Pass down these family ‘heirlooms’ with easy propagation process
Figs are one of the most common fruit trees you’ll find growing in Louisiana backyards And for many of these fig trees, there’s a name and face and a personal back story behind them
That’s because figs are a popular passalong plant. That means they were grown using cuttings taken from older trees or those belonging to family and friends.
Whether you want to start a new fig tree to continue the lineage of a beloved heirloom specimen or share cuttings with fellow gardeners or if you are simply interested in trying your hand at plant propagation the process is easy And winter is the perfect time to do it, according to Michael Polozola, LSU AgCenter fruit and nut specialist.
“Figs are forgiving,” he said “You can do it most of the year but you’re going to have the best results during their dormancy in December, January and February.”
The first step is to locate a healthy mother plant
“You want one that you’ve been fertilizing regularly, that you’ve been pruning so it’s growing vigorously,” Polozola said. “Ensure that it’s getting water, especially during dry periods so that you have consistent, good, vigorous growth.”
Next, you’ll need to cut off a piece of a tree branch. Look at the newer growth at the ends of the branches and try to find a section that is the diameter of a pencil to slightly thicker, somewhere around the size of a permanent marker
“A little bit bigger is going to have more carbohydrates. It’s going to be stronger and root better for you,” Polozola said.
Just don’t go too big. Thicker cuttings can struggle to root, as can older parts of the branch farther down that have a gray or tan coloring Now, get your pruners ready. Count at least four to five buds down from the tip of the branch you’ve selected. These buds are where the roots for your new tree will eventually form. Make a cut just below a bud at an angle. And voilà: You should have a cutting that is a few inches long. You may want to repeat this process a few times to give yourself more than one cutting to work with
Some people like to remove the terminal bud at the very tip of the cutting, Polozola said, as it is believed to slow rooting. But it’s not necessary Stick your cuttings about an inch deep at least one or two buds should be buried — in potting mix in small containers. And that’s it! Just keep the cuttings watered and protected from freezing temperatures, and within a year, they should sprout a few branches and reach a foot or so tall. Be sure to upsize the containers as needed. Figs are native to the warm
ä See FIGS, page 2G
Institute’s
From
consumer perceptions through food
Food Innovation
volunteers eat the products FOODii
Andrea Armstrong FOODii facility coordinator points to Tre’s Street Sauce, one of her favorite products produced at the lab
BY SERENA PUANG Staff writer
How much of a botched batch of hot sauce can a company put in a new bottle before consumers begin to notice a difference? How much salt can be removed from lowsodium mayonnaise before people start to complain? Will the new recipe for a product feel “new and improved” to people?
These are the kinds of questions that researchers help answer at the LSU AgCenter Food Innovation Institute’s Sensory Services Lab. With the help of students and volunteers from across the city, researchers test new products before they go to market. Our job is to run the study,” said Witoon Prinyawiwatkul, professor and sensory scientist. “We obtain the data, we interpret the data, but we are not making recommendations whether you should launch your product or not is not our job, because it’s risky.”
Rather the lab seeks to answer specific questions that can help business owners make informed decisions about consumer perceptions. It allows companies to test a new recipe for a product before launch to see if people like it. Maybe they used a different part of the fish in a canned tuna product and want to know if consumers can tell. Perhaps they want information about what their potential customer base would pay for the product.
Witoon Prinyawiwatkul, from left, professor and sensory scientist; Ashley Gutierrez, assistant director; and Dr. Achyut Adhikari, interim director, help business owners make informed decisions about
testing at the LSU AgCenter
Institute. The sensory booths behind them are where
is testing
STAFF PHOTOS BY JAVIER GALLEGOS
Maintenance superintendent Tony Barber gives a tour of the bottling facilities at the LSU AgCenter Food Innovation
Sensory Services Lab and explains how tenants can produce and bottle products at LSU
LSU AGCENTER PHOTO
Make sure cuttings have at least four to five buds.
COMMUNITY
Ladies of Tucumcari
The Ladies of Tucumcari, an auxiliary group of the Krewe of Tucumcari, hosted a royal meet and greet honoring this year’s royalty at the home of Colette and Jim Mitchell in Round Oak Subdivision on Jan. 25. Shown are, from left, Karen Saurage, Amey Crousillac, Josie Duke, Erin Cordell, Holly McGregor Kris Shortess, Alicia Quebedeaux, Colette Mitchell, Joni Herrmann, Sandra Hudson, Charlotte McGarr, Mary Katherine Moore and Lisa Lapeyrouse. Missing from photo are Holly Warrington and Renee Shortess.
