Country Living Skills

I mentioned suckers in an earlier post, saying that you can pinch them if you wish, but don’t have to – well, some people do not know what a sucker actually is.

What is a sucker ?

Suckers grow our between a tomato leaf branch and its stem.  If you pinch them off and stick them in the ground, they will root and you have another tomato plant.  Here is a nice picture of a sucker on an early tomato plant:

What is the benefit of pinching suckers ?

If you choose to pinch the suckers off your tomatoes, you will end up with bigger fruit, but probably less of them.  If you leave the suckers grow, however, you might get more, yet smaller fruit.  It really depends on your preference and on how much work you are willing or able to put into your tomato patch.

It is a good idea to plant cucumbers in hills so they can vine in peace and do not get too crowded.

A week or two after your last frost date, make hills that are 4-5 feet apart from each other on all sides, and approximately 12” in diameter.  Plant 6-8 seeds per hill.

After 3 weeks, thin to 3-4 plants per hill, depending on the quality of the soil.

Keep on top of weeds without disturbing the vines once they started running.

If you wish to save seed, take them from over ripe cucumbers that have already turned yellow and slightly soft.  Wash seeds from the cucumber and dry them.  They are ready to be stored away when they break instead of bending.

As tomatoes are most gardener’s favorite plant, especially but not exclusively amongst beginners, here are a few things that might be worth knowing about growing tomatoes.  If those among you who have decades of tomato growing experiences are unhappy with my information or have things to add, please feel free to comment

• Basically, all that tomatoes need is healthy, well draining soil, sunlight – don’t plant them in a shady spot – and sufficient water.  To keep the soil from drying out too quickly, mound grass clippings or other mulch around the plants and cover the soil of the whole garden bed with mulch too.  This will also improve the quality of the soil.

• If you have a square foot garden, plant one tomato per square foot, that should give them enough room.

• You can pinch the suckers if you wish, but you do not have to.  Pinching suckers will lead to less, but bigger fruit, whereas leaving the suckers on the plant will lead to more, smaller fruit.  If you are not sure what suckers are, just forget about them

• As for suitable companions, do not plant tomatoes and peppers within root distance from each other, as they stunt each other.  The same counts for onions.  Tomatoes like the company of carrots, lima beans, and parsley.
• Marigolds will help keep bugs away.

• Keep an eye out for the tomato horn worm.  It likes your tomatoes (the leaves mostly) even more than you will.  Here is a little site that is rather informative and has some pretty impressive pictures, too.  Here is the link and one of the pictures you find there. http://www.gardengrapevine.com/TomatoWorm.html

• When your tomatoes get taller, you might want to stake them.  You don’t have to, but if you don’t, you will have to be very attentive to ripening fruits that rest on the ground.  If you let them sit there for too long, they will rot.  If you stake the tomatoes, this will not be an issue.

Via: seattlepi.com

1. At a nursery, pick up seeds, potting soil, and a few small pots or a window box (it must be shorter than the length of your windowsill-measure first!). Get a container at least four to five inches deep with a drainage hole at the bottom.

2. Fill container with soil and place seeds on the surface. Cover with an eighth of an inch more soil, then mist with water from a spray bottle (pouring water directly on the soil could disturb the seeds). Cover top of container in plastic wrap to prevent seeds from drying out.

3. Herbs should start to sprout in one to two weeks – leave plastic wrap on, without watering, until then. Once you can see them growing, unwrap, but resist the urge to water again until the soil feels dry an inch beneath the surface. When in doubt, wait another day to water – you really can kill herbs with kindness. – Vinnie Drzewucki of Hicks Nurseries in Westbury, NY

If you are new to the wonderfully healthy and economical past time of gardening, this list might be interesting to you.  For all those who have been gardening for ages already, maybe you enjoy checking what this lady thinks is essential, and add what’s missing, from your own experience

Via: baltimoresun.com

By Susan Reimer
Use the right tool for the job” was the motto of my father, the woodworking hobbyist.

My mother, however, used the same cast-iron skillet to cook just about every meal.

I am their daughter, the gardener, and I don’t think you can have too many garden tools, even if you find yourself using your garden knife for just about every job.

