The EllGab Garden

[26 horses]

cannabis plants?

Teen follies - soon flushed.

...it looked like a senior biology project I thought...

[26 horses]

Hops bines (not vines) grow better with spring pruning. Pruning the hop shoots is so painful for me. Yet I do it.  Some people eat the hop shoots. Pruning tomatoes and strawberries plants is also recommended. I grow hops not only in my backyard but also in a container that stands outside the front of my home. I have a partial brownstone front. I have a container with hops, pansies and some solar lights. In the photo you will see the hops shoots.

Beautiful! So do you use them for any home brewing or just what is their consumable value?

[Rikki Gins]

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

Not identified but I'm pretty sure these are Forget Me Nots.

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

This postcard is just over one month away from being 110 years old.  From Wiki, May 25, 1909:

Israel Greene, who had led the United States Marines in the capture of abolitionist John Brown at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, on October 18, 1859, died at the age of 85 at his farm near Mitchell, South Dakota.

 

[FISH]

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

Not identified but I'm pretty sure these are Forget Me Nots.

visitors can't see pics , please register or login

This postcard is just over one month away from being 110 years old.  From Wiki, May 25, 1909: 

I believe you are correct (right). These are forget-me-nots-"Myosotidium". This was my Mom's favorite flower. Her wedding band was engraved with forget-me-nots.

[FISH]

Beautiful! So do you use them for any home brewing or just what is their consumable value?

@26 horses , I seem to always have a story for why I do the things I do.  Someone in my family does brew beer.  However, the real reason why I started to grow hops, was it is in my DNA.  I was asked to start a family tree since my family was going to visit Bavaria. There is a hotel/brewery in Bavaria that holds our family's surname. Our surname is not a common name in Bavaria. My ancestors came to the USA after the German revolutions of 1848–49. I started to wonder how to brew beer and how to grow hops. My neighborhood is full of hipsters with their love for IPAs. So our local garden center offered an outdoor "hop class". The class served hop candy, hop soda, hop salad and lessons on growing hops. I attended the class. I only had one question. "Is there a hop plant with an origin to the Americas? The answer was no. It seems that all the hop plants in the Americas came from across the ocean. All our founding Fathers and Mothers grew hops in their yards.
At first, I started growing hops for brewing. I was so surprise at the beauty of the cones. There is a pungent smell to the hop plants. However, I like this aroma. The plant attracts butterflies. The long bines can be grown so quickly to over 20 feet long in one season. The plants hide the unsightly structure of the back of my house. The back of my house was finished off with asbestos shingles. The shingles remain and hidden during the summer months.

[26 horses]

@26 horses , I seem to always have a story for why I do the things I do.  Someone in my family does brew beer.  However, the real reason why I started to grow hops, was it is in my DNA.  I was asked to start a family tree since my family was going to visit Bavaria. There is a hotel/brewery in Bavaria that holds our family's surname. Our surname is not a common name in Bavaria. My ancestors came to the USA after the German revolutions of 1848–49. I started to wonder how to brew beer and how to grow hops. My neighborhood is full of hipsters with their love for IPAs. So our local garden center offered an outdoor "hop class". The class served hop candy, hop soda, hop salad and lessons on growing hops. I attended the class. I only had one question. "Is there a hop plant with an origin to the Americas? The answer was no. It seems that all the hop plants in the Americas came from across the ocean. All our founding Fathers and Mothers grew hops in their yards.
At first, I started growing hops for brewing. I was so surprise at the beauty of the cones. There is a pungent smell to the hop plants. However, I like this aroma. The plant attracts butterflies. The long bines can be grown so quickly to over 20 feet long in one season. The plants hide the unsightly structure of the back of my house. The back of my house was finished off with asbestos shingles. The shingles remain and hidden during the summer months.

Fascinating back story, truly.

So how does a hop salad taste and also the candy?

[FISH]

Fascinating back story, truly.

So how does a hop salad taste and also the candy?

@26 horses , hops have a bitter taste. Hop candy and hop soda will never become popular.

[26 horses]

@26 horses , hops have a bitter taste. Hop candy and hop soda will never become popular.

But in a salad, is it like radicchio or endive?

