Chapter 249 Red Spider
Zhao Yeqing put the last piece of rapeseed cake into the oil bed and comforted himself: "This is not the first difficulty we have encountered in history. We have overcome it before. Our country is so powerful that this is definitely nothing."
After the last pancake was put down, Mu Xi checked the rope of the ram for the last time.
He set up a rack of logs in the yard and hung the ramming rod used to hit the oil press from it with ropes.
Zhao Yeqing stepped back a little, and Mu Xi pulled the long and thick ramming rod back a few steps, then let the ramming rod fall down by inertia, and hit it vertically on the wooden pillar supporting the oil bed.
With a "bang!" sound, the wooden pillar squeezed the rapeseed cake. After a few collisions, Zhao Yeqing saw golden and clear liquid flowing down from the diversion port of the oil bed.
Using a basin to catch the sound, Mu Xi continued to shake and hit the wooden pillar.
Until all the rapeseed cake inside can no longer produce oil.
The squeezed rapeseed cake can be reused. Take out the rapeseed cake that has been pressed into blocks, rinse it, grind it into powder, then wrap it into cakes and continue to impact it.
But this time the oil yield was greatly reduced.
No matter how small a fly is, it is still meat.
The two of them chose to start pressing the oil after dusk, which would be a little more comfortable. Although it would not be cool, at least they would not be exposed to the sun.
She sat by the door and admired his eight-pack abs with bare chest. Mu Xi, whose skin had been tanned to a bronze color, was working, and beads of sweat flowed down his neck to his abs.
Tsk tsk tsk.
Seeing Mu Xi looking at him, he pretended nothing had happened and played with the dog.
Mu Xi put all the oil in the kitchen to settle. After settling, he scooped it out and stored it in a plastic bottle.
This is the barrel of vegetable oil that was collected before. The oil inside has been used up, but Zhao Yeqing was reluctant to throw it away, so now he can continue to use it to store oil.
The 5-liter oil bottle was just filled up after filling three large bottles.
From the moment the rapeseed is steamed, the whole house is filled with a rich aroma of nutty oil, and now that the oil has been squeezed out, the aroma is even stronger.
The remaining rapeseed residue can be used as fertilizer or feed.
Feeding rapeseed directly to cattle and sheep can easily cause poisoning and indigestion, so she only dared to feed them in small quantities, and even rapeseed cake had to be fed in small quantities before they could be eaten.
The original owner's notes specifically stated that rapeseed meal contains toxins, which can cause goiter in cattle and sheep if eaten, and that it should not be eaten in large quantities without being detoxified. However, the owner did not explain how to detoxify it.
Zhao Yeqing thought that this was not a big deal for feed, so he just used it all as fertilizer.
If soybeans or peanuts are used for oil extraction, there will be no such concern. Soybean meal does not contain toxins and is an excellent feed fertilizer.
However, the oil yield of soybeans is low, with only about one or two ounces of oil produced per pound. Unless we plant more next year or when the temperature drops a little, we will be able to extract oil.
The two of them hadn't used vegetable oil to cook for a long time. The freshly squeezed rapeseed oil had a fragrant aroma, and any green leafy vegetables they stir-fried were delicious.
The vegetable garden in the basement has become a mung bean field. Leafy vegetables can only be planted in the gaps between fruits and vegetables, and they have not grown yet.
What was fried in the pot was the wild vegetable that Mu Xi picked in the woods when he chopped back the wood for the ramming pole for the last time - Solanum nigrum.
Eating wild vegetables with a slight bitter taste is very refreshing in this weather.
This Solanum nigrum looks very similar to chili leaves and is also called bitter vegetable. As the name suggests, the bitter taste is followed by a slight sweetness. It has the effect of cooling down and reducing fire, and is also a medicinal ingredient.
After dinner, Zhao Yeqing, unable to work due to his injuries, walked around the house to check if there was anything missing.
The first is the mushroom room.
A lot of oyster mushrooms have grown inside, but they are not very big yet, so they can still be grown for a while.
The weather is hot now, and mushrooms like warm and humid weather. If the water evaporates too quickly, it will be detrimental to their growth.
She asked Mu Xi to tear off three meters of plastic film to cover it to prevent moisture from evaporating. Even if it evaporated, it would first condense on the plastic film and then drip back onto the mushrooms.
The mushrooms grown in the two media are similar in size, but those grown in bran and rice husks grow more, while those grown in corn cobs grow larger.
After checking the situation in the mushroom room, Zhao Yeqing went underground again.
The basement was filled with the aroma of strawberries. She squatted down and found that many strawberries had turned red again.
Zhao Yeqing was immersed in the joy of harvesting strawberries. It was not until he finished picking them that he discovered that there was something wrong with the strawberry plants.
The leaves were slightly wilted and there were small insects on them. Zhao Yeqing got closer and found that they were red spiders.
Among the things Mu Xi brought from Meishan was a pesticide to prevent red spider mites, but growing strawberries is very particular. Strawberries are prone to disease and insects, and pesticides cannot be used to kill insects after the flowering and fruiting period, otherwise the fruit you eat will be contaminated with pesticides.
Zhao Yeqing asked Mu Xi to bring some water and manually sprayed water to kill the insects.
"Another method is to use mugwort for fumigation, but I don't think I have any mugwort at home."
Mu Xi recalled and nodded, "No, but if we look carefully in this season, we should be able to find some in relatively shady places."
In order to ensure pollution-free consumption, we have no choice but to use this relatively time-consuming and purely natural method.
She gently lifted up some of the hammered strawberry leaves and sighed, "These strawberries are so delicate. The sun has been strong these past two days, and we were busy pressing the oil, so we didn't open the boards to let them bask in the sun. So they don't look very lively now."
Strawberries are like delicate little girls. They need ventilation but are afraid of high temperatures. They like fertilizer but are easily harmed by it, and they drink water but their roots are easily suffocated.
Compared to the previous report that tomatoes are difficult to grow, strawberries are even more troublesome. They require various elements, and the fruits will easily turn sour if they lack magnesium, potassium and calcium.
This is a relatively early-maturing variety. It took nearly four months before the fruit could be eaten, and the seedling-raising time was also longer than that of normal fruits and vegetables.
But if it is grown well, there is no problem growing a strawberry plant for more than two years. When the weather gets cooler, the strawberries will be sweeter.
It is said that farming requires the right time and place. It is really not easy to grow crops well in the current temperature environment.
After she washed away all the red spider mites she could see on the tree, she suddenly remembered that they hadn't visited the citrus orchard for some time. Citrus fruit trees are also a high-incidence area for red spider mites.
Red spider mites are particularly prone to reproduction in high temperature and dry conditions. The tobacco water she found last year was of some use, but there wasn't much left.
She had thought that if the spider mite infestation on the strawberries did not improve after the manual pest control over the past two days, she would use the last bit of tobacco leaves.
But that amount of tobacco leaves is definitely not enough for the citrus orchard.
Mu Xi: "Then I'll go look for it in the tobacco field where I saw it last year. If there's still tobacco growing, I'll pick some and bring it back. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to find mugwort too."
"If you have tobacco, don't just pick it. Find two that look good, dig them up with their roots and plant them."
Mu Xi nodded in agreement.
He took the basket of strawberries from Zhao Yeqing's hand, and the two walked back.
This time we harvested a lot. Maybe due to the lack of calcium fertilizer, the strawberries were a little soft and the taste was a little worse. Zhao Yeqing was thinking about whether he should just use them to make strawberry jam, which could be used to make ice cream later, or spread on toast.
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