I've been watching a couple episodes of Jim Henson's story tellers here and there, amongst all the other crazy crap I get into. I've never seen them before, and I'm entranced by them. I think I remember being petrified by the opening sequence with the raven. The series came out when I was just six. At the moment, I'm actually quite glad I did miss them as a child. I would not have been capable of really appreciating them at that age. It's nice to see them fresh, so no, I don't feel I had a deprived childhood for not seeing them. I mean, at least I saw the princess bride when it came out, and american tale, and the ninja turtles. I didn't see many of Henson's heavier works until much later. Labyrinth I was 17, Dark Crystal I was 20 when I first saw those.
I also finished my faucet and plugged large-ish holes from pipes that were in the hardwood floor I'm working on. And I got some laundry and dishes done, and layed in the sun for a considerable span of time. Anyways, here's the sink. Note the actual water actually coming out of the tap. Hehe.
Did you ever wish you could make just one serving of popcorn? I don't know about you, but I find the microwave packages a problem. You can't eat it all without feeling disgusting, and you can't save it for later. Also, wouldn't it be nice to be able to flavor your popcorn however you like?
But we've been lead to believe that popping our own corn requires contraptions. Expensive and hard to store contraptions. Good news - it's not so! All you need is a pot with a lid, in actuality.
Stovetop popcorn
(makes one serving, and no more, just small bowl full)
(sorry my pot is a little scorched from this, but a little steel wool pad takes it right up, I just didn't bother before the pictures)
Pour about 3 tablespoons olive oil into the pot
put 1/4 cup popping corn in
Set stovetop to very lowest heat
All told this takes about 8 minutes.
The trick is to cut the heat and set the lid ajar as soon as the popping slows. Any longer and it will scorch.
Using a sloted serving spoon, put the popped corn in a bowl. Then flavor it if you like, it's also great plain. My two favorite flavors are below. Regular butter and salt, or maple pie!
Flavoring as regular butter and salt:
Place the thinnest sliver of butter you can manage on top while it's still pipping hot, and/or salt. Stir just a little to distribute the butter and salt to all the corn.
Flavoring as maple pie!
While still pipping hot, drizzle about 1 teaspoon maple syrup on top of the popcorn, and stir to distribute. Then sprinkle just a little apple pie spice on top and stir again.
I hope you love this as much as I do!
One wanna-be homesteader's approach to simplifying and reducing the cost of gluten free living, on a micro-farm at Pittsburgh's city-limits.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Recipe organizing
I think it's kind of sad that I still need my recipe book for my own creations. I've made Flapjacks a-la glutenless probably three hundred times, but I can't get past the first step before I'm going "Crap, wait, what do I do next again? Where's that darn recipe book?"
I guess at least I still remember how to start it. Cook grits with butter, add Xanthan, then...... I dunno! I'll have to look. Something to do with eggs, and milk and corn flour, and maybe some other stuff, too. And I scutter off to find the recipe book.
So I was thinking maybe I'd show you how I keep my recipes organized. For me, what keeps me organized is being able to quickly reference, having a table of contents, and keeping the cards protected from spills. The cards are supposed to say how to make the food, not have the ingredients of the food all over them and obscuring the words!
You'll need a cheep photo book, small permanent marker, your recipe cards, and two blank cards.
Here's my photo book. It was $2, doesn't have to be anything fancy.
Inside write the page number on each page (above) then create a table of contents (below) and fill in your recipe cards accordingly. If you have a lot of recipes it helps to have a couple photo books by topic.
Ok, so that said, the flapjacks were definitely a success! Yay. See, I forget to eat sometimes, so this was kinda late in the day. Oops.
AND, when I finished the flapjacks, I was full. So I added two pinches of baking powder, and puta dab of butter in each of three teflon cupcake molds and put the batter in there. (Aren't those just the cutest darned things you've ever seen?) They came out great! I want to try making them cheesy.
More related to the pancakes, wouldn't you know that Log Cabin came out with something I can eat!! Nice! Carmel coloring is the bane of my existence because it's commonly derived from barley (and malt is too) and so I've been having to spend more than I'd like to for real maple syrup. It's great, I love it and all, but when I was a kid I loved smothering each pancake in butter, stacking them up, and then drowning them in syrup. That's an expensive habit to continue when syrup costs at least a buck an ounce. This 22oz bottle has not corn syrup, and is the same price as a 9oz bottle of real maple! Good deal!!