Since this is the time of year to take stock of garden hardware and draw up a spring shopping list, let me offer my list of essential garden tools.

Every gardener has a trowel and a pair of pruners. What follows are items that make the garden’s toughest jobs easier.

•A garden cart.
•A mulch fork.
•A perennial shovel.
•Gardening knife
•A gardening-gear organizer.
•Garden kneeler.
•Pruner holster.
•Rain barrel.
•Gloves.
•EasyBloom plant sensor.

Explanations and estimated price of all listed items you can find here

So here is a study that tells you, basically, that living in the countryside, close to nature, as a producer, instead of a synthetic, stressful environment where people live as consumers only, will prevent addictions, will even cure addictions, will be the best you can do for your children and yourself.  The addictions of our times are manifold, and they are inflicted on people purposefully in order to increase profit.  Think melamine in infant formula, think MSG… 

But things are even worse than this.  Our environment poisons us in more than just chemical-enviromental ways. It is artificial, synthetic, and somehow deep inside we recognize this but cannot do anything about it. 
 The study reviewed in this book review tells us about the obviously cruel and inhuman conditions that the vast majority of people live under, even in their middle class suburbs:

The root causes of addiction, then, must run deeper than any individual pathology: they must be sought in a larger story of cultural malaise and ‘poverty of the spirit’ that forces individuals, often en masse, into desperate and dysfunctional coping strategies.

Get out of the system, get out into the countryside, before it is too late, for your children’s sake, and read this review, or the book The Globalisation of Addiction itself, from the beginning:

Via: nthposition online magazine

by Mike Jay

Bruce Alexander is best known – though deserves to be much better known – for the ‘Rat Park’ experiments he conducted in 1981. As an addiction psychologist, much of the data with which he worked was drawn from laboratory trials with rats and monkeys: the ‘addictiveness’ of drugs such as opiates and cocaine was established by observing how frequently caged animals would push levers to obtain doses. But Alexander’s observations of addicts at the clinic where he worked in Vancouver suggested powerfully to him that the root cause of addiction was not so much the pharmacology of these particular drugs as the environmental stressors with which his addicts were trying to cope.

To test his hunch he designed Rat Park, an alternative laboratory environment constructed around the need of the subjects rather than the experimenters. A colony of rats, who are naturally gregarious, were allowed to roam together in a large vivarium enriched with wheels, balls and other playthings, on a deep bed of aromatic cedar shavings and with plenty of space for breeding and private interactions. Pleasant woodland vistas were even painted on the surrounding walls. In this situation, the rats’ responses to drugs such as opiates were transformed. They no longer showed interest in pressing levers for rewards of morphine: even if forcibly addicted, they would suffer withdrawals rather than maintaining their dependence. Even a sugar solution could not tempt them to the morphine water (though they would choose this if naloxone was added to block the opiate effects). It seemed that the standard experiments were measuring not the addictiveness of opiates but the cruelty of the stresses inflicted on lab rats caged in solitary confinement, shaved, catheterised and with probes inserted into their median forebrain bundles.

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We finally got our seeds, accompanied by a nice letter from FEDCOs, and what they are telling their customers there did not come as a big surprise to us:  Fedco has had record sales this year, an over 40% growth in seed sales, which adds to the 20% growth they saw last year…  At a time where good news from any company out there are extremely rare, isn’t is significant which business is prospering in times such as these ?

So we will see a lot more gardens and finally less useless lawn in the neighborhood, it seems.

Good luck with your garden, everyone !

Via: Seattle Garden & Kitchen Examiner

A prolific garden can save your family a lot of money

Food prices are continuing to rise while more and more products get recalled. It only makes sense that all of us considering ways to raise some of the food we eat. The more we food we raise, the less we will have to buy.

By growing our own food, we are able to know exactly what was added to the soil unlike store bought fresh produce. By having our own gardens, we also have the satisfaction of providing for ourselves and being part of the solution and, not the problem. Winter is a great time to start planning your vegetable and herb gardens.

We personally, have saved a great deal of money by growing (and preserving) our own fruits, vegetables and herbs. Each year we go over what worked and what didn’t and adjust our garden accordingly. This is an important part of gardening, adjusting and readjusting to make sure you continually get the most out of your garden.