COMMUNITY GUIDELINES
The Community column runs Sundays in the Living section and accepts submissions for news of events that have taken place with civic, philanthropic, social and religious auxiliary organizations, as well as academic honors.
Submissions should be sent by noon Monday to run in the upcoming Sunday column. Because of space limitations, organizations that meet monthly or more are limited to one photo per month. If submitting digitally we prefer JPG files 300KB or larger If taking a photo of a group, have them stand or sit shoulder-to-shoulder If more than six people are in the photo, arrange them on multiple, distinct rows.Avoid strong background light sources.
Identify those pictured by first and last names as viewed from left to right, row by row.We prefer emailed Community column submissions to features@theadvocate.com.We also accept submissions by mail at P.O. Box 588, Baton Rouge LA 70821.A phone number must be included.
LAB
Continued from page 1G
The Sensory Services Lab is a way to find out without confounding variables such as other people’s reactions or biases that may arise if the company does this research themselves. Companies set their parameters of what kind of demographics they’re looking for and what questions they want answered, then the researchers at FOODii design an experiment to accommodate it. Sometimes, that means following very precise cooking instructions.
One study involved cooking bacon in a specific kind of griddle for exactly 3 minutes and 20 seconds on each side, said Yupeng Gao, sensory scientist at FOODii The studies themselves usually take only a day to conduct, but the team has to work two weeks in advance to get the product, train student workers to prepare it, and set it up. After the study it takes two weeks to analyze the results.
“We only do like almost one study a month,” said Gao. “But that’s still a really tight schedule.”
These studies run the gamut from tests for companies to student research projects. Their “Tiger Taster” email list is their first source for finding taste testers, and after that, they recruit on social media Participants are rewarded for their participation with LSU AgCenter Dairy Store ice cream or LSU swag.
Beyond testing food
The sensory services lab is the part of FOODii that is the most publicly visible, but it’s so much more. Since 2014, FOODii has been an incubator for products that local businesses bring to shelves. The lab helps people to develop, brand, test and even produce their products before they go to market. For a minimal cost, entrepreneurs can join the program, use the facilities and join in training workshops Davie’s Salsa, City Gelato and Primo’s
Continued from page 1G
Mediterranean region. They will generally survive Louisiana winters.
“Above Alexandria, eventually we’re going to get cold weather than can kill them down to the ground,” Polozola said. “An established plant will come back and be fine. It’s those first few years you have to really make sure that they’re healthy so they come back.”
Growing a cold-tolerant variety such as the Hardy Chicago can help, too. But Hardy Chicago can be harder to find than common varieties such as Celeste, Polozola said.
John James Audubon Chapter DAR
Members of the John James Audubon Chapter DAR held their annual patriotic luncheon at Mike Anderson’s restaurant on Jan. 20. Shown are, from left, seated, Liz Walker, Georgia LaCour, Maribeth Andereck, Desha Martin and Deny Malesic; second row, Alisa Janney, Savannah Hackler, Frances Brady, Sugar McAdams, Bridget May, Sue Badeaux, Nola Labat, Paula Wilbert and Mary Edna Rose; third row, Candy Binder, Holly Talley, Sherri Sliman, Stacy Garrett, Elizabeth Seab Sue Ann Shore and Denise Lindsly
Associated Women in the Arts
Members of the Associated Women in the Arts presented art inspired by the life of Marquis de Lafayette at the Louisiana Old State Capitol on Jan. 30. Gathered are, from left, Nancy Charpentier, Monica Wood and Gail Lloyd.
PROVIDED PHOTO
Bailey Monet,
PROVIDED PHOTO
Institute’s Sensory Services Lab for market research.
Peppers in Lafayette are among the many products that have gone through the program or use the facilities.
“That way they don’t have to spend a lot of money to buy equipment,” said Achyut Adhikari, interim director of FOODii. “They come here, get trainings, they bring their family, or they hire workers, they work, and then they produce their food. Then they take it back to our warehouse and then sell it to the grocery store.”
