It's Easy Being Green

Since I last posted about the progress of my new raised garden beds, I don’t think we’ve had more than two days straight without rain.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the rain but right now our yard is more like a mud bog with some portions verging on marsh-like.  I keep expecting to look out my window to see large water birds wading through the yard, looking for fish.

In order to complete my raised vegetable beds, I needed to locate the three items I needed the make the recommended growing media.  If you happened to miss my previous posts on creating this year’s garden check out Spring Fever and Garden Planning.  The three soil amendments I was in search of included bulk compost, Sphagnum peat moss and vermiculite.

Vermiculite ended up being the most difficult item to locate.  Even though it’s included in just about every ready-made bag of potting soil, I found it almost impossible to find by itself and in a quantity that was large enough as to not break the gardening bank.  Needing 25 cubic feet of the material, I quickly discovered that most gardening centers in my area wouldn’t be able to get me even close to that amount and they weren’t interested in ordering it in for me either.

Daylight Farm Supply was kind enough to price it out for me in 4 cubic foot bags and offered to order it in if I wanted it.  There was going to be a bit of a lag time to get the order so that’s when I got to thinking about the one place I drive by on a daily basis, specifically geared toward agriculture: The Warrick County Co-Op located in Vanderburgh County.  Sure enough they had vermiculite in stock at a little under $20 a bag which was the cheapest I was able to find it too.

Once I found my vermiculite supply I was set.  I ordered 4-scoop loads of well aged manure and compost from AP&P Soil Masters on Kansas Road and had them dump the large pile in my driveway.  After paying the driver I headed out to Rural King to get some peat moss and then to the county co-op to pick up vermiculite.  I spent about 3 hours playing mixologist, combining equal parts compost, peat moss and vermiculite to create my raised bed planting mix.  Without a wheelbarrow, I made a makeshift soil transporter with our little red wagon and two huge planting containers as my carrying buckets.

I’ve been dodging rain showers ever since, trying to get the rest of my raised beds filled with soil mix while trying to take care of other responsibilities around the house.  Today, rain be darned, I destined to get some more work done.  I finished filling in the raised beds and built the square foot planting grids to go over the tops of the boxes.  This is the grid system that lays out your planting squares.  It’s built using 4 foot lengths of wood lath that you buy by the bundle for about $5.

I also dug two holes about two feet deep on either side of my main aisle.  These were to sink my 4×4 poles into the ground to support the two picket fence panels.  I will also be attaching a swinging gate and building an arbor over the top of the 4×4’s.  The garden looks so much different from the last time I took a picture of it.  I’m excited about everything I was able to get done today and can’t wait to get out and starting getting some Spring veggies planted to take advantage of the cool weather.

It still looks like a construction zone but you can see my newly filled raised square foot gardening boxes with their planting grids and the new picket fence and two 4x4 posts waiting for a swinging gate and an arbor over the top

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Being the nomadic little family we are, last year’s vegetable garden and all others prior to that, have been one year affairs with little planning.  We literally moved to a new rental house at least once a year if not twice depending on the circumstances.

Before moving to the Midwest, we enjoyed high-elevation mountain living in Flagstaff, Arizona.  At 7500 feet, Flagstaff has a growing season that lasts barely 90 days.  If you blink, you might miss it!  Transplants couldn’t hit the soil until late May (snow that month wasn’t out of the question) and you had to hope you’d have something to harvest by late August before the first frost set in.  It was an incredible challenge and consequently we chose to always keep the veggie garden on the small side.  It ranged from just a few potted vegetables at our townhouse with a 10×10 foot patio to a 4×8 foot raised garden bed at our biggest rental house.

Here in southwest Indiana we’re strangely in the same USDA climate zone as our old home in Flagstaff but our growing season is double what we’re used to.  It feels like you can grow half the year and that is awesome!  Because we were renting the house we just bought, we kept the vegetable garden small and spontaneous.  I planted a strip about 4 feet deep and 20 feet long against our northern fence.  It was originally lawn space so I crudely turned the heavy clay soil with a pitchfork, tried to get rid of as much grass as I could and plopped in some transplants from the local farm market.

