held back with my planting. But today was so Spring perfect a day - sunny, warm, and not a breath of wind - that you'ld have to be inhuman to resist.

So the first seeds are sown. First are the most essential Chiles, Tomatoes and Eggplants, plus a tray of Lettuce for seed. Let's see how the weird weather treats us. I certainly have enough to be getting on with to prepare the beds in the meantime, and I'll follow up with more seed-sowing in a week or so.

Crooked Car Dealer

This purpose of this post is simply to get the word into Googles Enormous Engine about a particular crooked car dealer so that any poor soul searching for a used car might be lucky enough to search first and so avoid dealing with this particular cretin. Probably not very interesting otherwise.

My son bought a used car from one Anton Pretorius of CAW Auto Parts at 28 Albert Street, George, Western Cape, South Africa. The dealer ripped him off terribly, selling him a vehicle with a completely defective engine, and numerous other mechanical problems. According to all 3 diesel-engine experts who have subsequently looked it over, the engine is worthless and has to be completely replaced. The problems were concealed by the dealer liberally dosing it with very heavy, syrupy oil which masked the oil leaks and piston/ring problems until the vehicle had been driven about 1000km.

Upon confronting Pretorius about the problems and demanding a refund, Pretorius refused to refund my son's money (against all provisions of the law) nor did he make any offer to repair the vehicle. We have subsequently laid criminal charges against Pretorius and CAW Motors at the George SAPS, but do not hold out much hope that the police will pursue the case with much gusto, such being the pisspoor state of law enforcement in South Africa. We also sent a legal letter of demand to Pretorius by registered mail. It was simply ignored. To follow up with a civil suit is likely to end up cost more than repairing or replacing the vehicle. Pretorius knows this and is relying on it, just as he relied on my son's naivety and inexperience of vehicle purchase to sell him this piece of shit in the first place.

A few days ago, in conversation with my insurance broker, we discovered that this Pretorius has also ripped off other clients of this broker in the past.

If you're thinking of buying a used car, please do yourself a favour and find a more honest dealer than Anton Pretorius of CAW Motors. The man is a thief and fraudster without conscience, morals or regard for the law.

Lettuce Prey

I've been updating some of the info pages on the wiki... writing down some of the initial info (with pictures) of some of the Lettuce varieties I'm growing for seed this Autumn. The aim is to record much better notes on the habits, uses and cultivation of the numerous Lettuce varieties I grow over time. We'll see how that works out. I'm notorious for forgetting to keep those things up to date. Usually I'll notice a bunch of interesting stuff while my hands are all muddy and I'm having too much fun in the garden to go inside, wash up, fire up the computer,... so my observations get abandoned by the wayside.

Some of you may remember that I had ideas some years ago of growing organic-quality Lettuce seed as a commercial enterprise, but those plans -- indeed the Lettuces themselves -- were brought to nought by the Great Drought of 2008-10. Well, I still like the idea, and, although rain has been a little scarce in the past couple of months¹, I'm trying once again to build up my Lettuce seed stocks to the point where I can produce decently large quantities of seed. Summer is, as always, too hot, and many of the Lettuce varieties bolt to seed early from the heat and don't produce viable seed as a result. So early-Spring and Autumn are my best chance at growing Lettuce seed.

Some of the varieties are new to me: Malawi, Lital, Lavi and Vulcan. Seed was acquired from friends and barter, and started in late February, and the first-to-seed varieties are just producing flower spikes about now. Others are old friends: Forellenschluss and Cimmaron, but my current seed stocks are getting too old to be reliable, so in dire need of refreshing.

I do wish I'd had bed space for growing more varieties, but I don't so that's about as many as I can manage whilst maintaining adequate isolation distances between the varieties. I've also managed to stagger them in time where I've been forced to place different varieties rather closer together than I'd prefer, and, given that Lettuces are mostly self-pollinating, I think I'm pretty safe for keeping these varieties pure.

I do need your help though!  Can anyone help me identify this beautiful Lettuce? I thought it might be "Merveille des Quatre Saisons" ("Marvel of 4 Seasons" - and ancient French² heirloom, famed for its ability to withstand a wide range of weather conditions and temperatures) but it doesn't form a head, which my online researches tell me MdQS does. Leaves are quite large and broad, rumpled, fleshy textured and delicious even when very mature. But I'm stumped for a variety name. Any ideas?

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[1] ...and as I write this, it has started drizzling. Hooray!
[2] Who woulda guessed?