Pretty roses all over in the garden!
And I wore my Rolling Stones t-shirt today and picked a lot of "early garlic" because I've got WAY too much garlic around. If you know me and want some, just say so, it's ridiculous.
And my kitchen sink is busted. I'll soon be displaying my skills with plumbing.... sigh. It was quite the geyser of hot water, I got soaked.
Have a great night, all!!
I guess at least I still remember how to start it. Cook grits with butter, add Xanthan, then...... I dunno! I'll have to look. Something to do with eggs, and milk and corn flour, and maybe some other stuff, too. And I scutter off to find the recipe book.
So I was thinking maybe I'd show you how I keep my recipes organized. For me, what keeps me organized is being able to quickly reference, having a table of contents, and keeping the cards protected from spills. The cards are supposed to say how to make the food, not have the ingredients of the food all over them and obscuring the words!
You'll need a cheep photo book, small permanent marker, your recipe cards, and two blank cards.
Here's my photo book. It was $2, doesn't have to be anything fancy.
Add page numbers |
Table of contents |
AND, when I finished the flapjacks, I was full. So I added two pinches of baking powder, and puta dab of butter in each of three teflon cupcake molds and put the batter in there. (Aren't those just the cutest darned things you've ever seen?) They came out great! I want to try making them cheesy.
More related to the pancakes, wouldn't you know that Log Cabin came out with something I can eat!! Nice! Carmel coloring is the bane of my existence because it's commonly derived from barley (and malt is too) and so I've been having to spend more than I'd like to for real maple syrup. It's great, I love it and all, but when I was a kid I loved smothering each pancake in butter, stacking them up, and then drowning them in syrup. That's an expensive habit to continue when syrup costs at least a buck an ounce. This 22oz bottle has not corn syrup, and is the same price as a 9oz bottle of real maple! Good deal!!
Pretty roses all over in the garden!
And I wore my Rolling Stones t-shirt today and picked a lot of "early garlic" because I've got WAY too much garlic around. If you know me and want some, just say so, it's ridiculous.
And my kitchen sink is busted. I'll soon be displaying my skills with plumbing.... sigh. It was quite the geyser of hot water, I got soaked.
Have a great night, all!!
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Icing (for a cake)
So first I should note that the only special ingredient that I keep on hand at all times is Coconut flour. I get it at amazon.com because it really isn't carried in any stores. It's always in my freezer because it makes the best cakes and stuff. I don't need much, just a bit, killer good.
So July 9th we are celebrating the "triple mega birthday" in my family. My little brother is turning 21 in late June, Dad turning 60 the 9th and me 30 on the 10th. So we figure we better celebrate kinda big.
So as the date arrives I'll have a couple recipes for sweets. Why? Because if I don't make it, I don't get any!
But honestly there's some great gluten free cake mixes out there these days. That's less of a problem unless you really feel like having something special.... or if you're bored with the mixes your store carries.
The real problem is icing! Well... the real problem is modified food starch. It's getting more common for companies to specify what "food" they have modified the starch from. So modified corn starch is safe. But the cheapest starch to modify is from wheat, so if it just says "food" it's probably not safe. And almost all icing has modified food starch. Especially the sugar free stuff. Ugh, glutenless it is not.
So I have two icings for you. One is decadent and more fattening than you can shake a stick at, the other is smooth and delicious and can be made diabetic friendly.
Okay, so decadence in the form of Mint Chocolate Chip Icing that tastes like the ice cream.....
Cream together:
3 packages (8 oz size) cream cheese
2 cups brown sugar
Stir in 1 Tablespoon peppermint extract
Stir in 1 cup mini dark chocolate chips.
And this one can be made sugar free - pudding icing.
In 3/4 cup skim milk
dissolve 1 package instant pudding (again, watch out for modified food starch)
I used white chocolate flavor last time, pick your favorite, and to make it diabetic friendly, use sugar free instant pudding.
