The first of many rants.

Okay, I'm going to do something different, then I'll try to get back to regular gardening stuff.  It's still garden related, but deserves it's own post.  If, somehow, more than just myself reads this blog, one trend you'll come across from time to time is a post calling bullshit on something random. Today's subject: local honey. (it's related...someday I'll make a post on bee-keeping). The internet, tabloids, and any panderer of organic/raw/whatever will tell you that raw local honey is the best honey. Well, they might be right, but they're going to bullshit you sideways with their reasoning.

One of the big arguments for local honey is that it helps with allergies. Now, I've actually got a strong background in immunology, and its true that ingesting allergens (eh...things that cause allergies) is a great way to “tolerize” your immune system, essentially training it to not attack random things (e.g. dust, pollen, cat dander). Great! One problem though. Google this shit, and you'll see the first thing to pop up is from Web MD, saying that there is most likely no connection. Yes, there may be some connection, but it would be really small, and logically doesn't make sense. Bees carry pollen from plants that are pollenated by...well...bees. Wind carries the pollen of most things that cause allergies though (grass, trees, etc). This means that eating the pollen produced by bees is kind of worthless, since the pollen they harvest is not pollen that you're allergic to.

Next, you'll see that “processed” honey is missing out on a lot of anti-virals, anti-bacterials, etc. Well, sort of. Fact of the matter is, raw honey is GREAT at protecting open wounds from infection. Not as good as say...a band aid and neosporin, but still pretty good. There is no evidence, however, that eating those anti-virals/anti-bacterials does anything useful for you. Oh well.

There's also evidence that raw, local honey has a few other “enzymes” and “micronutrients” in it. Because “enzymes” are inherently good, right? Tell that to people who have a gunshot wound to their pancreas or stomach, spilling hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes all over their insides. Or perhaps you'd like “reverse transcriptase” and “retroviral integrase,” the enzymes that help viruses like HIV and herpes enter your genome, where they will live forever. Context is really fucking important, a fact that is easy to forget. Of course, 95% or more of proteins that enter your stomach are destroyed immediately by digestive enzymes and stomach acid. So how are they helping you if they're destroyed?

You know, it's funny, the NIH actually warns against eating raw honey, in some instances. Botulism spores can be a problem in “unprocessed” or “raw” honey, and eating it can be dangerous, particularly if you're an infant or have a really weak immune system. For your average Joe? Probably doesn't matter, honestly. You might get sick, but you'll be able to fight it off, and it's pretty unlikely anyways.

The reality is this. Many (if not most) of the studies and conclusions that find that organic/raw/whatever foods are better are strongly biased. They come from groups that have strong conflicts of interest. Lots of studies come out of Europe, for example, showing that GMO's basically cause instant-cancer-rape-explosion-death. Matching their bullshit propaganda, they're usually published in bullshit journals like “The French journal of fuck GMO's,” (I kid, but seriously, some of these journals unquestioningly publish articles that bash Monsanto, GMO's, etc). Whenever a really big, well designed study comes out regarding GMO's, raw food, vaccines, etc, it DOES get published in respectable journals. The findings? Most of the other studies are full of shit, and GMO's aren't dangerous (to your health anyways...that's for another day), raw foods don't offer much, if any health benefits, and vaccines do, in fact, save lives instead of causing autism (fuck you Jenny McCarthy). Sadly, until people start accepting unbiased data, we will be stuck with statements like this: “The North Dallas Honey Company says a daily tablespoon of honey can actually act like an allergy shot.” No fucking shit they make this claim! They're LOCAL HONEY PRODUCERS for fuck's sake.

Okay, deep breath. I clearly get worked up about this kind of stuff, because I think that buying into the whole “local and raw and organic is healthier” trend is making us dumber as a country, and giving people without a science background confidence to talk about this stuff, even when they don't understand the words they're saying. In reality, buying local honey (not sure about raw) is probably better, but for different reasons that you'd think. Firstly, you're supporting local beekeepers, which is awesome. Colony collapse is largely limited to the commerical industry, but it can affect local beekeepers as well. Giving them reason to keep producing is a good thing. Second, a strong local bee population is useful for a healthy ecosystem, and may help small farms to get better yields on some crops (tomatoes, beans, peas, and others are wind pollinated, but squash are pollinated by bees!). Third, you're supporting local business. That's usually not a bad thing. Finally, flavor is important. I recently bought honey from our local blueberry farm. It was different. I actually liked it the least of any honey I've ever tried, but it's got some really interesting flavors going on. I would buy it again, I think, just for a change up from the standard “clover honey” offered at the grocery. I've also tried raw honey on the comb before from the farmer's market, which was really good, and unlike any other honey I've ever tried (also really messy!).

