ForbesOnTech

Peach Buds Pop, So It's Time to Plant Heirloom Tomatoes

Watching peach buds pop open in my front yard is like a cannon fire signalling the  beginning of the garden season here on my mountaintop home in the avocado empire,north of San Diego.

I’m passionate about gardening and love few things more than salads made with home grown produce.

besides normal garden fare such as greens, radishes, onions and peppers, i’m very found of outrageously large heirloom tomatoes.this weekend I made my annual trip to Escondido’s Hawthorne Country Store to pick up my favorite heirloom varieties before every other home gardener empties the very large cart that's filled with heirloom seedlings.

I absolutely love the promising names of some heirloom tomatoes. “Martian Giant” is one of my favorites and is a vine I've had a lot of success with. “Giant” is something of an understatement when it comes to the fruit this variety produces. Last year my two vines produced some of the biggest (just over three pounds) i’ve ever grown. One of the reasons I like heirloom tomatoes is simple: as a result of careful propagation the flavor of most heirloom vegetables is more intense than basic hybrid varieties.

Another heirloom at the the tippy top of my “must plant” year;y  list is a variety called “Mortgage Lifter.” Although this tomato was propagated in the eastern US, it does  well here in Southern California, consistently producing 1.5 to 2 pound fruits that look great when sliced or added to sandwiches or cut into wedges for salads.

Other heirlooms that do well in Zone 9 gardens are Cherokee Purples, San Loranzanos and giant German Pinks.

Although I grow beefsteak hybrids and fast growing Ace 90 and cherry tomato varieties, it’s heirloom tomatoes that represent the real reward for my gardening hobby.

By this weekend, I’ll have seven more heirlooms in their planters, cages securely covered with mesh to discourage the legion of marauding squirrels I substantially thinned in last year’s massive “critter wars.”

I’m also building several raised garden beds this year.

But I don't limit my gardening efforts to vegetables and fruits. I also grow Virginia and Cuban tobacco as an insect barrier crop.  Tobacco?

You bet! since I started growing tobacco ten years ago,I’ve cut down on whitefly infestations and gastropod invasions. Besides, It’s a pretty plant as well as a historical California crop ( it was grown at most of the missions as a cash crop). And growing it brings out my inner rascally  Huckleberry Finn.

but ten years post stroke, any hobby that forces me to use my left hand is a good thing. And that’s just one of the reasons i recommend gardening as a form of physical therapy for stroke patients. Beside, it’s always nice to work on you sun tan under the warm California sun.-- Jim Forbes on 03/23/ 2014.

SMart Phone Health and Medical Apps--- The Tsunami Approaches

The next big thing in health improvement may be no farther away than your smart phone.

Patient self-monitoring could be one of the most important emerging categories of applications for Android and iOS phones. The initial offerings in this category are standard fare; calorie counters, dietary databases and pedometers are obvious examples. But technologists are moving forward with more advanced applications that monitor your pulse and which trigger alarms when preset values monitored by wearable or implanted sensors are exceeded.

But below the current horizon are a new generation of devices that will use smart phones to transmit the history of implanted (AICDs) cardioverter/defibrillators and which could connect the two devices using the human body as a transmitter. Also now in development are implantable glucose sensors for diabetic patients that transmit data to smart phones and which trigger alarms when blood sugar levels fall above or below preset clinical levels.

Many of the new health related smart phone applications are being investigated or developed by senior technologists whose life and industry experience fall outside of the current “found- a-startup- and-sprint-for-liquidity” model that defines industry.

No one makes this point better than Philippe Kahn, whose post Borland career includes pioneering software that allows readily sharing digital pictures on social media and other platforms. Mr. Kahn’s new venture is called MPath Technology, which uses a smart phone’s abilities to capture physical motion and turn data points into accurate maritime or terrestrial navigational systems. “The MotionX wearable sensing platform at FullPower (is protected by dozens of patents. We are 75 scientists, engineers, technologists working  in Santa Cruz, CA, focused on inventing and staying away from business battles, et cetera”.Some of the areas
MPath may next explore are smart phone-based health apps, according to the company web site.