Beat until mostly smooth, the tiny bumps will smooth naturally with a little time
Add 1 cup heavy whipping cream
Beat on increasing speed from low to high as it thickens
It's really fun to put one thin layer of icing on, then put diced strawberries down and put another layer of icing on top! I did this in the image below, then put slices on top as decoration.
The reason that counter top isn't ugly is because it's my mom's counter, at Easter. This was my easter cake.
Either of these recipes thickly ice a 9" round or thinly ices a 9x12 cake.
So it's about to storm and I gots to go to bed! 'Night all!
So July 9th we are celebrating the "triple mega birthday" in my family. My little brother is turning 21 in late June, Dad turning 60 the 9th and me 30 on the 10th. So we figure we better celebrate kinda big.
So as the date arrives I'll have a couple recipes for sweets. Why? Because if I don't make it, I don't get any!
But honestly there's some great gluten free cake mixes out there these days. That's less of a problem unless you really feel like having something special.... or if you're bored with the mixes your store carries.
The real problem is icing! Well... the real problem is modified food starch. It's getting more common for companies to specify what "food" they have modified the starch from. So modified corn starch is safe. But the cheapest starch to modify is from wheat, so if it just says "food" it's probably not safe. And almost all icing has modified food starch. Especially the sugar free stuff. Ugh, glutenless it is not.
So I have two icings for you. One is decadent and more fattening than you can shake a stick at, the other is smooth and delicious and can be made diabetic friendly.
Okay, so decadence in the form of Mint Chocolate Chip Icing that tastes like the ice cream.....
Cream together:
3 packages (8 oz size) cream cheese
2 cups brown sugar
Stir in 1 Tablespoon peppermint extract
Stir in 1 cup mini dark chocolate chips.
And this one can be made sugar free - pudding icing.
In 3/4 cup skim milk
dissolve 1 package instant pudding (again, watch out for modified food starch)
I used white chocolate flavor last time, pick your favorite, and to make it diabetic friendly, use sugar free instant pudding.
Beat until mostly smooth, the tiny bumps will smooth naturally with a little time
Add 1 cup heavy whipping cream
Beat on increasing speed from low to high as it thickens
It's really fun to put one thin layer of icing on, then put diced strawberries down and put another layer of icing on top! I did this in the image below, then put slices on top as decoration.
The reason that counter top isn't ugly is because it's my mom's counter, at Easter. This was my easter cake.
Either of these recipes thickly ice a 9" round or thinly ices a 9x12 cake.
So it's about to storm and I gots to go to bed! 'Night all!
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
On cupboards and companionship
Really, does anybody else feel like the combination of a garden, house, bird and cat are more than enough companionship? They sure do keep me busy! Gardens are the best companions. If only they could help with the chores, that's the only thing that would make them better. If they could help with chores and projects I would want for nothing. I love being here.
Cozy spots
Food
Beautiful blooms
Gorgeous views
And a wonderful dose of dirt, weeds and any other sort of soul food I could think of.
And this is all just today!
As for the house, my hardwood floor project has sure been keeping me busy too (which I'll share here eventually, like when it's done and I can show all at once).
The bird makes for nice music, he's a canary and a fine singer. The cat is a silly talkative little bugger wanting constant attention.
So I was thinking it might be good to review some of the basics I keep in the cupboard for baking and cooking! Starting with the easy basics and followed by some special occasion stuffs.
- Corn flour (Make sure it's really wheat free, most are mixes, and watch out for cross contamination on the shelf. I've done well with Hodgesons, and they're non-GMO too. The local Save-a-lot also has "Maseca" generic brand tortilla flour and that's done well for me too and is a finer texture which is nice, plus it's super cheep.)
- Grits
- Eggs
- Milk
- Olive Oil
- Baking Powder
- Xanthan Gum (crumbliness preventer, readily available in any store that has an organic section, mostly the stores around here stock Bob's Red Mill brand. It's about $12 a little bag, and that will last forever, keep it in the freezer.)
- Brown Sugar
- Baking Cocoa
- Peanut butter
- Apples
- Garden Produce of course!!
Having said all that, did anyone else ever have their junior high home economics teacher tell them there's a safety reason the microwave beeps?? If you went to my junior high then sorry, but I know you had the same teacher. On being questioned I became completely unsure of the soundness of her warning.