Home-made No-Rinse Sanitiser

A major part of being somewhat self-sufficient is the need to safely "dispose of waste". For example, how do you "get rid" of paint thinners or leftover paint? In some parts of the world towns and cities provide places where you can take these noxious chemicals to be "safely" dumped. Out in the country (or in countries - like South Africa - where the state of recycling is less advanced) there are rarely such options. And yet, I certainly would not pour such stuff into my soil or a watercourse! It can be quite a difficult problem.

Brewing uses its share of noxious chemicals for cleaning and sanitising bottles, kegs and fermentation vessels. Industrial brewers generally favour Caustic Soda as a cheap and effective cleaner, and I, too, use it for cleaning bottles and removing their labels. Disposing of it is a headache. I don't want to pour it into a dam, as I fear that the alteration in pH would, over time, be harmful to too many organisms. Generally I dilute the hell out of it, and then pour the dilute solution onto the roots of alien weedy shrubs that I would like to see killed off. It's never yet done that, but I live in hope. I also use different disposal area each time so that no concentration builds up.

I used to use diluted Chlorine Bleach for sanitising fermentation vessels, but was always bothered by two things: you have to rinse the fermenters at least 3 times to get rid of any Chlorine taint that might threaten the beer. And if you've ever tasted Chlorine-tainted beer, you'll understand perfectly! The rinsing seems to me to defeat the whole exercise unless you happen to have a lot of sterilised (i.e. High Energy) water around to rinse with. Then, too, disposing of Chlorine is a big headache.

Lately I've been using Iodophore - a concoction of Iodine and Phosphoric acid that requires no rinsing - for sanitising fermenters, and I am quite happy to just chuck this already dilute solution onto the lawn, since I don't consider either of these chemicals to represent a hazard in the low doses and small quantities involved. In fact I'm considering pouring it into the compost heaps where the Phosphorus will make its way to plants where it can do some good.

Just the other day, though, I came across the following recipe for a Home-made No-rinse Sanitiser that I will certainly think about trying. Please note that "sanitising" is not the same as "sterilising", so this stuff would not be suitable for babies bottles or anything like that. The recipe allegedly comes from one Charlie Talley (manufacturer of Five Star Chemicals, makers of Star-San, which we can't get here.)

No-Rinse Sanitiser

Thoroughly mix 30ml of distilled white vinegar to 19litres of water. When the vinegar is well diluted, add 30ml unscented Chlorine Bleach.

The high dilution of the vinegar in the water before the bleach is added prevents any out-gassing of Chlorine from the bleach that is added at the end. The vinegar actually helps the bleach work as a better sanitiser by acidifying the solution. The high dilution also means it leaves no residual tastes behind of bleach or vinegar, making it a perfect "cheap" no-rise sanitizer.

I feel quite confident that, in such low doses, no harm will come from just pouring this solution away into the lawn, as long as I spread it around enough. The price looks pretty good, too!

Having difficulty viewing my Braamekraal Farm site?

It has been brought to my attention that some viewers (or should I say Viewer Wannabes?) might be experiencing some problems when trying to browse to my Braamekraal Farm site...

The problem seems to only exist for users of Internet Explorer 9.

All I can say is...
Get Firefox, or
Get Chrome.

Both work perfectly, and my time is too short to worry about chasing down bugs in IE's redirect handling.

When I bought my computer, the box said "Requires Windows 7 or better." I complied.

Turkey Leftovers

Along with lots of you (including @grumpyoldrick) we're into Day 4 of Turkey Leftovers. So here's a recipe idea...

Finely dice a medium Onion into a cast-iron pan with a glug of hot Olive Oil. Add some chopped Chiles and Sweet Peppers. I leave quantities and proportions to your discretion, since your heat tolerance, Chile preferences and Turkey Leftover volumes will vary, and this sort of figuring things out for yourself is at the heart of self-sufficiency.

Fry the Onion and Chile mix until soft, then add your leftover Turkey, removed from the bones and chopped into centimetre-sized chunks. Fry until browned, and serve on top of Refried Beans, perhaps on a bed of Nachos, or maybe wrapped in a Tortilla with a dollop of Yoghurt (or Sour Cream, if your weight/cholesterol level can stand it).

Enjoy, and pause to give thanks to the ancient Mesoamerican gardeners and plant- breeders who made it all possible. Well, aside from the Onions. And the frying...

New Addition

A very small addition to the menagerie...

Just 6 weeks old, and we're still searching for a good name for her. Looking at the pedigree certificates we discovered that this little one's Dad and Keira are brother and sister - probably from the same litter!