So what do you do? I don't care honestly. You're not going to hurt anything by buying local, or eating raw honey (though you might get botulism...yikes), but you're probably not going to gain much either, except supporting your local economy and bee pollination. Don't forget that the commercial bee industry is actually really important with agriculture practices in the U.S. A field of almond trees needs to be pollinated, and the best way to do that is to transport around a bunch of hives while the trees are in bloom, since an ecosystem of all almond trees can't support a normal bee population (flowers are only present for a couple weeks a year). When the almond season ends, move on to the next crop! Without that commercial industry, we'd have a lot less food. Remember that.

The one that started it all

My gardening endeavors started slowly.  I've always kept a potted plant or two since college, but I rented in apartments and houses and whatnot, so real gardening wasn't really in the cards.  A couple years ago, I started renting a house on a 1/2 acre plot of sunny ground.  Add in a friend who had an industrial tiller, and BAM 1200+ sqft garden.  It was big.  Too big; but I learned a lot.  I began a grow setup with lights and all to start my plants.  I grew everything from seed, including peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, etc.  I also began growing raspberries, blackberries, and a couple potted flowers.  Lastly and most importantly, I also started my first real endeavor:  The Fig. 

As it turns out UCDavis hosts a USDA germplasm depository/distribution center for a bunch of stuff, including the fig.  In the name of "research" you could order fig cuttings for the cost of shipping of dozens of varieties, as they needed to prune their trees every year anyways.  Naturally, I got 10 varieties. (Alas, they've since discontinued this service...too much demand, not enough people to help with paperwork).  Many months later, I had heard nothing from them, and despite emails, had heard nothing back.  Bummer.

Fortunately, the fig community is large and passionate, and through a couple of sites (figs4funforum.com and ourfigs.com), you can score huge numbers of fig cuttings for dirt cheap in winter.  That winter, one forum member was offering 2-3 cuttings each of 10 varieties for 30 bucks.  Sure!  Why not?  As a bonus, when they arrived, he had sent half a dozen extra, less common varieties out of good will.  Jesus these people are friendly!  I spent the better part of the next couple months trying to root them, which turns out to be pretty easy (a topic for another day), but has its complications for sure.

Four months later, and I've got a crap-ton of little fig trees..maybe 15-20 or so.  Sweet!  Then one day I get a shipping notice that looked very official.  The USDA repository was shipping me 7 of the 10 varieties I requested.  A week later, and I've got 20+ sticks rooting again.  By late spring, I practically had a fig forest.  What the hell do you do with multiple plants of 25-30 different fig varieties?  More on that in a second.

Regrettably, I got some bad news during all of this.  The house we rented with a nice big plot got taken away from us when our landlord told us she wanted to sell the house, and we were in no position to buy.  Shit.  It got bought within 7 days of going on the market.  Double shit.  Now, not only did I have all these plants (plus some blueberries and a few other things in pots), but I had to move them all!  Worse still, I was trying to finish grad school, and my girlfriend was in between jobs.  We didn't even know if we'd be in the same state in 3 months.

Fortunately, the girlfriend landed a sweet job in town, I graduated and picked up a job a few months later, and we ended up renting another house a couple miles down the road with another nice big plot of land.  To this day, I have 3 varieties in ground, and another 12-15 or so varieties in pots.  They come with different flavors, sizes, textures, ripening times, colors.  And damn.  I will say that some of them absolutely kick ass in terms of flavor versus what is available in store.  Next summer, I'll try to catalogue the varieties I grow, and comment on them more extensively.  My goal for now is to give away/dispose of some of the less impressive varieties, and work towards honing my collection to something...in contrast to my blog title...more practical.

Day 0

I'm making a blog.  Not sure why, not sure anyone will care.  If nothing else, it will give me a way to document my gardening endeavors.  I type a mile a minute, so I figure this will be a hell of a lot more useful than trying to actually write things down.  If I have 5 views in 5 years, that's probably better than I expected.

Here goes...