So.Very.Tired

This post is ultimately about the pallet board greens garden I made today. Other things should be mentioned too.
One of the reasons I haven't been posting is that I had to have another tooth removed because it cracked. For a week there was a lot of discomfort and now, with it being pulled, there is a LOT of discomfort. More than I expected really, and I have had one other removed (other than my wisdom teeth, really wishing I had them right about now).
The other, more obvious reason is that I live 10 minutes from the Boston craziness. The day we stayed in was the nicest of the year so far, and no gardening. It was a small discomfort all in all, but when you can't do something it ends up being the only thing that you want to do. It turned out well though. I was going to hedge my bets and get the tomatoes, cukes and squash in, but now they are saying that there will be a hard frost in Lexington which is about 40 minutes from me driving (the roads are a pain that way). It is unlikely we will have a hard frost here, but there will be frost and the tommy toes do not like frost.
In case you are wondering, "tommy toes" is what Ramona the Brave called tomatoes, and I loved those books as a kid.

So today, while exhausted, emotionally wrung out and mostly wanting to crawl in a nice deep hole, I pulled myself up and went to work on the pallet garden after getting a new staple gun because my old one was mishandled by somebody (husband.. ahem..). It is probably the best thing I learned growing up, being able to just do things when they absolutely have to be done. I am usually a wreck after, but things get accomplished.

Here is my attempt at the pallet garden. I did make mistakes. This is due to lack of foresight and I think I get a bit of a break for reigning insanity, at least temporarily.

I found the idea on the internet, pinterest I think, a while ago and thought that it was a terrific idea. Pallets are easy to find, free and light. The way it explained to do it though took way too much time for me. I didn't have time to carefully stuff soil in while it lay on the ground and wait for the root systems to take hold before lifting it up. Plus, greens grow too fast and have too shallow of roots for this to work. This is where I tried to get fancy.

Forgot the full before picture

Okay, I didn't take a shot before I started, but here it is at the very beginning. The slats needed a bottom to hold the dirt, so I took some garden cloth that I already had and cut it in to strips to staple in place.

Strip of garden cloth

Yes, I can't cut a straight line to save my life. Just make sure you have enough, you can always trim it later.

New Stapler

I just took this shot because I want to show off my new low end stapler. I love these things, there is so much you can do with them. Anyway, I stapled one side to the back, and then attempted to make the front not so obvious. This was a bit tricky because pallets are not uniform, not even in itself.

Wish this was the front

Supposed to be the back.. 

The right side picture was intended to be the back, because I was sloppier to give the fabric a little more support, but then I noticed that there were a couple of slats that did not have a match on the other side. This is perfect for the taller plants, but since I didn't notice it, that side became the front. The picture on the left is how I planned it to work out. 
Next time, I am doing to remove the middle slat on one side. I will lose one trough for planted, but there will be far more head room and more sun will get through. This was an experiment after all.

After filling and planting

On the top I am trying to grow some rainbow chard, next down is leaf lettuce, further down is small leaf spinach and then a lettuce "tape" that I wanted to try. The seeds are so tiny that I do not like to waste them. I realize that the seedlings that are culled can be eaten, but with such a small space that will not be enough for all three of us. 

Staking the peas

If you remember from a past post, we had a lot of saplings and branches that were pretty straight, so I took a minute to arrange some in the pea planter for the snow peas to grow up on. 

My rhubarb!

I took a shot of this because I am astounded that my two rhubarb plants are completely thriving. I didn't really expect much, I have never dug up, separated and planted anything like rhubarb before, unless the tiger lilies count, but I remember those rhizomes to be quite different.

Another note on the marathon bombings: my thoughts are with the families who lost loved ones in the blast and the young man who was shot down in his car. All of their lives were precious and they didn't not deserved to have that life snuffed like that at another person's hand. 

Krystle Campbell 29  years old

Lu Lingzi young graduate student

Martin Richard 8 years old

Sean Collier age 26

Then there are the men, women and children who were hurt, maimed and psychologically damaged forever. We also can not forget those brave people, both government workers and civilians who went back in to save people. One man lost both legs and yet, when he woke in the hospital was able to tell the police who he saw dropping the backpack that may have held the bomb. They are all deserving of our thoughts and if you are inclined, prayers. 

Thank you to the majority of Americans who showed their love for fellow citizens and for all the fine officers, soldiers fire fires and medical personnel for your fine work and bravery under an extremely trying situation. I rest easier knowing that there are people like all of you there to help and I hope, should I ever be needed, to be able to help in the same way.

Visit other homesteading sites for ideas and instructions by clicking the picture below:

Homestead Barn Hop 108

Baking in the Rain

Okay, I am not literally baking in the rain, or even baking. What I did do, among other things, is clean out my baking cupboard. 