[PolkaDot]

@26 horses , I seem to always have a story for why I do the things I do.  Someone in my family does brew beer.  However, the real reason why I started to grow hops, was it is in my DNA.  I was asked to start a family tree since my family was going to visit Bavaria. There is a hotel/brewery in Bavaria that holds our family's surname. Our surname is not a common name in Bavaria. My ancestors came to the USA after the German revolutions of 1848–49. I started to wonder how to brew beer and how to grow hops. My neighborhood is full of hipsters with their love for IPAs. So our local garden center offered an outdoor "hop class". The class served hop candy, hop soda, hop salad and lessons on growing hops. I attended the class. I only had one question. "Is there a hop plant with an origin to the Americas? The answer was no. It seems that all the hop plants in the Americas came from across the ocean. All our founding Fathers and Mothers grew hops in their yards.
At first, I started growing hops for brewing. I was so surprise at the beauty of the cones. There is a pungent smell to the hop plants. However, I like this aroma. The plant attracts butterflies. The long bines can be grown so quickly to over 20 feet long in one season. The plants hide the unsightly structure of the back of my house. The back of my house was finished off with asbestos shingles. The shingles remain and hidden during the summer months.

We have a native subspecies here: neomexicanus. My understanding is that common hop is Mongolian- then to Europe-then to the Americas well over a million years ago.

[PolkaDot]

@26 horses , hops have a bitter taste. Hop candy and hop soda will never become popular.

It would be very similiar in palate to the weed candies. I wouldn't want it in a salad particularly because of texture.

[FISH]

It would be very similiar in palate to the weed candies. I wouldn't want it in a salad particularly because of texture.

@PolkaDot , at my hop class, they had served a hop salad with a dressing of sorts. Just for you, I will prune some of my hop spouts and take a taste. The spring spouts are like a thin flexible drinking straw. Texture should not be an issue.

[26 horses]

Cool video, those purple shoots look like the first thin asparagus of the season!

But as he says, not really the "poor man's asparagus"...looks tasty though!

[FISH]

We have a native subspecies here: neomexicanus. My understanding is that common hop is Mongolian- then to Europe-then to the Americas well over a million years ago.

@PolkaDot , you should have taught the hop class. You sent me on a journey learning about "neomexicanus". Thank you.

In the spring of 2010, the Monastery of Christ in the Desert planted a quarter-acre experimental hop yard that included several varieties of hops native to northern New Mexico (subspecies neomexicanus). In 2011 and again in 2013, the hop yard was expanded and several new varieties of native New Mexico hops were added.

https://www.abbeybrewing.biz/

[PolkaDot]

@PolkaDot , you should have taught the hop class. You sent me on a journey learning about "neomexicanus". Thank you.

In the spring of 2010, the Monastery of Christ in the Desert planted a quarter-acre experimental hop yard that included several varieties of hops native to northern New Mexico (subspecies neomexicanus). In 2011 and again in 2013, the hop yard was expanded and several new varieties of native New Mexico hops were added.

https://www.abbeybrewing.biz/

I'm a botany girl that's worked with the local Botanic Gardens and Herbaria and I happened to marry a home brewer before it was the cool thing. Tangent: he was outlowed from indoor brewing within the first year of marriage due to a boil over that stained my granite counter top! I'm still kinda mad about that. Anyway, there are pockets of wild native hops that are coveted around here. It's rather taboo to share where the native plants are found to protect the plants (and your wild harvest).  Locally, spruce tips are popular too if you're doing a wild brew.

[albrecht]

@26 horses , hops have a bitter taste. Hop candy and hop soda will never become popular.

@FISH

Never say never. Think of the salty candy loved by Nordics (NH4C the source of which is naturally found from burning coal dumps and main use is in industrial fertilizers or in Nordic candy) or the various other "acquired" tastes around the world. Apparently there is a "hop soda" that is popular in Sweden, essentially from what I can gather maybe the first "non-alcoholic beer?"  It outsells COKE even.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julmust

Something ate all of my Serrano pepper plant but didn't touch the nearby Jalapeno? Or the nearby Tomato (usually first thing they get) and Banana Pepper.