Author Archive
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?
Full Story
No Comments »
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:
- What do you like to eat ? (Don’t grow what you won’t wish to eat.)
- 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.)
- What stores well ? (What can nourish your family well through the next winter.)
- 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 !
3 Comments »
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.
3 Comments »
Posted by: Rose in apple pie, apples, tags: recipe
 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
No Comments »
Posted by: Rose in General, tags: root cellar
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.”
No Comments »
Posted by: Rose in potatoes, tags: health news
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.)
2 Comments »
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.
Full Story
No Comments »
Posted by: Rose in General, tags: heating, news
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.
Full Report
No Comments »
Via: thedailygreen.com
Save Money and Get Happier
by Jeff Yeager
One of my all-time favorite movies is the 1979 classic Being There, starring Peter Sellers. The late Sellers (of Pink Panther and Dr. Strangelove fame) plays Chance the Gardener, a simple minded but lovable manservant who lives his whole life cloistered in the estate of an elderly patron, only to be abruptly thrust into the outside world upon his master’s death. Sellers’ clueless character is eventually heralded as one of the great economic minds of his time, pointing out through his innocence and simple thinking the follies of the self-deceived “real world” he encounters.
If you’re a simple cheapskate like me, you’re probably feeling a lot like Chance the Gardener these days. I know I am. With the recent and ongoing implosion of the U.S. economy, quite honestly my phone has been ringing off the hook with questions from reporters writing articles about getting frugal — and fast — in order to weather the hard times that are upon us.
I guess we’ve entered the Age of the Cheapskate, and frugal folks like me, who know far more about hedge trimming than hedge funds, are the new financial oracles. Chance the Gardener, take a bow.
While I’ve never claimed to be a mastermind of high finance (a critic once said that I am to the community of personal financial pundits what paint-by-numbers is to the art world), I’ll wager that the most effective solutions for making it through these complex financial times may in fact be the simplest. I’m not talking about on a macro-economic level, with its nearly trillion dollar federal bailout of credit markets, but on a personal level, in your own life.
When asked for personal financial advice for surviving — and even thriving — in these troubled economic times, I keep coming back to a single word: Simplify. Almost without exception, whenever you simplify your life, three things happen. It usually costs less, it’s nearly always better for the environment, and — here’s the best part — it inevitably makes you happier.
Simplify. Drive less by consolidating trips, telecommuting, shortening your work week, walking or bicycling. Stay at home more with family and friends, making your own fun rather than paying to be entertained. Cook more meals at home and eat lower on the food chain. Consider downsizing your house, moving closer to where you work, or living in — and heating! — only part of your home in the wintertime. De-clutter your life and boost your finances by selling stuff you don’t use or no longer want. Do more things for yourself rather than pay others to do things for you, and maybe then you can even cancel your gym membership.
How is any of that about sacrifice or hardship? It’s all about living a better life — and living lighter on the planet — by consuming and spending less. Ghandi said it best: “Live simply so that others may simply live.” I agree, and think Chance the Gardener would too.
No Comments »
Posted by: Rose in books, tags: country living
Via: TwinCities.com
 
“Tell me a farm story, Grandma.”
That’s what Mildred Kalish’s granddaughter used to say when Kalish walked the little girl to school some 20 years ago.
“I started to tell her stories of my life, and then it dawned on me to put them down for the rest of the grandchildren,” Kalish recalled in a phone conversation from her home in northern California. “So I worked at it sporadically for years, writing down this and that.”
Kalish’s jottings were the basis for her popular memoir “Little Heathens,” which is what her grandmother called the kids when they mis-behaved.
Subtitled “Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression,” Kalish’s book was published in 2007 when she was 85 years old. Her friendly voice and easy writing style made her story an instant success with critics and readers.
Kalish says another impetus for writing “Little Heathens” was that her life was so different from her friends’ lives.
“When I would tell a story about things I learned on the farm, everybody said I should write a book,” she recalls. “I just always knew more than they did about how to cope. I remember being invited to a fancy party by poet Louis Simpson. When I cut the meringue pies, I asked his wife for a big glass of hot water (to dip the knife into). She said, ‘Millie, I never in my life knew how to do that.’ “
“Little Heathens” begins when Millie Armstrong was 5 years old and her grandfather “banished my father from our lives forever for
Advertisement
some transgression that was not to be disclosed to us children. …” She and her three siblings lived part of the year on one of her grandfather’s farms and part of the year in the little town of Garrison with their grandparents so they could walk to school. Those grandparents had tough rules about how to behave, and their philosophy was “waste not, want not.” But Grandma sure could cook.
Kalish offers recipes, from mouthwatering apple cream pie to head cheese (not so mouth-watering), as well as down-home remedies for removing warts, ways to catch raccoons and how to find morel mushrooms.
Full Story
No Comments »
Via: washingtonpost.com
As gardeners, we are at the forefront of the new Green Revolution.