Although MPath’s Mr. Kahn eschews today’s MBA-cookie cutter entrepreneurial model, the complexity and cost of any next-generation health app that works in conjunction with pharmaceutical or critical patientvital signs monitoring may favor startups with very deep pockets or direct ties to established medical companies. A single phrase in this smart phone application category—regulatory agency approval—adds months and mega buck research development costs to product delivery.

But topical applications such as those measure physical activity and deliver caloric burn rates, Or which allow individuals to download and store personal health records and insurance plan data (including info on in-plan physicians) are well within the range of most start-ups and represent
fast paths to liquidity or cash injection points.

Recommendations for Early CA Sierra Trout fishing: Head out to Fuller or Manzanita Lake Now!

I’m stuck in San Diego on the opening day of the California Sierra trout season, unable to  engage in the one recreational past time I thoroughly enjoy, whipping water with ultra-light fishing gear, as I slowly bake at altitude under the unadulterated high Sierra sun.

The humanity of getting older, Is balanced in my life today by the reality of my health—which has not been all that good for the preceding 12 months. Last week I  had non-native human parts added to my body to correct a coronary condition that’s been building for the last decade.

To be precise, I had a cardioverter (combination pacemaker and defibrillator) stuck in my chest. So it’s no lifting and definitely no casting of fishing lines for me until mid-June.

I’m above ground, unable to fish, and I find myself napping throughout the day.

But I really really wish I were fishing Fuller Lake right now. Now other fishery in California has been as routinely productive for me over the years as this little known man-made lake On California’s Highway 20 east of Grass Valley www.kiene.com/reports/lakes/fuller.shtm.

 Fuller is so good I recommend it to jaded fishermen who think they’ve seen it all. It gets regular plants and has a substantial populations of both hold-over and native trout. It’s one of the few lakes where I routinely bring home at least one German Brown in my five fish limit. But better yet, when I’ve resorted to bait (such an ugly word) I’ve also consistently managed double hookups when fishing on the east side of the dam above its outfall.

You don’t need a $500 Orvis outfit to successfully fish Fuller. The one gadget I do recommend for Fuller, however, is a float tube. If you paddle out in a float tube, it helps to understand that the creek bed (think trout freeway here) meanders just off the shore opposite the road to the head of this Lake). This section of Fuller has been especially productive to me over gthe years I’ve fished the lake.

I have another semi-secret trout fishing spot in the Sierras east of Visalia, CA. It’s an under fished body of water near North Fork, CA called Manzanita Lake http://www.tripadvisor.com/AllReviews-g32789-North_Fork_California.html.

This little known jewel may be the perfect destination for Southern California trout fishermenn who want a great experience without a 10-hour drive. Manzanita has always been a little known but more productive fishing destination than the much more commonly known Millerton reservoir or nearby bass Lake. Manzanita is stocked regularly, has overnight camping and excellen fishing from the shore opposite a large boulder in the middle of the lake.

I have had excellent results using light weight (white pattern)Mepps lures and Colorado spinners here. The trick is if you cast towards the dam, your lure is headed for deep cold water—which is where old fat rainbows live. Do let your lure sink before beginning your retrieve. Manzanita may not offer instantaneous hook ups, but it’s a relaxing weekday or weekend fishing destination that’s never over crowded despite being loaded with feisty10-15 inch rainbows.

If I can’t  participate in the 2010  California trout opener, I can at least note places where experience has taught me to fish. Me miss the opener? Oh the humanity. Or more appropriately, oh the fishanity.—Jim Forbes on 5/31/2010.

Peach Buds Pop: On Your Mark, Get Set, Garden!

It takes two simple things to kick start my gardening bug; the blossoming of my peach trees; and the successful starting of my two-cycle rototiller. And both happened last week, so my 2020 gardening season is underway in February.

The problem with beginning my garden his early in the year is that I spend a lot of time looking at the temperature and atmospheric pressure fervently hoping   gray clouds slinking towards my home from Mount Palomar won’t unleash a spring hail storm.

Although it rarely happens, Mother Nature has a way of teaching me she’s in charge; most recently in 2008 when a 15-minute freak hail storm. withered  five rows of two-foot tall tomatoes and several nice green leafy mounds of Yukon Gold potatoes in as well as nearly 100 Sequoia strawberry plants and two rows of Havana gold tobacco.