Basically, I started out cleaning the kitchen because somehow, despite no one eating in the morning (I know, bad habits), my kitchen is gross every single morning. I think I may have elves, just not the kind that makes me shoes. So, I was cleaning the counters and realized that they were way too cluttered so thought that I would simply move the cutting boards to an out of sight place that I could also easily get to. That led to me wanting to find a home for a couple of things that have been on the counter too long. That led me to cleaning out the baking cupboard (and the laundry pantry, but that is another story). 

So, I went through the cabinet and cleaned and consolidated and moved things around to make everything easier to use. 

The upper two containers are filled with sugar and flour, 15lbs and 10lbs respectively. I have this hoarding problem. Okay, it is nowhere near "TV ready" hoarding by any means, but having lived most of my life worrying about the next meal, I tend to overcompensate. That, and, pretty!

While we are there, you many notice that I have things on the doors. Those ideas for using the doors as additional storage never worked for me. The doors always ended up a little ajar. What I did was make an envelope using a heavy duty manilla folder and then taped it up to keep all of the manuals that I need in there, like the settings for the microwave and such. My Gramma taught me to tape often used recipes in there too, which I did with the recipe for window cleaner. There is also a list of medications for the family so we have that accessible if we can't use the computer for some reason.

Easy to find

During this it became apparent that I was quite hungry. I am nursing a split tooth, so it has been a bit of a challenge finding things to eat. Then I remembered that I have the baking mix I have mentioned in the past.

Baking mix

Since I have been waiting to try it before posting it, this seemed like an ideal time to give it a go, since pancakes are very soft and tasty. 

The directions are written on labels on the outside of the container to make things a bit simpler. I cut the recipe for pancakes in half and gave it a try. Even using a whole egg (it called for 1 egg for the full recipe) I found that it needed a lot more water than called for.  These were not thin pancakes even with the extra liquid.

Ugh, is that what my stove top looks like?

Please ignore the grossness of the stove top. Also, that butter isn't burned, it is browned. Seriously, it was browned butter, albeit accidentally browned. It lent a nice flavor to the pancakes though.

Here they are all cooked and ready for my tummy.

Ta Da!

This mix will also help you to create biscuits, cookies, coffee cake and more. I was very pleased with the results. They were fluffy and still filling, plus, real maple syrup, need I say more?

Now you ask, where is the recipe for this lovely mix? I have it for you here. It was developed by an extension office, and though I really wanted to avoid cutting in real shortening, preferring to add oil when mixing the batter, I went ahead and tried this. Some people will say to refrigerate this. Personally, I don't. Shortening is fine and shelf stable, but if it squeeks you out, put it in the fridge, I don't judge.

Master Baking Mix

Ingredients:

9 cups sifted all-purpose flour 

2 cups dry milk

1/3 cup double-acting baking powder

1 tablespoon salt

2 teaspoons cream of

tartar 

1/2 cup sugar

2 cups shortening

which does not require refrigeration

1. Stir baking powder, salt, cream of tartar, dry milk, and

sugar into flour.

2. Cut in shortening until mix is consistency of

cornmeal.

3. Store in covered containers at room temperature. To measure the master mix, pile it

lightly into cup and level off with spatula.

My system for cutting in the shortening was to put batches of it with a corresponding amount of the shortening into a food processor and pulse it until done. The creates a more standardized mix, which will help when you use it later. Once I finished the batches, I mixed it together well and put it into the container. 

For my purposes, I only made a half of this recipe and it filled that container, which is one of the really big "disposable" containers that you find at the grocery store. 

Some recipes to use with it:

Biscuits

3 cups baking mix

1/3 to 2/3 cups of water 

Mix it all together gently. I have not tried the biscuits yet, so be careful with how much water you use. Just get it to the consistency of a normal biscuit dough.

Pat out until about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch and cut out as you normally would. I have also made square biscuits by just patting it out roughly into a square shape and cutting it up. I like that method because the dough is handled less and that makes more tender biscuits.

Bake at 450 degrees F. for 10-12 minutes.

Pancakes

3 cups baking mix

1 egg

1 1/2 cups of water (I had to use more though)

Mix until just combined and cook as  any other pancake batter.

Coffee Cake

3 cups baking mix

1 egg

3/4 cups water

1/2 cup sugar

TOPPING:

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

2 Tbsp flour

2 Tbsp butter

Mix the batter and pour into an 8 inch cake pan or equivalent. 

Cut topping ingredients together and sprinkle over the top. 

Bake at 350 degrees F. for 30-35 minutes

There are many more things that you can make with this, including sugar cookies and waffles. Your imagination is the only limit here.

Now, to brave the weather and go protect my bok choy that I unfortunately planted (or transplanted) yesterday, as well as the radicchio, green onions and radish seeds. I am so glad I didn't jump the gun and put out the other plants that are waiting very impatiently for their new home.