According to our home ec. teacher, and I don't remember her name, it is not safe to open the microwave before it's done beeping. She said this is because the beeps are set to stop only after all the microwaves have cleared from the cooking area. If you open it too soon then the waves will get out and get you, she said! I'm not sure at all if this is bogus. Does anyone have some input?
Well anyways, have a great night!!
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Apple Chicken in the crock
So this is something I make so often it's ridiculous. Why wouldn't I make it so often, it's really ridiculously easy and wonderfully delicious.
Apple chicken has 3 steps.
Step one: put apples in the bottom of the crock. Apples absorb and distribute the heat so you can have evenly cooked meats.
Step two: put any bone-in chicken on top. Here I used thighs. Legs or split breasts are also great. Boneless chicken comes out looking a little odd, but still tastes great, so that's up to you. I also added coriander seed on top.
Step Three: 10 to 11 hours (with lid on of course) on high. Done!
Yes, that's really it! So yummy! So easy! Love it, can't be beat. I recently switched to a timed crock, which makes this even easier. I highly recommend the upgrade to timer for anyone who uses a crock pot relatively frequently.
Apple chicken has 3 steps.
Step one: put apples in the bottom of the crock. Apples absorb and distribute the heat so you can have evenly cooked meats.
Step two: put any bone-in chicken on top. Here I used thighs. Legs or split breasts are also great. Boneless chicken comes out looking a little odd, but still tastes great, so that's up to you. I also added coriander seed on top.
Step Three: 10 to 11 hours (with lid on of course) on high. Done!
Yes, that's really it! So yummy! So easy! Love it, can't be beat. I recently switched to a timed crock, which makes this even easier. I highly recommend the upgrade to timer for anyone who uses a crock pot relatively frequently.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Balsamic Pickled Garlic (as an after-thought)
Incoming Strawberries! Duck and cover! The strawberries I planted from bare root plants on April 7th are already doing this:
And also right now the sky is doing this:
It's a nice rainless night finally in the glutenless garden. Pittsburgh has been receiving rain nearly every day for about 2.5 months. At least the tomatoes seem to be happy about it. Here they are eagerly popping out of the top of their frost shelter, which is an old Hawaiian punch jug with the bottom cut off.
My clematis are blooming, the asparagus is still doing well, and I'm contemplating balsamic pickled garlic on a salad.
Oh! These are the kinds of things that I don't even think of as recipes. Goodness, let me just change the title of this post right now. (I was going to call it incoming strawberries.) I just was thinking of something I had in my fridge. It's yummy I want some. But perhaps you'd like some, too? Let me just run downstairs and take a picture real quick.
Do you want to know how to make balsamic pickled garlic? It's so easy!
Put 1/2 to 1 cup balsamic vinegar in a jar.
Slice several garlic cloves into small disks. Slice enough to pack in the jar but not have any sticking up above the vinegar. You can add more vinegar if you want to make more fit below the vinegar line.
Seal jar and place in fridge for about 2 weeks before using.
Keeps for a year if kept cold. Garlic only gets sweeter with time.
Best if you use your own garden grown garlic. My jar is getting low because I made a large batch in fall when the garlic was fresh.
And also right now the sky is doing this:
It's a nice rainless night finally in the glutenless garden. Pittsburgh has been receiving rain nearly every day for about 2.5 months. At least the tomatoes seem to be happy about it. Here they are eagerly popping out of the top of their frost shelter, which is an old Hawaiian punch jug with the bottom cut off.
My clematis are blooming, the asparagus is still doing well, and I'm contemplating balsamic pickled garlic on a salad.
Oh! These are the kinds of things that I don't even think of as recipes. Goodness, let me just change the title of this post right now. (I was going to call it incoming strawberries.) I just was thinking of something I had in my fridge. It's yummy I want some. But perhaps you'd like some, too? Let me just run downstairs and take a picture real quick.
Do you want to know how to make balsamic pickled garlic? It's so easy!
Put 1/2 to 1 cup balsamic vinegar in a jar.
Slice several garlic cloves into small disks. Slice enough to pack in the jar but not have any sticking up above the vinegar. You can add more vinegar if you want to make more fit below the vinegar line.
