Apple photos

A picture's worth a thousand words. Here's some photos to show you some of the stuff I went over in yesterday's post.

Here we have a batch of seeds that are sprouting. You see the white tails poking out of some seeds. They'll keep going as long as they stay moist. I like to wait until they have some growth on 'em before transferring them to soil




How the seedlings spend most of their time. The bag keeps moisture in. Seedlings like moisture. They seem to get enough light through the baggie.


Inside the cup. These were from pink lady apple seeds.


And these are from fuji apple seeds. In the middle, you see a baby seedling. That's what they look like when they first come out of the ground, though they'll probably still have an apple seed shell on top of them.


This guy has root rot. The bottom of the root has become all shriveled and brown. There's still a bit of healthy root, but better to get rid of it so it doesn't infect anyone else.

Baby apple trees

Over the last few months, I've been working very diligently on my experiments in growing plants. Working so diligently, in fact, that I managed to destroy most of them!

The main thing I've learned about plants is that you do more by doing less. In the beginning, I just wanted to be a good plant mommy, and water my plants all the time, and spoon-feed them little drops of sunshine, etcetera. Since then, I've learned that plants are not like babies. Plants are more like teenagers. They just want to do their own thing. If you dote on them, they wither.

(I base this statement on my own experience with being a teenager, which wasn't too long ago; I was a bitch, Mom would agree.)

Mostly, I overwatered. Overwatering killed maybe ten or twenty apple seedlings, my one chamomile shoot, my random garlic cloves, and my one orange seedling. Rest in peace, guys.

Since then, I've decided to stick with sprouting apple seeds, since I've always got a supply of them. The mint is also around, but it's infested with aphids and some other bug that makes a really sticky substance. It's irritating.

I've learned so much. At the beginning, this was my mindset:

• Plants need soil, water, and sunshine.
• If a plant gets all three of those things, it should grow.

Now I know:

• Each plant is a little different.
• Plants generally need soil that drains well, a little water, a lot of sun or fluorescent light, adequate air flow, and an appropriate temperature range.
• Apple seedlings like soil that drains well, very little water, tons and tons of light, cool temperatures, and high humidity for their little leaves.

Now I have something like ten apple seedlings, and only a few of them succumbed to root rot. So I can pat myself on the back a bit.

Here's the method that's finally yielded results, if you're curious:

1. Sprout the seeds. Check the seeds in the apple. If they're already sprouting, put them in a moist paper towel, and put that inside a plastic baggie. (Or, for a non-disposable option, use a washcloth or rag and put it in a tupperware or other sealed container.) Wait one week. If they're not sprouting, dry them for 1 week. Put them in the moist paper towel + baggie apparatus, and put that in the fridge for 3-4 weeks (checking every week). Take it out, and wait one week.
2. You should have at least some seeds with a white tail sticking out. These are your future apple trees. Throw away the seeds that didn't sprout.
3. Prepare a home for your seedlings. I like to convert plastic containers into pots -- plastic cups, yogurt cups, water bottles chopped in half. Punch three or four holes in the bottom, and fill it with potting soil. For best results, you'll want one for each sprouted seed, but I tend to stick them two or three to a pot. Another small tip: I found it's easier to use clear plastic containers and fill them half full of soil, and you'll see why in a second. Water the soil until water flows from the bottom, and let it drain until there's no more water coming out.
4. Plant your seeds. Make a little dent with your finger, put your seed in there with the root pointing down. Cover the root gently with soil. I find I get the best results if I let the seed rest on the top of the soil, or very near the top.
5. Create good growing conditions. This means light, and lots of it, temperatures from 60-75ish, good humidity with adequate air flow, and moist soil. Basically, here's how I do it: cover the top with a plastic baggie, and punch some holes in it. (That's why it's handy to use half-full clear plastic containers; they admit light, and your seedlings won't be crushed by the baggie.) Since it's summer and it's too hot out for these guys, I keep them inside on my shelf all day, and I use a CFL bulb to give them light from about 7 AM - 10 PM. I've got a few at work, and they only get light from 8 AM -5 PM, but they seem to do all right.
6. Let 'em be. They'll shoot right up in a matter of days. I water mine maybe once every week or two. And I water from the bottom, not the top. Just put some water in a shallow dish and set the pot in the water; the soil soaks it right up through the drainage holes. You can still overwater this way, so be conservative. Apple seedlings like it a little on the dry side; a little on the wet side will kill them, easily. Just note that you should really try to alternate watering from the top and the bottom, so that the salt doesn't build up too much in the soil. The only time I intervene is to pull off the woody seed case. Generally they should be able to cast 'em off on their own, but sometimes they do need help.
7. Pull the ones that don't do well. If one gets root rot, you'll know it because it won't grow as fast as the others. When you pull it up, it'll have brown roots that are sort of soggy. This sort of thing is communicable, so you want to get rid of it. If they start to wilt, or if you see any brown around the roots, you want to get rid of it. They progress as such: first, they should pop up off the soil, with the seed shell still on. They cast this off, and the false leaves spread and start photosynthesizing. There'll be a little shoot between the false leaves; these are true leaves, and it's so cool to look at them every day and see how fast they grow. If the leaves look really, really super-green, you want to pull back on the watering. Light green is a good color for the leaves.