Not all gardens will, or should, be the same. Each gardener needs to take into consideration which fresh (and preserved) fruits and vegetables your family eats most often. This can be done by simply asking questions – does everyone in the house like green beans, do we consume enough salads to make growing our own lettuce worthwhile? Will your kids snack on cherry tomatoes, carrots or fresh berries? How often do we eat peas or potatoes?

Also consider which fresh fruit and vegetables you seem to purchase every trip to the market and if there any items you avoid buying because they are too high priced, even though they can be grown locally? And lastly, do you wish you could treat your family to organically grown vegetables but the price is just too high?

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You might think it’s weird to think about the gardening season now, but it isn’t.  Even though your garden patch might be buried in snow right now, depending on where you are, you still need to get off your hindquarters and start planning now.

2009 might very well be the year when, for the first time in a long time, many people will have to rely on their own crops or go hungry, so plan well, and order early, and order heirloom seed that you can save so you won’t have to spend money again next year. When I went through our seed catalogs earlier this week, I noticed just how many crop failures are mentioned, and how much more expensive seed has become compared to last year.

I suggest looking at Fedco’s, or Seed Savers Exchange, to get an idea.  Both places let you order online or via snail mail.  Fedco’s is a little less pricey, but they have hybrids too, so make sure you don’t get a hybrid accidentally.

In addition, buying a little seed dispenser might help you not to waste seed, and a germination mat, for example Hydrofarm MT10008 Seedling Heat Mat, 20 By 20 Inches, will make sure that the seeds you start indoors will grow nicely even if you start early.  Hydrofarm even sells a Hydrofarm CK64050 Germination Station with Heat Mat which gives you the seedling pots and the heat mat all in one go. If you are new to the whole idea of growing your own food and don’t have a basement full of little seedling pots already, this might be the way to go.

If you have difficulties deciding what you want to grow, consider this:

1. What do you like to eat ? (Don’t grow what you won’t wish to eat.)
2. What will fill your family’s belly well ? (You might like radishes a lot, but they are hardly satisfying if that’s all you have to eat.)
3. What stores well ? (What can nourish your family well through the next winter.)
4. What can you process ? (Will you can, freeze, dehydrate, or store in a root cellar.)

Tomatoes and peppers are tasty and wonderful additions, but you will want to have beans, potatoes and corn too.

Be wise, and don’t go hungry !

Just a short note today:

We recently talked to a pediatrician who told us that she is seeing a lot more cloth diapers these days than she used to.   Most people are probably using cloth diapers now because they cannot afford throwaway diapers anymore, but it is still difficult to get decent diaper covers in any store that we have checked out.  Walmart has those horrible vinyl diaper covers that do more harm than good, for example…  So we looked online and found the Swaddlebees ABC Cloth Diaper Cover, for example, available in all sizes, that look much better. They are not AIO diapers, mind you, so in addition to these you would still need traditional or prefold diapers, but you can pick them up anywhere really or buy Indian Prefold Diapers – Unbleached or similar prefolds online.

If you are not using cloth diapers yet but want to be well prepared for the bad times ahead, get a decent amount of diapers (about 40 should do it) and probably 6-8 diaper covers, that should do it, and remember that you have to wash new diapers at least 4 times before they absorb moisture properly.

Apple Pie with Lattice Topping

I suppose most of you have made millions of apple pies in your time, but if you are looking for a nice online description of how to bake one, I recently found a well made page about how to make apple pie from scratch, with lots of pictures and ingredients for both a lattice and a streusel topping.

How to make an apple pie

If you need storage that keeps your food cool without using electricity, a root cellar comes in very handy.

There are a tremendous amount of different designs for root cellars out there – check out this site, for example: Root Cellars

Their link to the garbage can root cellar is broken though, so here are some basic instructions to this particular type of root cellar:

Via:survivaljunction.com

“Consider burying a galvanized garbage can in the ground to create your own “root cellar.” The root cellar keeps potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips, and apples through the winter. Bury the can upright with 4 in. or so of the top protruding above ground level.”

I got this information from snopes.com:

The potato, the ultimate comfort food in Western society, has a disturbing secret. potatoes This trustworthy old friend so often invited to our tables can, at times, slip us a little bit of poison.