Seal jar and place in fridge for about 2 weeks before using.
Keeps for a year if kept cold. Garlic only gets sweeter with time.
Best if you use your own garden grown garlic. My jar is getting low because I made a large batch in fall when the garlic was fresh.
Oh my god, I'm so hungry now! I must have some now!! Dinner salad, here I come.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Organizing Garden Info
To accomplish your own effective organization system, any gardener may find a need for the following five things. The first requirement to being an "organized gardener" is that you are in possession of a noticeable level of squalor in your home during three seasons of the year. Yes, squalor: disorganization, mess, clutter and the like. Squalor.
Without the squalor, you can either conclude that I have promoted you to a homesteader, or demoted you to hobbyist. What? If you are doing a ton of gardening AND keeping house nicely, you are much more dedicated than I, and you are therefore a homesteader. If you aren't doing enough gardening outside to significantly interfere with home upkeep then you're really a hobbyist. In either case you should continue reading the following directions for being an "organized homesteader" or an "organized hobbyist."
Anyways, that was silly. On with the real thing, already!
OK, so really there are just four things you need, and lets get started.
Please pardon the hideous linoleum of my kitchen floor!
First, the fun part. This is where good habits began for me. It's like scrap booking without the work.
What to get and how to make it:
Go get a great big empty photo album with those pages they call "magnetic" which are just sticky paper with plastic over. Get one that has a sort of three ring binder set up inside so you can shuffle the pages when needed.
While your at the store, pick up some stick-on tabs. These are going to be section labels. You can see them in various colors in the picture on the right and left so you see what they are. "Adhesive index tabs" is what they are called at office supplies company. You just need a few, one package will be enough.
Write yourself a spine and cover label and tape it on with packaging tape or something similar.
Stick the tabs on some pages in the book - I put them on seven pages and staggered them so I can see them all.
Put a few un-tabbed pages between each of the tabbed pages.
Here are some label ideas for your tabs:
Designs (garden layouts and building instructions)
Perennials (the ones I have or had and notes on how they did)
Veggies (same as the perennials)
Annuals (same again)
Wishes (where I track what I want to order some time in the future)
Notes (this has my soil test results, botanical information on various plants, etc)
Articles (clipped from magazines, newspapers and the internet)
How to use it:Get yourself into a good habit! Here's how - start putting all sorts of fun stuff in between the gardening stuff you stick in here. Insert stuff you'll want to look at often. Pictures of your kids, doodles and funny song lyrics, your astrological chart (a focal point of mine) and all kinds of stuff like that. Don't worry, you can peel anything back out later when your book starts to get crowded and you'd like to get that cute picture into a frame, or something. It will be there. The point is to get you into this book, enjoying it and looking at it. This book will be your answer lifeline this time next year, so just use it. I show a good example of pages above. My "veggie" section has the plant tags from the first year I ever bought veggies from the action warehouse. Next to each plant tag is a little cut out paper note about what I like about the plant, what went wrong, how I fixed anything that went wrong, and whether I wanted to get it again. The next year I used this page to go buy what I really wanted. And my process improved. On the page on the right hand side there are some doodles. Can you see them? It's kind of embarrassing to say that I ever thought a system like that would actually work for supporting tomatoes. But there you have the proof. I thought that once. Any ideas on how to do things can be drawn, cut out and stuck into this book. I suggest dating things. It's amazing how useful that is later.
OK, so do this one thing first. Do that and forget I said anything about number 2 through 4. Develop that habit of record keeping. Don't jump in so suddenly that you overwhelm yourself and don't accomplish anything. Just do step one. That's all. It's fun, it's cheep, and it's more useful than you yet know!!!
Wait, you're still here? I guess you really want to know about step two then! I hope you already did step one, I hope you have a great habit and are reaping the benefits of garden tracking.
Step two is to get a garden journal together.