The thing you want to remember is that these guys may not bear fruit, necessarily, when they get older. And they also may not bear fruit that resembles the apple they came from. Apples these days are grafted, which I'm not really sure what that means, but you basically do something to the roots so that they grow up really small, and they produce the apple you want them to.

Johnny Appleseed, who I read about on Wikipedia, evidently did not believe in grafting due to religious beliefs. I'm with him on this one, more for ecological reasons than anything else. We really should have trees that grow tasty apples naturally. Actually, we should really have more fruiting trees in the wild, period. Because they're cool. Yeah, I won't see an apple from these guys 'till I'm 30. So? I still think it's cool.

Saving the earth by... throwing money at it?

I was walking out of the Takoma metro station around 7:30 PM a few nights ago. I'd quit aikido early, because I didn't have the energy or the focus to swing a big wooden sword with 30 other people in the same room. I patted myself on the back for having discretion, trying not to feel too lame for needing additional energy and focus at 23 years old, and headed for home.

In a city where it's polite not to meet anyone in the eyes, I still can't break my habit of watching faces. (Not that I want to.) In North Carolina, it was fairly common to greet a stranger in passing, and I miss it. Not in DC. So I should have known better when I looked around for friendly faces, and I found one -- the face of a young woman, maybe my age. I was happy until I noticed that the face was attached to a body that was attached to a clipboard.

Oh, s***. She's canvassing.

I wavered in my path, maybe trying to decide if I should swerve, but the damage was done because we'd made eye contact. "Ma'am, do you feel strongly about environmental laws?"

Oh, well. Environment. And also, she called me "ma'am," which won my favor immediately. Last week, the security guard at work, after studying my ID badge, said "thank you, sir." I went up to my desk, fuming that I hadn't thought to stare him dead in the face and say, "uh, do you even LOOK at this thing?! How many GUYS named EMILY do you know?!"

I try not to get upset, because it happens more than I like, but come on. Just because my boobs aren't popping out of my shirt doesn't mean I'm a man.

Oh, anyway. This canvasser chick. We chatted for awhile, she said she was from the League of Conservation Voters, and did I know that blah blah blah was doing blah blah blah bad thing in congress and blah blah we need some money to fight the bad guys.

I made a good effort to listen, but all I could think of was how broken our government is. I'd read an Ansel Adams quote that day, something to the effect of "it's horrifying that we have to fight our government to save the environment." It's true, because our representatives (and I use that term loosely) are too busy pushing legislature for their big corporate friends to really represent us -- even if they wanted to.

Pushing that thought aside for another day, I stared down at the clipboard she'd pushed into my arms while she was doing her spiel. I was hoping to find written-down information of some sort, because my brain was already tired and it likes when things are visual. No such luck. There was some sort of laminated, generic fact-sheet, behind which were papers with peoples' credit card numbers.

