Category: Garden

Posts about gardening and related topics, such as canning and maybe other aspects of food preservation.

Post G21-004: Low-effort three-season kitchen compost system

 

Edit 2024:  The approach I describe in this post worked well, but it looks bad in the kitchen.  In the end, I replaced my crude compost holder with the smallest kitchen compost holder I could find, the three-quart OXO model (Amazon reference).  That still forces me to empty it every few days, and as long as I rinse it (outside), there’s been no odor in the kitchen. 

This is a brief note on everybody’s favorite topic, rotting garbage.  I mean, composting kitchen waste.

Our household generates a fair amount of compostable kitchen waste  It’s nothing unusual:  Vegetable peels, coffee grounds, and the like.  But it’s enough volume that it’s well worth composting for the garden.

Over the years, I’ve tried a variety of methods for composting my kitchen waste.   All the ones I used to use were failures, to a greater or lesser degree.

Sometime the failure was due to the equipment.  But more often, it was operator error. Because, when you get right down to it, who in their right mind wants to deal with composting kitchen waste?  It’s way too easy to say “I’ll take the compost out tomorrow”, particularly if it’s a nasty job.  And if you ignore a composting system that needs some TLC, it’ll let you know about it.

It was only when I more-or-less gave up on the gizmos and the tricks that I stumbled across a system that works for me.  It was really a question of channeling my inner sloth.  So I thought I’d share what finally worked for me. Continue reading Post G21-004: Low-effort three-season kitchen compost system

Post #1073: No-dig potatoes as value-destroying gardening.

I grew potatoes for the first time last year.  Just a 4′ x 4′ test plot in a little raised bed filled with loose soil, essentially Mel’s Mix ™.

Based on that small trial, I’m sold.  Almost no work, almost no pests.  Great yield of calories per square foot.  Keeps well.

And tastes good.  Fresh potatoes taste better than potatoes that have been sitting around for a year.  Who would have guessed?

I now want to scale that up to a much larger garden plot at the back of my yard.

Continue reading Post #1073: No-dig potatoes as value-destroying gardening.

Post #G21-003: Is there still a canning lid shortage?

 

Edit on 5/18/2021: 

The final section of this is now a list of options you might consider trying if you can’t find Ball/Kerr lids locally.

As of 4/18/2021, it was clear that shipments of canning supplies for the 2021 canning season had begun.  In Vienna, VA, lids were back in stock in several locations.  That’s documented in  post #G21-013. 

I figured the lid shortage was over.

I figured wrong. 

Three weeks later, my local Walmart is out of stock, and lids are going in and out of stock at my local hardware store.  See Post #G21-020 for a summary of how the supply looks, in my local area, as of 5/8/2021.  Post #G21-023 for a 5/18/2021 update.

The original post follows:

I watched a presentation yesterday on YouTube, the focus of which is the ongoing shortage of canning lids in the U.S.A.  These lids aren’t re-usable, so if you do home canning using traditional (“Ball”) lids, you need a steady supply of them.

You may not hear about it much right now, as it’s not canning season.  But after looking into it, I think that’s sort-of true.  But only sort-of.  If you’re willing to pay a premium, or use no-name lids, there’s no shortage.  (See Amazon below).

But the very idea of a brand-new shortage is a little odd.  Nearly all other shortages of low-tech consumer goods were sorted out last year.  And it’s unsettling to see news of a shortage of a good for which there are nearly no substitutes (other than Tattler lids, which themselves appear in short supply).

After looking at the crazy current prices for lids (see below), I’m betting that the great lid shortage of ’21, such as it is, will not persist.

My explanation is that we’re seeing the impact of the seasonality of new product shipments by U.S. manufacturers.  In effect, this isn’t a shortage of domestic canning lids for the 2021 canning season.  It’s the last gasp of the 2020 canning season.  The 2021 season hasn’t started yet.  And when it does,  I bet that the lid shortage disappears entirely.

In this post, I lay out the evidence for that conclusion, such as it is.

Continue reading Post #G21-003: Is there still a canning lid shortage?

Post #G21-002: Sweet potato slips, rewritten: Ditch the glass.

My latest discovery as I plan out my garden is that there are few hot-weather vegetables that I would care eat.  I’m not quite desperate enough to grow eggplant (yet).  But I’m getting there.

I’ve decided to grow some sweet potatoes.  They like the heat, and by reputation, they’re easy to grow.  Except for that weird part about growing slips by suspending a sweet potato in a glass of water.  That’s unappealing.