A current tenant at FOODii is Posh Pop Gourmet Popcorn, a custom popcorn company started by Bailey Monet, 14, and Harper Juliet, 9. Posh Pop opened a brickand-mortar store last fall on Perkins Road
LSU
The three smaller fig trees are about a
at right is about 3
in Baton Rouge. After coming up with their concept in 2020 and selling popcorn online out of their home, at the Zachary Farmers Market and Live After 5, they needed to scale up.
“My entire home smelled like popcorn for six months because we were making it in between our kitchen and a spare room where we were storing everything,” said Ebony McCalister, the girls’ mom and selfproclaimed “momager” of the operation.
“What the incubator was able to teach us was things that we had wondered about, but we weren’t necessarily clear on how to find that information out.”
By using FOODii’s commercial kitchens,
the Posh Pop ladies were able to cut production time by more than 50%. They were also able to test the shelf life of their product, ensure they were providing customers with correct nutritional labeling/calorie counts for their popcorn and expand their selection of flavors from six to the 14 they have in store today McCallister marveled at the fact that her daughters were 6 and 11 when they started at FOODii, but they’ve always been treated as professionals.
“They never baby them,” she said of the program. “That’s huge. It instilled another level of confidence in my daughters. It has literally been a direct reflection of what we teach children, which is: You can do anything, you can go anywhere, you can be anything. But they (FOODii’s program) have shown it.”
For example, she said, the incubator gave Bailey the opportunity to pitch their product to LSU’s president, William F. Tate IV, when she was 12 years old. In addition to opportunities like that, FOODii also connects entrepreneurs to grocery stores or wholesalers to help them get their products into stores. Bright future ahead
FOODii is expanding. It’s getting a new building, and the lab aspires to have tenants graduate from the program so more people can develop products at LSU.
“By the end of this year, we will probably have this new facility working on and that will provide new opportunities for our local tenants,” said Adhikari. Among these opportunities is working with more established restaurant brands to bottle/package their products for retail use. Adhikari was in recent talks with Mo’s Pizza in Westwego about bottling its pizza sauce. From regulation to nutritional information to the logistics of getting into stores, FOODii is there to help.
To sign up to be a Tiger Taster, check out https://lsu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/ SV_3FeEyuuhkStqy57
Email Serena Puang at serena.puang@ theadvocate.com.
LSU horticulturists developed several fig varieties in the 1950s and ’60s with Louisiana’s heat and humidity in mind. These releases include LSU Purple, LSU Gold, Champagne, Tiger and O’Rourke. There are many other
grandparents brought
sharing with your family and friends,” Polozola said. Like all living things, fig trees don’t last forever “That’s why taking cuttings is important — to keep that line going,” Polozola said. “Eventually you’re going to get an old tree that’s going to rot from the center FIGS
from Europe. “There’s a lot of family heirlooms out there that are worth propagating and
right, and Harper Juliet, left, with their mother/‘momager,’ Ebony McCallister are the founders of Posh Pop Gourmet Popcorn, a custom popcorn company. The 14-yearold and 9-year-old use the LSU AgCenter Food Innovation
AGCENTER PHOTO BY OLIVIA McCLURE
year old. The larger one
years old.
PROVIDED PHOTO
PROVIDED PHOTO
Exploring the story of a town called Transylvania in East Carroll Parish
BY ROBIN MILLER Staff writer
I became conscious of the fact that the driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the moonlit sky
That’s the scene Jonathan Harker recorded in his journal when his horse-drawn coach finally came to a stop in Transylvania in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, “Dracula.”
In all honesty, most curious travelers don’t expect to see a vampire’s dilapidated Gothic home when driving through northeast Louisiana’s version of Transylvania. But then, there’s always the thrill off a hope. No castles here
What they will get is lots of flat, Louisiana delta land and a smattering of structures, but there is no Dracula’s castle among them. However, that doesn’t mean the Dracula spirit is absent in this unincorporated community. Travelers driving north on U.S. 65 are greeted by a bat looming at the center of its water tower some 165 feet above the highway — all of which leads to Baker Boyd’s question about the origins of Transylvania’s name.