Now that the house is officially ours and we plan to stick around for awhile, I decided to actually plan this year’s garden space as most experts recommend.  Our 80 square foot planting space last year included about 6 tomatoes, 2 zucchinis, 2 lemon cucumbers, 6 regular cucumbers, 6 collard greens, 2 eggplants and about a dozen stalks of sweet corn (which didn’t do very well because there were so few of them).  We packed a lot in to that tiny space and we didn’t have to buy produce the entire Summer.

I then began to lay out different ideas on graph paper.  I tried different sized beds and layouts until I came up with a design that I liked and that maximized the amount of space I had to grow in.  When you come up with your design, make sure to list your priorities before you get started.  I wanted to plant as much space as possible yet keep it accessible and pleasant to look at.

After mulling several different designs for a day or so, I didn’t like anything I came up with so I started drawing a few more.  I simply tweaked the designs I had previously come up with.  Finally one I put down on paper felt right and I knew I had a winner.  I opted on a central aisle that is 3 feet wide, big enough to roll a wheelbarrow up and down.  Branching off the main aisle will be wraparound aisles for harvesting that are about 2 feet wide.  That’s less than recommended by Bartholomew but I think it will be okay since I don’t plan to roll a wheelbarrow up and down those aisles and don’t mind to brush my vegetables as I walk by.

Planning the raised beds on graph paper also made estimating cost and materials a lot easier.  I was able to quickly come up with how much lumber I needed and calculated the formulations of soil mixes I’ll need to buy to fill the planting beds.  I’ll also make photocopies of the full-size garden plan so I can actually plot out what will get planted where.

Over the past two weekends I bought the lumber and built 6 of my raised garden beds.  I still need to build 3 more beds but that will take just a couple hours of time.  To make sure I was still on track with my plan, I laid out the finished beds to see the full-scale look of garden 2010 and I like what I see so far!  I’m exited to start putting in my soil mix, mulching my aisles and building the gate and arbor that will serve as the entryway to veggie heaven.

Stay tuned for our next installment as I put the finishing touches on the raised beds and get to growing!

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Imagine the joy of this past Saturday.  The sun was shining.  The sky was a vibrant blue.  Birds were chirping.  It warmed up to a positively balmy 50 degrees.  The snow had completely disappeared.  Now imagine today’s disappointment when I awoke to see another dusting of snow outside!

Mentally, we are definitely done with Winter.  I’m not sure what has all the sudden pushed us past the tipping point here in our household.  Maybe it’s the cabin fever talking but regardless of the reason, we want to see an end to our current season.

My "pile" of seed catalogs. It's one of my many piles that endlessly frustrates my poor wifey.

I’ve been trying to make myself feel better by burying myself with a pile of colorful and always enticing seed catalogs.  It makes me not only feel better but provides a little glimmer of hope that I will one day be back outside, enjoying the warmth and sunshine while laboring or simply enjoying our garden.

As you probably remember from previous posts, I’ve been toiling with my vegetable gardening “method” for the year.  Historically, our little family of three has moved just about every year, going from one rental to the next.  That won’t happen this year since we’ve actually solidified our existence and purchased a house.  Now we can put down some more permanent roots in our garden as well.

Last Fall, I took some time and read Lasagna Gardening.  I’ve known for awhile that no-till gardens are much more environmentally friendly and figured Patricia Lanza’s book might be enough to spur me in the no-till direction when planning our permanent veggie garden.  About halfway through her book though, I was frustrated.  What I needed to know, the way to lasagna garden, was literally two paragraphs worth of material in the beginning of the book.  Lay down a thick layer of newspaper to smother weeds and grass and then simply pile up loose, friable, organically supreme soil for your garden beds was the basic gist.  I’m glad I only checked the book out at the library and didn’t waste the money buying her book.  It was perfect for a beginning gardener who might be discovering this new found hobby but not for me.

I felt like I didn’t have many other options though and tried to mentally design how this lasagna garden would look in my backyard.  Our yard is already small and so I was really only looking to expand my vegetable space to about 19 feet by 12 feet, a little more than 200 square feet.  I started looking for cast-offs from everyone’s front yard, Fall decorations: straw bales.  Lanza’s soil mix suggests straw as a good component to help build your raised beds up above the original soil surface.  The idea is that the straw will compost with your other organics and produce a top-notch soil.

As Winter pushed deeper into the calendar, my straw bales sat untouched, well at least by me.  Dixie, our doofy but lovable dog, has been smart enough to use the straw bales as a warming perch this winter.  Every morning she sits with a yoga-like patience atop those bales, warms herself in the early morning sun and keeps watch for the mouser cat Haley to wander back from her early walk to eat breakfast.  The more Dixie sits, the more the straw bales break down making it easier to spread into future garden beds but frankly she seemed to be getting more use out of it as a makeshift sundeck.

Dixie sits atop her straw bale sundeck. It's a product of my procrastination and her keen, dog-like ingenuity. To the right you can see our composter, poorly visited bird feeder (which will be moved) and a torn up piece of trellis used to keep Dixie off of what was left of the collard greens.

Knowing my yearning to pick something, my wife gently nudged me in one direction with a little Valentine’s Day present.  It was Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening:  Grow More in Less Space.  His concept, ditching the inefficient practice of gardening in long single rows, made much more sense for our tiny backyard.  I haven’t blogged a bit lately, in part because I’ve spent the past seven days reading Bartholomew’s book from cover to cover and embarked on the design process of our own square foot garden.  Check back tomorrow for more on how I designed our 2010 vegetable garden and what I’ve been able to get done so far.  Hopefully it will trigger you to start planning your own and make the most of your garden space and your wallet!

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Thanksgiving might be a week behind us but I’m still pretty pleased with our decision to go local this year.  Instead of elbowing the crowd at the freezer case at the local grocery store, we located a nearby farmer who raises natural and fresh turkeys for the Thanksgiving holiday.

This is something we’ve done before when we lived in northern Arizona.  Our tradition was short-lived however because the farm bowed out to developers and sold their acreage.  It was disappointing but just another real world example of how small local farmers are edged out of the market every day.  Last year we were new transplants to the Tri-State area and didn’t have much time to begin looking for a locally and naturally raised bird to feast on.

After a call to the River City Food Co-Op, they directed me to Uebelhack Farms located in Mt. Vernon, Indiana.  The family has been raising turkeys for the past 40 years and is not one of those factory farms that inhumanely and unnaturally treats the meat that will end up on our tables.  They took my order, asked if I wanted fresh or frozen and gave me a date to swing by the farmhouse and pick up my turkey.  It was a bit off the beaten path and more expensive than a frozen, store-bought turkey but it was well worth it.

We felt even better about our decision to buy locally sourced meat after watching an eye-opening documentary called Food, Inc. The documentary, co-produced by Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (Omnivore’s Dilemma), takes a look at how Americans consume meat that is fast, cheap and tasty (or at least that’s what we’re led to believe).  It follows meat from the breeding process in a lab, to the farm, to the slaughterhouse, to the store and eventually onto your table, showing you exactly what you’re eating.

I’ve always been a big proponent to eating locally sourced food but have found it both difficult and cost-prohibitive to find locally sourced meat.  I’ve been talking with another local farmer over at Stonewall Farms in Evansville, Indiana who sells shares of organic, pasture-fed beef, pork, lamb and goat.  After watching that documentary, I think we’re ready to make the leap in 2010 and support a local, organic meat producer.

For more information about Food, Inc. you can visit their website by clicking this link.

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It’s that time of year when the skunks start coming out of the woodwork and interacting with the friendly wildlife we call pets living in our yards.  T had a near heart attack the other night when she heard our dog going crazy outback and opened the door to the most pungent skunk spray smell ever.  We’re pretty used to the odor coming from Flagstaff, AZ.  We practically had a skunk wander by our bedroom window just about every night regardless of what house we were living in there.

T remarked that the odor was so bad her eyes were watering and she was almost certain the dog had been sprayed because of the way she was acting.  Co-workers told me to pickup lots of cans of tomato juice on the way home, with extra to make a Bloody Mary to enjoy during the bathing process.  While I’ve heard good things about the tomato juice, I’ve heard it takes several washes and wondered if there was anything better and not chemically based for getting rid of the smell.

That’s when I sent a good friend of mine back in Flagstaff a message to see what he’s used.  He had the unfortunate experience of having both his dogs sprayed and then they ran into the house, fumigating his two story abode with the smell of woodpussy.  He got back to me with his favorite and effective green skunk deodorizer recipe and here it is:

Green Skunk Wash Deodorizer Recipe

-  1 bottle of hydrogen peroxide

-  1/4 cup of baking soda

-  A few drops of liquid dish soap

Mix all ingredients together and get to washing!

As it turns out, I got home and the dog did not get sprayed, thankfully.  It seemed as if the creature simply wandered through the yard and was quite smelly but never deposited it’s fragrance on my four-legged beast outback.  Do you have a good home remedy or green recipe for getting rid of a skunky smell?  Leave a comment with your recipe or email me and we’ll post it in a future article!

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As the nights get cooler and the days get shorter, apples that ripen in the Fall are finally ready to come off the tree.  We have several U-Pick apple orchards in the area and enjoy going to fill up a bag or two as we wander down the rows of apple trees.  Inevitably we come home with more than we can simply eat so naturally, we look for ways to preserve a piece of Fall.

Last year I dug out the apple slicer and corer.  It took about an hour or two to make my way through the entire harvest and get them ready for preserving.  We left several of the jars of apples plain and packed them in sugar water.  I used another batch of apples to make jars of apples packed in cinnamon red hot syrup.

Both have proven to be a winner and have their own special uses.  The regular apples I use for baked goods, pancakes or waffles and main dish recipes like Pork Chops with Apples.  The cinnamon red hot apples are good for desert toppings and breakfast treats like waffles.

Yearning to celebrate the changing of the seasons this weekend, I cooked up Baked Pork Chops with Apples and a side of Baked Sweet Dumpling Squash.  Both were delicious and I will put them in our seasonal recipe collection.  I’ll share those recipes later this week.  In the meantime, if you’re looking to can some apples, here are the two recipes I use.

Apples In Syrup

courtesy: Ball Complete Book of Preserving

Ingredients:

-  10 to 12 lbs. apples, stemmed, peeled, cored and quartered (to prevent browning submerge apple slices in 1/4 cup lemon juice and 4 cups water)

-  1 batch of hot syrup (I used a light syrup recipe because I wanted to preserve as much of the nautral apple flavor & sweetness as possible.  Make by combining 2 & 1/4 cups of granulated sugar in a large pot with 5 & 1/4 cups water.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved.  Reduce heat to low and keep warm until needed, making sure you don’t boil the mixture down)

Directions:

1)  Prepare canner, jars and lids.

2)  In a large stainless steel saucepan, combine apples and syrup.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.  Reduce heat to medium-low and boil gently for 5 minutes, until heated through.

3)  Using a slotted spoon, pack hot apples into hot jars to within a generous 1/2 inch of top of jar.  Ladle hot syrup into jar to cover apples, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.  Remove air bubbled and adjust headspace, if necessary, by adding hot syrup.  Wipe rim.  Center lid on jar.  Screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip-tight.

4)  Place jars in canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water.  Bring to a boil and process both pint and quart jars for 20 minutes.  Remove canner lid.  Wait 5 minutes, then remove jars, cool and store.

Apples in Cinnamon Red Hot Syrup

courtesy:  Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

Ingredients to make 8 pint jars:

1 & 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1/2 cup cinnamon red hot candies

2 cinnamon sticks

2 tsp. whole cloves

1 tsp. ground ginger

2 cups water

1 & 1/2 cups vinegar

2/3 cup light-corn syrup

2 tbsp. red food coloring (optional)

24 medium apples, peeled, cored, sliced and treated according to directions above

Directions:

1)  Prepare canner, jars and lids.