Turns out, the sweet-potato-in-a-glass-of-water method is more of a kid’s science experiment than a gardening technique.  Real gardeners grow sweet potato slips by placing sweet potatoes in a warm, moist, loose medium, such as soil, potting soil, sand, or sawdust. 

And that’s the point of this post.  I’m going to try to summarize the best available advice on this topic.  See the bullet points at the end for the bottom line. Continue reading Post #G21-002: Sweet potato slips, rewritten: Ditch the glass.

Post G21-001: Garden lessons learned.

Last year I put in a fairly serious vegetable garden.  Partly it was for the exercise, partly it was to have something to do.

And partly, it was so I’d have something cheerful to see when I looked out my back window.  Like so.

 

I’m going to start this year’s garden posts with lessons learned from last year.  Scroll down to the headers in red to see if any of this interests you. Continue reading Post G21-001: Garden lessons learned.

Post #G29: Illustrated guide to making red cabbage sauerkraut

This post illustrates the process of making sauerkraut, starting from 10 pounds of red cabbage, and ending up with a two half-gallons of kraut, ready to ferment.  For detailed written instructions for lacto-fermentation of vegetables, see Post #G23.

Let me start by noting one big advantage of red cabbage sauerkraut compared to more traditional green cabbage sauerkraut.  Aside from the looks (a deep purple) and the taste (tangier than regular sauerkraut), it is exceptionally crisp when it is done. 

So crisp, in fact, that you can freeze it.  And by that I mean, you can freeze it and still be willing to eat it afterwards.  It won’t be as crisp once you’ve done that, but it is still on the right side of “edible”.  It ends up just about as crisp as traditional sauerkraut.  By contrast, if you freeze traditional sauerkraut, you pretty much get mush when you thaw it.  It’s still edible, but it’s not something you’d care to eat raw.

For the casual reader, that may not seem like much.  But those of you who are into lacto-fermentation or probiotics or food preservation understand the advantage to this:  You don’t have to can it to preserve it.  Canning is a lot of work, and it (by definition) kills all the bacteria in the sauerkraut.  But with red cabbage sauerkraut, you can make a big batch, eat some fresh, put some in the fridge for the next couple of months, and put some in the freezer for next year.  And in each case, those probiotic bacteria will still be alive.  And it’s all good enough to eat raw.  It’s better when it’s fresh, but it’s still not bad after it’s been frozen.

And that’s why I’m not afraid to make it by the gallon, as shown in this posting.  Some will go in the fridge.  The rest will go in the freezer.

And that means I can do this seasonally.  When the new cabbages start showing up at the farmers’ markets in the fall, that’s when I make kraut.  Sometimes I get some odd looks, buying half-a-dozen cabbages at a time.  But they’re always willing to take my money.

The only disadvantage of red cabbage sauerkraut is that you can’t cook with it.  Not unless you like (e.g.) purple pork chops.  It will dye any food that it is cooked with.

If you’ve never made sauerkraut before, everything you really need to know about the basics of making sauerkraut can be found in the USDA guidelines, Section 6 (.pdf).

Continue reading Post #G29: Illustrated guide to making red cabbage sauerkraut

Post #G28: Squirrels are just rats with fluffy tails, UPDATED

Remember the popular kids’ cartoon about Rocket J. Rat and his pal Bullwinkle Opossum?  No, guess not.  Must be the naked tail, or something.  Nobody seems to like rats or possums.

But squirrels are cuuuute!

Cute obnoxious destructive pests, in the garden.  That said, this is not an anti-squirrel screed.  Much.

This is a report about two commonly-suggested methods for preventing squirrel damage to pumpkins and other winter squash.  For me, one worked, one didn’t.  Given that it’s the time of year when squirrels seem to be gnawing on everything not protected by heavy steel mesh, I thought I’d report that out.

Coating the outside of the pumpkin with the hottest, cheapest hot sauce I could find seems to have worked.  Making my own “capsaicin spray” from hot pepper flakes, following common internet guidance, did not.

Continue reading Post #G28: Squirrels are just rats with fluffy tails, UPDATED

Post #G27: A treatise on the squash vine borer, final version

 

Source:  U Wisconsin Vegetable Entomology.

Yet another gardening post.  If you have no interest in growing cucurbits, stop now.

This is a rewrite of an earlier post (G09), mostly to summarize the results of this season.  And to shorten it up and tighten up the writing.  It’s a summary of everything I think I have learned about the squash vine borer (SVB).  All in one place.  Off the top of my head, based on what I’ve read over the past week, and what I’ve observed in my garden.  So I can remember it next year.  Citations as to source only if and as I feel like locating them.

Continue reading Post #G27: A treatise on the squash vine borer, final version