The potato — or, rather, green versions of it — contains a natural toxin called solanine. The greenish hue that should warn you away from such spuds is actually chlorophyll, but its presence indicates concentration of solanine are present in the tuber.

A glycoalkaloid poison found in species of the nightshade, solanine is a nerve toxin produced in the green part of the potato (the leaves, the stem, and any green spots on the skin). This bitter poisonous
crystalline alkaloid is part of the plant’s defenses against insects, disease, and predators. Potato leaves and stems are naturally high in glycoalkaloids, so ingestion of these parts of the plant must be avoided at all costs.

Solanine develops in potatoes when spuds are subjected to light or either very cold or warm temperatures. It interferes with the body’s ability to use a particular chemical that facilitates the transmission of impulses between cells. Ingested in large enough amounts, it can cause vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, and even paralysis of the central nervous system.

However, unless you are deliberately seeking out green potatoes to eat, you are unlikely to ingest enough of the toxin to do harm. The potatoes we buy contain such a minute amount of the chemical that a healthy adult would have to eat about 4-1/2 pounds at one sitting to experience any neurological symptoms. Ergo, don’t worry about having the occasional green potato chip, but do discard any potatoes that have green eyes, sprouts, or greenish skins, rather than prepare and serve them, especially to children. (Children’s smaller body size makes them more susceptible to ill effects.)

This is worth reading…  Hopefully many people have learned from their family history, or will learn from these people’s memories…  Prepare, people !

Via: CNN.com

Memories of salvaging and stealing to avoid going hungry are part of the legacy of the Great Depression. Some iReporters say they can’t help but look at the current economy and feel the past holds lessons for the present.

“Even ladies didn’t shy away from hard work,” says Sheila Elrod. Her grandmother is shown at a cotton loom.

Pam Van Hylckama Vlieg says her grandfather tried to steal chickens after being laid off from coal mining.

Donna LeBlanc of Waxia, Louisiana, says she carries no credit to this day as a result of the frugality and self-reliance instilled in her by her family. Her husband keeps the couple’s credit card and maintains a zero balance.

The Great Depression meant scary times for many households as a period of economic downturn spread throughout the world. Historians trace its start to the “Black Tuesday” stock crash on October 29, 1929, and argue that the resulting global desperation set the stage for World War II.

LeBlanc said her grandparents were fortunate that they didn’t have investments and could grow — or catch — their own food during the Depression years.

Her grandfather Lester was a “Cajun cowboy” often seen wearing a cowboy hat, and her grandmother Ida was a resourceful woman who spent much of the 1930s working as a store clerk. LeBlanc, always told never to keep credit card debt, heard frightful stories from Ida. iReport.com: See a photo of the happy couple together after all these years

“She remembered vividly the barrels of flour, the bolts of cloth and the hunger in the faces of people as they begged for store credit,” LeBlanc said. “The store must have been at least marginally successful, because my grandmother was able to purchase, a piece at a time, a complete six-person setting of Gorham Chantilly silverware for her trousseau, linens and even a Lane cedar chest to house her treasures.”

The couple would catch wild hogs, feed them corn for a year and eat them once the wild taste was out of the scavenging animals. They also took advantage of available squirrel meat, a common food in the South at that time.

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Via: Cleveland.com

Q. What are the most important considerations?

A. Know the square-footage of your home, or the room to be heated, to get the right size unit for that space. Buy the highest quality that you can afford, and have the unit installed by a professional who knows the system and can make sure the clearances are correct, the chimney system is proper, and the installation is in accordance with the owner’s manual.

Q. Wood-burning stoves are commonly made from cast-iron, welded steel, soapstone or porcelain. Is there an efficiency and/or price difference among the materials?

A. Steel stoves are typically least expensive, and heat is released from steel quicker, so it cools down more quickly.

A cast-iron stove is the next step up in price. It releases heat more slowly, which means it stays warm longer.

Soapstone is usually the most expensive. The material releases heat slower than cast-iron.

Porcelain stoves are cast iron with a colored porcelain finish.

Q. What’s the price range of wood-burning stoves, and what do you get for the least and most expensive?

A. The least expensive start at about $800 and are small, heating less than 1,000 square feet.

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