What to get:
I'm not thrilled with the layout and design of the one I have, but it was given to me and it was my grandfather's and has his handwriting in it still and notes from the garden he kept. It feels like I'm living his garden through me, sometimes, like he's still here a little bit. And besides that it works and has made a HUGE difference. It really doesn't matter what you get, so long as the pages are sturdy and it has sections for months broken down in some way. The most common break down is this: early month gets one page, mid month gets two pages and late month gets one page, repeat for each month, chronologically. This is usually surrounded and interspersed by little bits about projects, tasks, grids for garden planning, and other such truck. I don't use the peripheral goop, but that "peripheral goop" was the most used part by my grandfather. I guess it depends on how you like to organize.
What you'll want to record:The biggest deal in your life is the weather! You know it, and so do I. So write it down! Just write the date, include the year, and then describe anything notable about the weather. Here's an example of how helpful this is: this February we had an ice storm right after a long week of 60 degree weather. Everyone at work was saying about how this is so unusual and how they never saw anything like it. Do NOT rely on your memory!!! Here's why - I went home that night and went to write the odd weather pattern in my garden journal and discovered something incredible: this had happened every single year for the past three years during the same week of February. No one believed me.
The other thing you'll want to record is planting dates, blooming times, harvest times, etc. And if you wish to do something earlier or later next year, put in a note about what you'd rather do in the appropriate month's section. You don't need to put anything else in here if you don't want to. I don't!
But however are you going to find time to actually write down first and last bloom dates, or harvest times or seeding dates? I mean, you're too busy out there in the garden, right? If there's a freak snow, you're way too busy running around covering up your tender plants, right? Yes, you are right. So here's my suggestion. In the winter - do you have a winter? Or a scorching hot season? Or any sort of lull in the gardening seasons? I do. So during this lull, go through your digital photographs. There is a new feature on digital pictures. They are digitally stamped with at "taken date" you can see this by hovering over the thumbnail with your mouse, or you can view it in the details section on the left bar of your explorer folder. Look for pictures of new blooms, of harvested food, of seedlings, of snow, or of plants that have died (yes you should take pictures of your failures too). You'll be able to figure out the date from this. Just make sure your camera knows what today's date really is! Ask a teenager to check it for you if you don't know how. It is amazing how technology can help you, isn't it! Write these dates down sometime when you do have time. You'll see when you planted those carrot seeds, you know - the ones that weren't ripe until December and you were harvesting them in the middle of the snow. Who? Oh, that wasn't you, that was me. So this year I know to plant my second round of seeds earlier.
Again I say - now just go do it! Go try this! Get into a good habit, and next year you'll be so amazingly happy you did!!! Doing this will get so much easier after you see the benefits. Stop here, ignore the rest of my banter. It's just too much to start all at once.
Yes, there is a thing-three. Thing-three is a simple three ring binder with sheet protectors in it.
So easy to make. So simple to explain. Just make it a good label so you can find it on the shelf.
How to use it:
This is for copies of good ideas out of library books, articles ripped out of magazines, or the entire magazine if it was that good of an issue.
Featured in the photo is:
On the left an article from Psychology magazine about the health benefits of the microbes in soil (they reduce inflammation in the lining of the brain which studies are showing this prevents anxiety and depression disorder).
On the right is a stapled packet of pages copied out of a library book (the best ideas from the book of basically how to recycle stuff for your garden).
Make sure you copy the cover of any book, too, so you can take that book out again some time if you'd like to read it again.
These are just a couple examples of what can be kept in here. It's a bulk pages version of the sticky pages binder from #1. Not useful as often, but a great reference, and so much better than having a bunch of loose paper.
And the fourth - last and probably also the least. Go ahead and get the month-by-month edition for you state, amend it with a heavy book mark for the vegetable section - which makes it easy to flip to the current month any time you need to pull it off the shelf. Highlight it to oblivion and scribble in notes until you can barely see the page behind your penciled marks! Not everything in this book is correct for your micro-climate, so write in what was correct. Some things, like chemical fertilizer suggestions, only apply to other gardeners, not you or me. Sometimes you need a phone number the same time every year. Put it in the margin. Some things are good to have as handy information, so highlight those. Very useful. Enjoy!
Without the squalor, you can either conclude that I have promoted you to a homesteader, or demoted you to hobbyist. What? If you are doing a ton of gardening AND keeping house nicely, you are much more dedicated than I, and you are therefore a homesteader. If you aren't doing enough gardening outside to significantly interfere with home upkeep then you're really a hobbyist. In either case you should continue reading the following directions for being an "organized homesteader" or an "organized hobbyist."