 Thirty years ago, most home landscaping consisted of lawn, foundation plantings, a few trees, and perhaps a bed for flowers or vegetables. Plants were chosen for their color when flowering and their availability at garden centers. Maintenance included mowing, fertilizing, spraying, pruning and watering.
But we now know that native plants can endure without synthetic chemicals or fertilizer, or much watering or labor, once established. And that insects that depend on native plants are important food for birds.
Knowing this, gardeners can take steps to promote sustainability in their landscapes. It involves how you use your property — everything you own. Here are some key steps that will help you to create a sustainable gardening culture and promote renewable energy:
· Use plants, trees and shrubs that are native to your area. They are already adapted to local growing conditions.
· Keep the soil in good condition with homemade compost and mulch, saving energy by using on-site materials.
· Collect rainwater to irrigate plants and to clean your tools, deck, patio and car.
· Control your use of pesticides and herbicides. Employ natural remedies such as soap sprays and hand-removal of weeds. Use the least toxic methods of control. Encourage beneficial insects such as ladybugs and parasitic wasps. Research the techniques of integrated pest management, use them in your landscape.
· Recycle materials on your property, including compost and masonry. Pots, pans and teapots make great containers for planting. Scrap lumber can have another life as fencing material. Carryout containers are perfect scoops for potting soil and fertilizer and save you a trip to the garden center. Plastic jugs with holes punched in the bottom will water your plants during dry spells.
· Increase food production. Plant more fruits, berries and vegetables so you can eat locally and seasonally, decreasing the need for food to be transported from all over the world. Make your edible plantings as beautiful as flowerbeds by training them on trellises, arbors or other structures. Mix in beneficial flowers, such as marigolds, which are natural insect repellents. Don’t forget herbs.
· Encourage diversity. Install a wide variety of flora that allows plants, birds and insects to cohabitate.
· Use all spaces to install greenery, including patios, porches, balconies and window boxes, to reduce your carbon footprint even further.
· Use less energy. Disturb the land as little as possible. For example, heavy machinery uses fuel. Create berms for sound protection and privacy. Plant swales to reduce rainwater runoff, which can cause water pollution. Use plants to provide shade to reduce cooling costs and windbreaks to reduce heating costs. Make use of muscle power and not horsepower as much as possible. Even small devices, such as hedge trimmers, waste nonrenewable energy.
· Make garden chores more efficient. Take time to compost, mulch, plant and harvest.
· Take responsibility. Educate yourself and others. Investigate community resources, such as community gardens. Evaluate practices used in your garden, and decide whether they are environmentally responsible.
· Evaluate any feature or plant before installing it on your property by asking if it will require a lot of water, fertilizer, pesticide, electricity, gasoline or other fossil fuel. If it does, alter the plan to make it more sustainable and energy-efficient.
Sustainable landscapes are practical. They save energy, money and labor. Creating them may take a little more thought and effort at the beginning, but the end results will better sustain all of us.
No Comments »
Via: NaturalNews
A new study that was recently published sheds more evidence to what many have been saying for a long time, that DNA does not control the body or predestine you to being overweight, ill, sick, weak or anything else, but that the majority of our health and destiny lies within our own power.
Full Story
No Comments »
Via: iTWire
An American study has shown that Old Order Amish adults–who have a gene that gives them a higher risk to be obese–reduce that tendency to gain alot of pounds by doing one thing. Can you guess what it is?
 It is known to the scientific community that the Amish eat a normal diet that is high in fat, calories, and refined sugar. All three groups would normally doom any American from maintaining a slim-and-trim waistline.
However, the Amish keep from getting overweight and/or obese by doing what many of us have removed from our lifestyle.
Full Story
No Comments »
Even if you are not located in Idaho, this might be interesting and informative for you.
Via: U of I Master Gardenerat the Idaho Statesman
Now that the initial shock of “what I didn’t get done this summer” has worn off, it’s time to think about what can be accomplished before the snow flies.
According to the National Climate Data Center, Boise’s average first frost date is Sept. 22.
If you already have an herb garden, watch for the basil to die back. It’s the most frost tender of all herbs and is a signal that nights are getting cold and all other annuals will soon be gone.
If you have perennial herbs in pots that need to be brought inside for the winter, do so soon after the basil dies back.
If you don’t have an herb garden but have been thinking about starting one, first find a suitable space. Most herbs need full sun but will tolerate afternoon shade. That makes the east, northeast or southeast parts of the yard the best areas for an herb garden.
Some herbs are annual, some biannual and some are perennial. Some are grown for their leaves, some for their seeds. A Purdue University Advanced Master Gardener put together a list of herbs and the culture of each one. You can download the list and keep it for future use. Purdue University is in Zone 5, so any herbs that can be grown there can be grown in our Zone 6.
Full Story
No Comments »
We saw one of the male praying mantises again today, and it has grown quite a bit ! We think it grew so fat on our Japanese beetles for they have disappeared completely out of our garden already. Well, have a look at the pictures if you like… I rotated two of them, and you know what, these insects look rather otherworldly if you rotate the picture.
No Comments »
|
Entries (RSS)