Lost wax bull with packaging peanuts

This was another failure where the mold blew out. Just wanted to post the image in wax so you can see what it would have looked like. This was done but making a silicon mold of a few packaging peanuts. making a ton of copies and then assembling. An aside to the whole lost foam bull fiasco.

Northern brewer 10% off entire order

April 13th - April 19th

Hops shoots with garlic and oil recipe.

I guess it is suggested you cut back to about 5 shoots per plant for best yield. The internet suggested that you can eat the hops shoots. So I did. Only the nice purple ones that had not spread leaves tasted any good the others were much too tough.

They can be prepared like you would asparagus. for me that means coated in olive oil with garlic salt and pepper. Then I broil on high until they start to change color.
What do they taste like? garlic olive oil and salt.
Is it safe to eat hops shoots? I plan on updating this blog later today or tomorrow. If there is another post the answer is yes.

Discussion on eating hops shoots on the grow hops list here

pizza box and newspaper plant nursery

This holds about 25 of the recycled newspaper paper pots shown in this post.
Simply a pizza box lined with the plastic I took off the window (SPRINGTIME!).

After filling the pots with soil and a variety of seeds and water I add another layer of wet newspaper. I then fold the plastic over to trap the moisture.

A lamp heats the seeds to germinate quickly. I will pull the plastic back in about 5 days.

Bender and Morbo futurama kidrobot

Sweet!

Also feel free to send me zoidberg. thanks.

Two piece lost wax mold jesus

The goal of the two piece mold is to allow me to clean the wax out of the mold perfectly as well as dry the mold completely.

The wax sculpture before plaster

The front half is dipped in the plaster.

Oil is spread over the plaster bottom half and another layer is poured on.
Then after setting the two halves are separated. The dark spots on the top half are babbit to allow for the nails to be pulled out even though they are not perfectly straight.


holes were drilled to allow the metal to flow into the mold. and i set a can in plaster to make a spout.

Hops growing in a pot year two.

So the hop wintered over very well. very very well. All i did was cover it in a foot of mulch. So I guess that is adequate frost protection in pittsburgh.

For spring I just dumped the pot cut the thick coiling rhizomes and gave it fresh soil to work on. It had pretty much filled the pot with roots.

The dumping process was a challange. I was trying to lift it and found that it was very heavy. The reason was that the four small drain holes in the pot had huge roots growing through them anchoring the pot to the ground.


So when I say hops can grow in pots I guess I mean they can but try their best to get out. here are the shoots comming up in force for the spring: