It's Easy Being Green

This Memorial Day of course marks the beginning of Summer and what better way to celebrate the season than to fire up your grill, right?  Well for me anyway, it’s my preferred method of cooking when it heats up.

Grilling has it’s benefits, especially when it comes to trying to keep your home cool during the Summer months.  By cooking outside, you’ll reduce the heat output of your kitchen which of course will make your air conditioner run harder trying to keep you comfortable.  It will keep your cooling bill lower and easier on your pocketbook.

While grilling over propane is the cleanest burning way to cook up some food on the “barbie”, I’m a charcoal purist.  I like the tast charcoal provides that I just can’t get on a gas grill.  I used to exclusively use charcoal briquettes until I ran across a produce that I think is a little more natural: lump charcoal.

You may have noticed lump charcoal is popping up in more and more stores.  My local Schnuck’s recently introduced their house brand of lump charcoal called “Full Circle” and bill it as a natural product.  Most lump charcoal is pure, unadulterated wood scraps that are fired at high temperatures to develop the char.  That’s it!  Nothing else is added.  Lump charcoal burns cleaner than briquettes and hotter.  Sometimes it can be more expensive than briquettes and not burn as uniformly or long.

Charcoal briquettes however are a different story.  They’re made from charred wood as well but are pulverized and compressed with saw dust, borax, starch, sodium nitrate and limestone.  For more on what each of those fillers do, click here.  If you begin grilling before the briquettes are ashy, it’s possible they can release a chemical type flavor into your food.  The added chemicals, while claimed to be unharmful, are enough to drive me to use just natural lump charcoal.

So what if you currently have a charcoal grill and you’d like to reduce your emissions by grilling with a cleaner fuel?  You might just run out and buy a brand new gas grill but that of course is wasteful thinking.  I just ran across an interesting new product on the net that could be the way to convert your old charcoal grill, to a lean, green grilling machine.

The Flame Disk is billed as a "clean burning" fuel to use in your charcoal grill.

The manufacturer says the product is made from 100% ethanol, a renewable biofuel made from corn.  They also claim that the emissions include a small percentage of carbon dioxide (less than charcoal) but is mostly made up of water.  Plus they say it’s as easy as peel, light and grill.  This seems like a great idea to me and would be willing to try it out sometime, especially on a camping trip when fumbling with a bag of charcoal and lighter fluid might be a total pain.

What’s your view on grilling?  How do you make your experience more eco-friendly?  Share your comments with our other readers!

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Since I’m a rogue gardener, I’m also not shy about “stealing” plants.  Actually I’m pretty sure it was my wife who turned me onto the act, lasciviously telling me to uproot certain plants so she could divide, steal and replant so nobody would ever know.  Now I “steal” on my own without having to be told.

There are so many plants out there that require dividing because they multiply and sometimes at great rates.  Iris plants are just one such plant that benefit from frequent dividing.  The benefit to you is that you get more plants, so-called clones that you get to insert into your garden in another spot or give away to friends for planting in their gardens.

The other day I was working near a nicely landscaped series of garden beds and much to my surprise, noticed large, vibrant mint plants rambling throughout the bed.  Mint of course will take over anything if you let it because it sends up runners anywhere it can.  I simply plucked one of those runners from the soil, made sure to get some whispy roots on that plucking and dropped it in a glass of water at home.  It’s been sitting in a sunny window for about two weeks now and is about ready to find some soil I think.  The roots look great!  Now I’ll have my own mint plant thanks to “stealing”.

Other plants that you can “steal” and root in water include tomatoes (check out my previous writing on that), basil, avocado (the pits), pepper, willow, african violet, pothos, coleus, sweet potato vine, gardenias and spider plants.  I’m sure there are many more out there.  If you have a plant that you like to “steal” and plant or root in water, leave a comment and share with your fellow gardeners.

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When it comes to gardening, I’m like a mint plant:  rogue and rambling throughout the landscape, putting down roots wherever I see fit.  I guess that’s just how I roll and I kind of like it.  I’ve learned you can’t really be prim and proper with a vegetable garden anyway because inevitably, the darn things grow in ways you never expected and couldn’t contain even if you tried.  That’s why I go rogue.

I got my first vegetable bed planted earlier this week and two nights of soaking rain have helped to water it in good.  I planted 10 tomato plants all together: 4 roma, 4 cherry, 1 heirloom orange oxheart and 1 unknown plant that already has a tomato.  I also planted two zuchinnis and an eggplant in that tiny plot.

Last night I took advantage of the cool weather and finished my work with the pitchfork, overturning another plot of the backyard to plant in.  It’s supposed to dry out this week which will make it much easier to work the heavy Ohio Valley clay soil that I’m learning to wrestle with.  I’ve never seen soil so thick and claylike in my life, now imagine trying to figure out how to grow stuff in it!  After living in Arizona though, another poor soil condition, I’m just learning to deal with it and hopefully ramp up compost production so I can begin enriching and lightening the clay in our garden beds.

I also ended up coming upon quite the stack of free seeds from a fellow gardener who just had surgery and won’t be planting this year.   Last night I started rampling about the yard, poking seeds in just about every spot imagineable.  My thought is why not use every available inch of space or bare ground to grow some food for us.  So I followed the fence line, scratching a trench in the clay and planting Alaska peas, Henderson lima beans, Cherokee Yellow wax beans and Golden Bantam sweet corn.

The method would probably throughly confuse any “classical” vegetable gardener who likes to have everything in nice little neat rows.  That’s not me though!  I hilled up the sweet corn and planted about 6 plants to a hill and am hoping the line of bush beans and peas will just grow up against the fence at the edge of the lawn.  We’ll see how my rogue method works.  I can’t wait!

Meanwhile, I still have dozens of seed packets waiting for some bare earth and have work to get to.  My seed collection is verging on old, so I think I just need to plant everything that’s old and get it out of rotation.  I know a lot of it is already past prime and won’t germinate.  I’ve had some of these packets for at least 10 years if not more (I know, don’t judge) and most seed has a shelf life of only about 5 years.  It’s time to purge!

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It got hot and sticky yesterday here in southwestern Indiana.  A lot of people commented that it felt like mid-Summer already and I have to admit, I kicked the a/c on because I just yearned for some cooler, drier air.  I’m a newcomer to the Midwest of course so all this humidity is a new experience for me.  It can feel downright tropical out there!

While I’m sitting out on the deck or working in the garden, there’s nothing more refreshing than a cool, frosty drink to help you cool off.  Below are some great and cheap alternatives to store bought mixes or drinks that will normally empty your wallet of a few more dollars.  So why not try these homemade versions instead.

Lemonade Syrup

The key to making lemonade syrup on the cheap is to look for lemons to go on sale.  You’re going to need about 16 lemons for this recipe, so the cheaper you find them the cheaper it will cost to make your syrup.  The batch of syrup will end up making enough to create 22 glasses of delicious lemonade.

Ingredients:

- 3 cups sugar

- 1 cup boiling water

- 3 cups fresh lemon juice (about 16 lemons)

- 2 Tbsp. grated lemon zest

1)  In a 1.5 quart, heatproof container, put in the sugar.  Add the boiling water, stirring constantly, until the sugar has completely disolved.  Let the sugar mixture stand until it is cool.

2)  Add the lemon juice and zest and stir until all the ingredients are well blended.  Cover the container and store in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.  Makes 5.5 cups of syrup.

To make a fresh glass of lemonade using your syrup:

In a tall glass, combine the desired amount of syrup (1/4 to 1/3 cups) with the desired amount of cold water and stir until blended.  Garnish with lemon wedge or a sprig of mint.

To make a fresh pitcher of Lemon Squash:

This is a fizzy version of fresh lemonade made with sparkling water. In a 2 quart pitcher combine some lemon zest with 1 cup of the lemon syrup you made earlier.  Stir until well blended.  Just before serving, stir in the seltzer, sparkling water or club soda and stir gently.  Then pour over ice filled glasses and garnish with a lemon wedge or mint sprig.  Makes 4 servings.

Limeade Syrup or Lime Squash:

This can be prepared the exact same way, just using limes instead of lemons if you desire.  Fresh strawberries will make a refreshing and sweet garnish for the limeade if you choose.

What’s your favorite cold drink that helps you cool off on a hot summer day?  Share it with us and we’ll post your recipe online to share with our other readers.  Happy sipping!

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It’s been a whirlwind past few weeks as we get into the final days of my wife’s pregnancy.  I can’t believe how quickly times has flown by and how much I’ve had to get done.  Admidst all that, I’m ramping up for the Summer garden season and am getting ready to get our vegetable patch going.

I probably should have started my seedlings a lot sooner but since this is my first season here in the Midwest, I’m a little behind the curve.  We’ve been saving our used cardboard egg cartons and just turned those into a seedling factory a couple of weeks ago.  They work great and don’t drain water all over the place and they save space too.  Eventually, you’re supposed to be able to just clip the individual egg cups apart and plant the whole thing just like a peat pot.

Another egg carton seedling tray with lemon cucumbers and yellow squash reaching for the sky.

I had a few loose seed packets left over from previous years so I started some lemon cucumbers, zuchinni, yellow squash, Trip-L Crop Climbing Tomato, Benchmark Tomato, Jumbo Tomato and some bush beans.  So far, the sprout factory is off to the races with with many of the squash plants winning.  Some are even ready to be potted up because they’re getting a bit leggy now.

My next task is to get the future garden plot prepared for planting.  We’ve been inundated with rain for the past three weeks or so and it seem like we’re finaly going to get a short dry spell.  That will hopefully allow me the chance to actually get out and get some soil turned over and ready to go.  The composter is set up and already on a roll.  We just cleaned out the rabbit hutches and that provided a lot of great compost material, along with our usual kitchen scraps and trimmings from the bushes and flowers around the house.

So, how does your garden grow this time of year?  Are you a Midwestern gardener with some time tested tips?  Let me know what you’re growing and what you can always rely on for a bumper crop harvest!

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