Anyways, that was silly. On with the real thing, already!
OK, so really there are just four things you need, and lets get started.
Please pardon the hideous linoleum of my kitchen floor!
First, the fun part. This is where good habits began for me. It's like scrap booking without the work.
What to get and how to make it:
Go get a great big empty photo album with those pages they call "magnetic" which are just sticky paper with plastic over. Get one that has a sort of three ring binder set up inside so you can shuffle the pages when needed.
While your at the store, pick up some stick-on tabs. These are going to be section labels. You can see them in various colors in the picture on the right and left so you see what they are. "Adhesive index tabs" is what they are called at office supplies company. You just need a few, one package will be enough.
Write yourself a spine and cover label and tape it on with packaging tape or something similar.
Stick the tabs on some pages in the book - I put them on seven pages and staggered them so I can see them all.
Put a few un-tabbed pages between each of the tabbed pages.
Here are some label ideas for your tabs:
Designs (garden layouts and building instructions)
Perennials (the ones I have or had and notes on how they did)
Veggies (same as the perennials)
Annuals (same again)
Wishes (where I track what I want to order some time in the future)
Notes (this has my soil test results, botanical information on various plants, etc)
Articles (clipped from magazines, newspapers and the internet)
How to use it:Get yourself into a good habit! Here's how - start putting all sorts of fun stuff in between the gardening stuff you stick in here. Insert stuff you'll want to look at often. Pictures of your kids, doodles and funny song lyrics, your astrological chart (a focal point of mine) and all kinds of stuff like that. Don't worry, you can peel anything back out later when your book starts to get crowded and you'd like to get that cute picture into a frame, or something. It will be there. The point is to get you into this book, enjoying it and looking at it. This book will be your answer lifeline this time next year, so just use it. I show a good example of pages above. My "veggie" section has the plant tags from the first year I ever bought veggies from the action warehouse. Next to each plant tag is a little cut out paper note about what I like about the plant, what went wrong, how I fixed anything that went wrong, and whether I wanted to get it again. The next year I used this page to go buy what I really wanted. And my process improved. On the page on the right hand side there are some doodles. Can you see them? It's kind of embarrassing to say that I ever thought a system like that would actually work for supporting tomatoes. But there you have the proof. I thought that once. Any ideas on how to do things can be drawn, cut out and stuck into this book. I suggest dating things. It's amazing how useful that is later.
OK, so do this one thing first. Do that and forget I said anything about number 2 through 4. Develop that habit of record keeping. Don't jump in so suddenly that you overwhelm yourself and don't accomplish anything. Just do step one. That's all. It's fun, it's cheep, and it's more useful than you yet know!!!
Wait, you're still here? I guess you really want to know about step two then! I hope you already did step one, I hope you have a great habit and are reaping the benefits of garden tracking.
Step two is to get a garden journal together.
What to get:
I'm not thrilled with the layout and design of the one I have, but it was given to me and it was my grandfather's and has his handwriting in it still and notes from the garden he kept. It feels like I'm living his garden through me, sometimes, like he's still here a little bit. And besides that it works and has made a HUGE difference. It really doesn't matter what you get, so long as the pages are sturdy and it has sections for months broken down in some way. The most common break down is this: early month gets one page, mid month gets two pages and late month gets one page, repeat for each month, chronologically. This is usually surrounded and interspersed by little bits about projects, tasks, grids for garden planning, and other such truck. I don't use the peripheral goop, but that "peripheral goop" was the most used part by my grandfather. I guess it depends on how you like to organize.
What you'll want to record:The biggest deal in your life is the weather! You know it, and so do I. So write it down! Just write the date, include the year, and then describe anything notable about the weather. Here's an example of how helpful this is: this February we had an ice storm right after a long week of 60 degree weather. Everyone at work was saying about how this is so unusual and how they never saw anything like it. Do NOT rely on your memory!!! Here's why - I went home that night and went to write the odd weather pattern in my garden journal and discovered something incredible: this had happened every single year for the past three years during the same week of February. No one believed me.