Gardening in Zone 9 is easy. There’s enough sunshine to set my plants early and to experiment with new cultivars every year. I start every year with a list of new plants I want to try in my garden. This year’s big experiment is burley tobacco and celery.  You might think growing celery is easy, since it’s little more than crispy, stringy, water. Turns out the common celery plant isn’t easy to grow. It has a 180-day growing cycle and it likes full sun and a regular watering. It also has specific soil requirements and because its seeds are tiny, it can be hard to germinate.

Aside from what I’ve read on Internet gardening sites, most of what I know about growing celery has been handed down to me from my Father’s people—hardy pioneers who were Eastern Utah and West slope Colorado farmers and ranchers. After looking at the soil in both those states in areas where the Forbes Family lived, I think I may have taken their vegetable success stories too literally. While I recognize that a lot of celery is grown in Utah, I’ve come to appreciate that it’s grown somewhere that has a vastly different soil chemistry than northern San Diego County. The harvested celery fields I saw in Utah had fine soil the color of Nestles Quick chocolate drink mix. The soil in Colorado is incredibly rich dark sandy loam. None of that remotely resembles the dirt in my garden but that’s not going to stop me.

“Well, isn’t that nice and Good Luck with the celery, Jim?” I thought churning through a 20-foot square patch of my garden with my seven-year-old Mantis tiller.  In sad acknowledgement of the need for improved drainage and sweeter soil required by celery, I’ve added about 40 pounds of sand and just less than 15 pounds of ground sea shells to the soil in this part of my garden. If I’m wrong the worse thing that can happen is I’ll continue to buy celery at the local farmers market or grocery store. And, If my experiment is completely off the mark, I’ll just plant heirloom tomatoes in this patch. And I know how to grow t hose in abundance. The increased calcium in this plot should yield to sweeter tomatoes. And that’s a good thing.

I fill, out my garden in stages.  The next vegetables I’ll plant will be Brussels sprouts, cabbages, lettuce and my yearly six to ten rows of Sequoia strawberries. The one new strawberry hybrid I’m trying his year is a strain called “Ozark” which yields firm sweet two-ounce fruits.  I’m planting the Ozarks in the lower of my two big gardens. With any luck, the local weasels will eat any voles or gophers that try to eat my strawberries.

I’ve gardened since I was a kid and I’ve always enjoyed my time coaxing good produce from the dirt in my yard. As an adult who had a stroke nearly eight years ago, I’ve found gardening to be incredibly therapeutic. It forces me to use my weak hand, to pay attention to my balance and it improves my remaining self-confidence.  Gardening is an activity I recommend for anyone who’s come through a debilitating stroke. It keeps me active and outside and it puts healthy vegetables and tasty fruit on my dinner table.

And speaking of fruit, the peach tree that serves as the starting signal for my yearly gardening is swamped in pink blossoms. I think I may have to shore up some branches again this year.—Jim “Farmer” Forbes on 02/21/2010.

 

Mixing Dyes, getting Ready for my 2010 Tie-dyed Shirt Projects

Back from Colorado, unpacked and just finished mixing 12 quarts of Procion MX dyes for my first batch of tie-dyed tshirts in 2010. Ive decided to focus on basic patterns such as swirls, hearts and maybe a Mandela or two in my first batch of shirts, but depending on my luck off the San Diego Coast this comings week, i may also attempt a fish patterned shirt to record a halibut catch.

Tie Dying is a hobby I can recommend heartily by waving two dye-stained hands over my head. I like it because it's something I can do despite being handicapped by the loss of my left hand as the permanent effect of a stroke several years ago, and because it extremely creative and relatively inexpensive.

My cost for dyes, plastic activity boxes-- which I use as catch basins when I apply dyes, and misc supplies was about $75 last year. High quality white t-shirts ( I prefer AllStyle heavyweight t-shirts) added another $100 to last year's budget.

$175 for a hobby that takes up a couple of hours each week throughout the year seems inexpensive, given the enjoyment get from wearing shirts I created and designed.

Although i've made tie dyes for more than a year, I still have a long way to go. For example, through trial and numerous brown spotted errors, i've learned that when you're using the color purple, it needs to be the last color you apply. Pinks are also twitchy to apply, although I like the contrast of hot pink and caribbean blue when used to create a two-color swirl patterned shirt.