2)  In a large stainless steel saucepan, combine sugar, cinnamon candies, cinnamon sticks, cloves, giner, water, vinegar, corn syrup and red food coloring, if using.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring frequently.  Add apples and stir gently over medium-high heat until apples are heated through, about 6 minutes.  Discard cinnamon sticks.  Turn heat off, but leave saucepan on heating element while filling jars.

3)  Using a slotted spoon, pack hot apples into hot jars to within a generous 1/2 inch of top of jar.  Ladle hot syrup into jar to cover apples, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.  Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace, if necessary, by adding hot syrup.  Wipe rim.  Center lid on jar.  Screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip-tight.

4)  Place jars in canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water.  Bring to a boil and process for 15 minutes.  Remove canner lid.  Wait 10 minutes, then remove jars, cool and store.

Now let the fruits of your labor cool for a couple of days and coming up later in the week, I’ll share the delicious recipe I used for Baked Pork Chops and Apples and Sweet Dumpling Squash.

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This last week I ran across a desk that popped up on Freecycle.  I’ve been working off of a tiny desk that was barely big enough for my monitor and the keyboard since moving to Indiana last year.  The only challenge was the desk was about a 30 minute drive from the house so it was going to require some advance planning to find a morning I could sneak out early and pick it up.

Wild sunflowers bloom alongside one of the many gravel roads leading in and around Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife Area in northern Warrick County.

I chose Wednesday, a day when we don’t have much going on other than me going to work, and made plans with the Freecycler to come cart their old desk away.  I woke up early, loaded the car with recyclables to drop off on my way out of town, grabbed a free coffee at McDonald’s and then headed out.  I was supposed to call the Freecyclers just to warn them I was headed out so they would be ready for my arrival.

A typical grassy meadow borderd by forest and found throughout the Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife area

Needless to say, I wasn’t really surprised when nobody answered the phone and I didn’t get an immediate call back after leaving a message.  I wasn’t too concerned though since I needed to stop and drop off my recyclables before heading out to the desk.  After 10 minutes of sorting recyclables and getting them into their correct bins at the recycling center, I decided to drive around in the general area waiting for my return phone call.  It just didn’t make sense to drive all the way back home only to turn around and head back out that direction again.

Wildflowers of all different shapes and colors bloom in the grassy praires and even right alongside the guard rails on all of the gravel roads

Sometimes the magic of just driving around on the roads less-traveled is enough to keep me occupied.  I love seeing the land and discovering little hidden corners and hideaways.  As I was driving along on two-lane farm roads, I discovered a gravel road that veered off the pavement and up a hill.  I decided to meander up the road and check it out.    It ended up running into the nearby Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife Area, a network of prairies, woods and lakes that attract all sorts of local game.

Reflecting on their serene view, wildflowers bob and sway in the breeze at Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife Area

I parked the car and decided to turn my frustration at a flaky Freecycler into some good mind clearing fun.  I wandered down the gravel roads, checking all sorts of native wildflowers blooming just about everywhere you looked.  Since I”m a horticultural nut, I also spent some time collecting seed pods off of the different wildflowers so maybe next year I can grow some of my own and cultivate them.  The quiet and solitude of that 30 minutes was just what I need to rejuvenate my mind for the rest of the day.  The only man-made noise was from a plane passing overhead.  The rest was the breeze blowing through the reeds, fish jumping for bugs, insects and frogs chirping and whirring away and a heron swooping in over one of the lakes to setup his observation post, looking for his next meal.

Even dried flower pods are colorful. These ones are covered with bright orange and black beetles that look like cousins to the squash beetles that attacked my zuchinnis and cucumbers

I started out angry at yet another Freecycle Flake who says one thing and then does another but was able to turn the wheel down the road less-traveled and cleared my mind with nature.

A beautiful Monarch butterfly stops for a sip of nectar on one of probably thousands of purple thistles blooming in the area

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