The other thing you'll want to record is planting dates, blooming times, harvest times, etc. And if you wish to do something earlier or later next year, put in a note about what you'd rather do in the appropriate month's section. You don't need to put anything else in here if you don't want to. I don't!
But however are you going to find time to actually write down first and last bloom dates, or harvest times or seeding dates? I mean, you're too busy out there in the garden, right? If there's a freak snow, you're way too busy running around covering up your tender plants, right? Yes, you are right. So here's my suggestion. In the winter - do you have a winter? Or a scorching hot season? Or any sort of lull in the gardening seasons? I do. So during this lull, go through your digital photographs. There is a new feature on digital pictures. They are digitally stamped with at "taken date" you can see this by hovering over the thumbnail with your mouse, or you can view it in the details section on the left bar of your explorer folder. Look for pictures of new blooms, of harvested food, of seedlings, of snow, or of plants that have died (yes you should take pictures of your failures too). You'll be able to figure out the date from this. Just make sure your camera knows what today's date really is! Ask a teenager to check it for you if you don't know how. It is amazing how technology can help you, isn't it! Write these dates down sometime when you do have time. You'll see when you planted those carrot seeds, you know - the ones that weren't ripe until December and you were harvesting them in the middle of the snow. Who? Oh, that wasn't you, that was me. So this year I know to plant my second round of seeds earlier.
Again I say - now just go do it! Go try this! Get into a good habit, and next year you'll be so amazingly happy you did!!! Doing this will get so much easier after you see the benefits. Stop here, ignore the rest of my banter. It's just too much to start all at once.
Yes, there is a thing-three. Thing-three is a simple three ring binder with sheet protectors in it.
So easy to make. So simple to explain. Just make it a good label so you can find it on the shelf.
How to use it:
This is for copies of good ideas out of library books, articles ripped out of magazines, or the entire magazine if it was that good of an issue.
Featured in the photo is:
On the left an article from Psychology magazine about the health benefits of the microbes in soil (they reduce inflammation in the lining of the brain which studies are showing this prevents anxiety and depression disorder).
On the right is a stapled packet of pages copied out of a library book (the best ideas from the book of basically how to recycle stuff for your garden).
Make sure you copy the cover of any book, too, so you can take that book out again some time if you'd like to read it again.
These are just a couple examples of what can be kept in here. It's a bulk pages version of the sticky pages binder from #1. Not useful as often, but a great reference, and so much better than having a bunch of loose paper.
And the fourth - last and probably also the least. Go ahead and get the month-by-month edition for you state, amend it with a heavy book mark for the vegetable section - which makes it easy to flip to the current month any time you need to pull it off the shelf. Highlight it to oblivion and scribble in notes until you can barely see the page behind your penciled marks! Not everything in this book is correct for your micro-climate, so write in what was correct. Some things, like chemical fertilizer suggestions, only apply to other gardeners, not you or me. Sometimes you need a phone number the same time every year. Put it in the margin. Some things are good to have as handy information, so highlight those. Very useful. Enjoy!
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Spring Pleasures
I love fresh asparagus. The best thing about asparagus is that it's ready to harvest at the same time that all the other vegetables are just going into the ground. No waiting! This is my purple asparagus plant. It was great fun to get going, now in it's 4th year I can harvest more heavily than before.
To start, I dug a 18inch deep trench, loosened the soil at the base and added a lot of horse manure. Each year in the early spring I added another 4 to 6 inches of good soil and compost and manure on top and weeded a lot. Each year the shoots got thicker and now it's finally reached maturity. A well cared for asparagus row can live 30-35 years.
And the taste of fresh asparagus is like NOTHING you've EVER TASTED. It absolutely melts in your mouth.
These are just about the last daffodils.
Saskatoons are going to do wonderfully this year. Also known as June berries, and native to Canada, these are very much like blueberries. The are more nutritious, actually, and a darker color. Nothing like 'em!
Red currants come in so much sooner than the black ones, yay!
What's left of the red tulips, still beautiful. These were spring planted so they are very late in blooming. Dearest little one is marked here. A deer came and ate half of them, but the others are fine.
This was my first day this spring to water. The beauty is just captivating.
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