The Baker resident said he’s familiar with the community and was simply curious about its name, whose inspiration, he surmised, likely wasn’t the Romanian home of a legendary vampire. Turns out, Boyd is right
A beloved university
Historical references point to the early 19th century, when a man named W.L. Richards purchased a large acreage in what is now East Carroll Parish. He named it for his beloved alma mater, Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky The univer-
sity also wasn’t named for Romania’s Transylvania, but the 1770s Transylvania Colony in western Virginia.
The colony chose the name because Transylvania’s Latin translation is “across the woods.”
Transylvania, Louisiana, stands 10 miles south of Lake Providence at U.S 65’s junction with La. 581 near the Mississippi River in the state’s northeastern most corner These days, selfie seekers often stop in front of the post office for a quick photo on the backdrop of the community’s name.
The post office once had its own bat postmark, and the now closed Transylvania General Store sold bat T-shirts and mugs.
“We still get people who come in wanting the Transylvania postmark, but our postmark is just a regular postmark now,” postal clerk Mallory Payne said. “It doesn’t have a bat It’s just a quick hand stamp. It’s just an itty bitty town, and there’s really nothing to stop here for.”
Bats were once a thing
But the general store once tried to make Transylvania a tourist destination
“The store has attracted sightseers from England, Italy, Iceland, Japan and even Romania’s Transylvania including a visitor who identified himself as a descendant of Count Dracula,” writes Gay N. Martin in the travel guide, “Louisiana Off the Beaten Path: A Guide to Unique Places.”
The guide was last updated in 2008, a couple of years before the general store closed and the Farmhouse at Transylvania restaurant took its place in 2011.
The restaurant closed its doors in 2018, and its name probably best coincides with the community’s history of a Farm Security Administration agricultural project in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Still, stories of the general store captures the fun the community once had with its name.
“Besides food, dry goods and
hardware, the owners sell lifesize rubber bats, skull replicas and about 250 dozen T-shirts a year with a bat logo,” Martin continues in the travel guide. “Be sure to take a peek at the ‘baby vampire bats’ in a lighted box.”
The lighted box, of course, was a gag with the “bats” being brick bats.
Bats — especially those of the vampire variety didn’t factor into the Farm Security Administration’s resettlement project in 1938. It’s official name was the
LaDelta Project for Negro Farm Tenant Families in Louisiana and was among President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal initiatives.
An agricultural project
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Library, 12,024 acres of government-owned land in the area were allocated for use by the LaDelta Cooperative Association, assuring 147 Black tenant families social and economic security “The entire acreage, which will
be leased by the cooperative for 99 years, will be subleased in units of approximately 38 acres each of cultivated land to members Subleases also provide that crops shall be cooperatively processed and marketed,” the National Agricultural Library states. Land tracts were purchased from absentee landlords, and tenant houses were replaced by model five-room homes at a cost of $1,450 each.
However Cleo Scott Brown, head of the History Matters Institute of Goose Creek, South Carolina, counters this historical account in her blog, cleoscottbrown. com, saying the land previously was owned by a company in Memphis and farmed by 250 Black families who were promised an opportunity to buy the land if it came up for sale.
The land, instead, was sold to the Farm Security Administration.
“Under this New Deal program under President Roosevelt, this land would be resold to poor whites in 40-acre plots for farms,” Brown writes.
“Each farmer would also be provided a home and loan financing. None of the black farmers who already lived there would be allowed to purchase any of the land.”
The NAACP and Black media outlets protested, and Black farmers eventually were given the opportunity to participate.
Ancient Indian mounds
Meanwhile, 30 farm units in this program were located by the Transylvania Mounds, a site that once was home to two plazas of ancient Indian mounds dating around 1400 A.D. It’s believed that at least 12 mounds made up these plazas with the largest standing 34 feet high.
All were rectangular in shape with flat tops before being altered or leveled by the farming community
Only six of the mounds are now visible, all standing on private property and commemorated by a state historical marker at the intersection of La. 581 and Mound Road.
While an ancient civilization once thrived in Transylvania, Dracula is nowhere to be found.
PROVIDED PHOTO BY DAVID JONES
A bat on Transylvania’s water tower welcomes travelers driving north on U.S. 65 to the community
We use theincredible powerofour audience to executeadvertisingand marketingcampaigns withaclear mindset –results If we don’t achieve results, we don’t keep our clients. Andgreat brands