My tie dyed hobby came upon me quite suddenly and i was incredibly surprised to find out that many left-handed people who have had  mid right brain strokes can become artistically creative out of the blue.

that's exactly how my hands came to be stained on weekends. One year into the hobby I have a nice collection of hand crafter tie dyed shirts and a new found appreciation of the need to buy and use good gloves that can withstand multiple exposures to caustic dyes. Even when I goof up making a shirt i never forget that with tie dyes you proudly wear your mistakes.

ten years ago, if someone would have told me i'd be making tie dyes  and curing the shirts in aluminum roasting pans sitting on bricks on my frot porch that had beenheated in my kitchen stove to 200 degrees, I would have said "Shut up, no way!"

But here I am, on the first Saturday night of the new year waiting for three shirts to hit 150 degrees before they go into my washing machine for two cycles and from there into my closet.

Way dude! the path to unlocking my creativity came to me after a devastating stroke that left me embarrassed about being handicapped.

that's my story and Im sticking to it!  Dude--jim Forbes, with Procion dye stained hands in Escondido, CA on 01/02/2010.

Counting Down the Hours to that Damned Invasive Procedure--Then off to the Fair

Later this morning I go into my health provider for yet another “fantastic voyage” as part of their overall campaign to help me get healthier and become aware of how my body parts are holding up to the wear and tear of my somewhat spastic but active lifestyle.

            At the moment, I’m hungrier than a coyote enforced to live warily on the outskirts of the Donner cabin in the Sierra. Coffee and bland
Jell-O just doesn’t cut it for breakfast. I’m also nervous. But the good news is: just two more intrusions and it’s done. That’s just great. The better news is that after this is all done, I’m going to the LA County Fair to indulge in my secret vices of betting on large horses that have almost now chance of ever winning a race, and kicking tires of new tractors in the farm implements exhibits.

            I have an unusual horse racing routine I practice at the LA County Fair.  I park my friends and picnic lunch under a tree well beyond the turn into the backstretch.  I enjoy my kosher hot dog, slurp my fresh-squeezed icy lemonade and wait for the starter’s gates to clang open.  Then I lie down on the grass near the fence and put my ear to the ground and listen for the thunder as the horses come on around*. It’s then that I know I’m back in Pomona at the County Fair**.

            It will be then that I realize my day of indignity at the gentle hands of my health provider are done.  It could be worse. I could be my dog. “Sr. Perro” who’s been forced to have several exams this week. I’m so glad I don’t come from a species that scent marked its territories using anal glands. I feel more for the indignity of Sr. Perro than I do for myself.

            But hey, someone has to be the pack alpha here on my little mountaintop in rural northern San Diego County. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it—Jim Forbes on 09/14/2007 on my way to Kaiser for my doc's version of "a fantastic voyage.". Yeow!!!!

* and ** both inspired by and copied from folk rock pioneer John Stewart's album, California Blood Lines.

A 30-day Reprieve--Thank God!

Well my health provider just called with disturbing news.  They cancelled my butt-clenching feared sigmoidoscopy procedure scheduled for tomorrow and set it back 30 days.

Dear me, 30 days of staring at the bottle of super colonic evacuating Calcium citrate solution now chilling in my coolerator, just watiing for that "special" day in September.

A big sigh of relief and I can now relax my buns. --Jim Forbes 08/13/2007

Procedures that Build Buns of Steel-- Think "Sigmoidoscopy"

Know the one word that can instantly cause you to lose interest in blogging and turn your buttocks lightning quick into “buns of steel?”

            Try “sigmoidoscopy!” 

            There, I said it. Unfortunately I don’t feel better for it. I just feel buttocks- cringingly apprehensive about it.

            I begin prepping for the dastardly deed this evening with sundry potions guaranteed to create a ziggurat of colonic filth, leave me weak and which allows me to only eat disgusting substances such as bland white yogurt and maybe some banana.

            Wow! I feel so special. And of course void. But then the bastards have a dastardly plan to violate me.

            They may take my dignity, but they can’t take my sense of humor.  To wit the t-Shirt I just printed up:“I lost my dignity at Kaiser San Marcos on Aug 14.”

            I hope it makes the docs laugh. Hee hee—Jim Forbes on Aug 13/2007.