Seedlings and beer..

Whipped up a new stout with Comando Savvas a couple days ago. We did an American Stout with a hint of chocolate malt and a smidgen of oats. The next morning, I found what we *really* should have put in this thing.. cocao nibs! Damn. Next time, for sure! Anyway, I think he used an Irish mack pack from Wyeast to kick his off, while I deviated from the norm and went with a re-pitch of the lacto/sacchro mix I dredged up from the bottom of my Berliner weisse fermenter. Talk about 'yer night and day.. His exploded through the airlock later that night, he tells me.. mine was a little slower in starting off, but is going pretty hard core, just reaching to up underneath the tinfoil I've got perched on the top. Check it..

That thermo says "76.5" degrees in there, last time I looked. Much better than the 80-something I had there for the Pale ale I did for Avalon!

In other news, check the coffee tree.. it's got a handfull of flowers forming! Might get a half cup of beans from this thing after all...

Here's yesterday haul from the garden:

This deadly monster came from the Habaneros two days ago and nearly killed me. Damn thing is totally inedible! Way too hot.. and there's like, 8 plants of these things. Sheesh.

And lastly, a tiny lettuce seedling (two, really) coming up in a container I have on the window sill.. gonna be a transplant in a few weeks or so. Probably.

If these survive, it will be he first seedlings I have successfully raised in a container to transplant to the outdoors. Thus far, I'm batting 000 across the board for seedlings. Mostly because I've tried planting in outdoor woods obtained soil. That killed 'em immediately, cause who knows what's lurking in that dirt. The next ones I tried popped up while I was on vacation and just up and died from lack of attention. And we already know my Jalapeno failures from earlier this spring. I can grow a mean whatnot in the beds outside, but trying to raise 'em indoors is a deal-breaker for me. We're trying to end the curse with these little guys.

I'm reading a new book these days, "The Bountiful Container".. and it's really interesting. It's a book about, you guessed it, container gardening, for people with small yards or no yards at all.. and though I have enough yard to do what I want to do in the ground, I think raised beds, combined with self watering planters and some regular containers in strategic spots on the deck might be a more well rounded approach to the type of gardening I want to do. So, we'll read this book and see what it has to offer. So far, I like it. It takes a somewhat different approach than most others (except maybe from square foot gardening..) where it actually puts an emphasis on the aesthetics of the plots/plants and makes you think about how it's going to look when it's all done, thus perhaps bringing more fun to your mini-garden. In the past, I may have poo-poo'd this type of thinking (I'm way much more of a function over form kind of fellow..) but I do write this blog thing and take lots of pictures of my gardens for it, so it's starting to appeal to me more.

I'm also pondering lettuce a lot now.. 800 different known lettuce varieties in the US and so little time.. but we'll look at that in another post, I think. Carry on..