Keep in mind that I had already made up my mind not to give her anything -- I donated to some charities for the homeless earlier this month, so I was off the hook for a little while, at least to myself. She tried her first appeal for money, which is the "monthly contributor" plea. I said, sorry, I can't do that, don't make a whole lot of money right now. (Which I don't. I get a cost-of-living stipend and a commuting stipend, and that's it. I've got savings, but that's for... saving.)

She tried her second appeal: that's okay, you can do a one-time donation. I said, sorry, not today. I need to go read some stuff on your website, do some research first. Her first response was, oh, I know everything that you'll find on the website. The second response was, you can't become a monthly contributor on the website.

What a drag.

I told her I was tired and I couldn't possibly focus enough to concentrate on what she was saying, but that I would read the website. I wished her good luck.

And it felt really weird to walk away from someone working on environmental issues. But that's what I did. Honestly, I'm glad that I did, for a few reasons.

1. There's no guarantee that she won't do something dishonest with my credit card number, or steal my money.
2. There's no guarantee that my donation will support what she says it's supporting.
3. I'm not donating if I don't know the organization well, and I don't know the League well, apart from the name. I need to know what they do; they might do stuff I'm not cool with. For example, I think it's great that Greenpeace works so hard to get out the environmental message, but I don't think I want to support them breaking into Mount Rushmore.
4. Generally, canvassers are very passionate about the issues they work for, but the other part of the incentive is the commission they get for each donation. I can't trust someone who's got a personal financial stake in my donation. Maybe you can.
5. I'm not sure how much I believe we can solve our environmental problems by becoming embroiled in political battles. If I give money, I want it going to tree planting or educating the public.
6. I don't think canvassers are educating the public. People know the environment is going down the tank, and they know that life is brutal on capitol hill. Educating the public, to me, would be more like engaging people in conversations about what they can do in their own lives, and why they should do it. What a canvasser does is begging for money, not public education.

I'm really glad that people feel so moved that they will canvass. It's a really hard job with a high turnover rate. I guess I'd just feel differently if I thought they were actually doing anything for the environment. Obviously, I understand that the political side is important, and there are folks who will donate to those causes -- I'm just not one of them.

Swine flu follow-up: no more antibiotics down on the farm

According to the NY Times (and CNN as well, but I couldn't find the article this morning), the government may be wising up a bit to the CAFO scheme. Representative Louise M. Slaughter introduced a measure that proposes the following:

1. Ban the use of seven antibiotics, used to treat humans, from use on animals;
2. Restrict the use of other antibiotics to mostly therapeutic uses (with some preventative use)

The medical community is all for it, obviously; this would safeguard the effectiveness of antibiotics. However, the folks who mass-produce meat are not gonna stand for it, and the measure is not expected to pass. It's thought that the measure will be added onto the health care reform bill.

Also, we have someone up top lambasting such misuse of antibiotics: the principal deputy commissioner of food and drugs, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, basically told the House Rules Committee that the casual feeding of antibiotics to livestock should be stopped, and antibiotic use should require a vet's supervision.

It might strike you as odd that anyone would be allowed to use antibiotics for anything without first consulting someone of a medical profession, but there you have it. That's how they do business, these CAFO people.

Meat is not going to become any less healthy. If anything, the price might rise a bit to cover the extra costs of raising animals in such a despicably unhealthy fashion. (By which I mean, to put it bluntly, that it's likely that more animals will die. Which might be a mercy, when you look at how they have to live.)

This is the part where I tell you, again, that limiting your meat consumption will help. Meat production has become so bloated and unsustainable because people demand meat several times a week, or daily, or multiple times a day. You don't have to cut it out, just cut back. If demand lowers, fewer animals will be raised this way. Or, you can eat smaller. Limit the amounts you eat, or limit yourself to poultry (takes considerably less energy to produce). Better yet, buy from your local farmer's market.

The bottom line, for me, is that this is an exceedingly unsustainable process that hurts us where we live. (If you don't believe me, go try to live next to a CAFO.) Old habits die hard, and I'm far from 0% (I'm at ~1 meat serving a week), but if I can keep a couple more of my dollars from factory farms, I'm doing something.