Homestead Barn Hop

Container Planting Root Crops

We have been very lucky this Spring despite the bipolar weather. For the last several days we have had overnight rain but the days have been nice enough to work outside. 
The soil in my yard may have lead contamination. My neighbor had her yard tested, and it abuts my property, so she was kind enough to share the information. The levels are perfectly fine for fruits and such, but not for leafy greens or root crops, so those require lined, raised beds or containers. 
This brings me to this week's project, making containers for beets and carrots that are deep enough, but not so heavy that I need a truck lift to move them. Adding a ton of vermiculite would be easier, but way more expensive and I haven't found a lot on how much crops like such light soil. Even then, the containers would be quite heavy. I learned this trick from a home gardening program years ago. Now, if you are super concerned about BPAs, you will want to use this to create your own type of drainage. Personally, I have done the research and do not see a problem with this method, but there are many studies out there and it depends on the ones you trust, don't judge me. *smile*

The first step, after finding a suitable container is to drill holes at the bottom to prevent water from pooling and causing root rot. Believe me, there isn't much worse than getting your plants going only to find a month or so later that they are not viable and there is no time to plant more. 

Drill holes in container

I chose to make smallish holes close together. I have seen folks make large holes, and they work too. I prefer it this way. Plus, the holes aren't as obvious. I just used an electric drill. This takes just a minute or two.

Fill the bottom

I gathered some plastic containers from the recycling bin for reuse. You crush them down well and then layer them on the bottom. It is that easy. Just make sure you don't put too much there because your plants need plenty of space to grow.

Cover those puppies

Ideally you would use a gardening cloth, but I was being incredibly lazy and thought that I was also being clever and reused some plain paper packing material from something I had shipped in. It is just newspaper paper without the print. You do this to avoid losing so much soil in between the plastic containers. The paper is going to disintegrate  hence me "thinking" I was being clever. It is going to work, I just don't know if it will for next year. Go with the cloth if you have it on hand, but do not use plastic unless it is very perforated as otherwise it will not drain, resulting in the aforementioned horror of root rot.

A nice, gentle watering

Ideally, one would research which soil is the best for the crop being grown, but who has time for that? Also, I am on a budget and these projects are already costing way too much. I am just using a garden mix made for vegetables and fruits. After filling the container a little higher than you want the soil to me, I planted beet seeds and very gently, dusted some of the soil over them. I want them close to the surface, but covered to maintain moisture and to keep it from getting too much sun while still staying fairly warm for sprouting. Then I gently drenched the top with water. I will have to keep this watered because I didn't moisten the soil before putting it in the pot. This time it wasn't laziness, just poor planning as I didn't have a container big enough to mix the soil and water together in first. 

I did make that baking mix, but forgot to photograph the process because things have been pretty crazy here. I would like to make some biscuits or something anyway before giving it the seal of approval. I am also going to try a brownie mix because it has to be better than the boxed type.

Also, if the pain subsides, I will be going out and planting the bok choy I started inside. Again, I hear that this is not recommended generally, but given the climate here, it seemed like a good idea to attempt anyway. With the bak choy I will plant my green onions (which take forever to grow it seems) and radishes. I also want to start some radicchio. 

Once the pallets that my soils and manure have been sitting on are cleared off, I will be attempting a horizontal lettuce and greens garden. Stay tuned! 

Things Are Popping Up All Over!

Thanks to the Prairie Homestead and their Barn Hop, I realized that I haven't posted here in a little over a week. Well, that must be taken care of. I have done some cooking (the sweet potato pancakes were fantastic!) and quite a bit of yard work and gardening. Yes, I feel that those two are separate things. 
When I do yard work it is often a lot more work and effort than seems to show. How do you explain that it took work to pull out all of those roots and cut back all of those branches when there is only a little thing to show.

This is what happens when you get lazy

Here is a little tree that decided to live in my old garden bed where I plan to plant the "Three Sisters" soon. This is what happens when you get sick and not take care of things for a couple of years. This too shall pass though and I will just funnel all the pain into chopping that bugger right out of the ground. 

Perfectly straight and flexible twigs

Another thing that had been being neglected were the stumps we had left after cutting down a bunch of trees. I really hated having them cut down, but some were ruining the neighbor's fences, one was actually hollow inside, and the pear tree was just too old and alone to bear fruit anymore. With all the shoots it had been (and still is) shooting up from the roots, it is likely that it was also dying and thus threatening to fall on my house. BUT, cutting them down is why I can plant as much as I can now since my yard isn't completely in shadows. This branches I cut back from the stump next to my beds are perfectly straight, so I will be using them as trellises. Straight, green and flexible. Perfect.

One of the rhubarb crowns

I love rhubarb very much. There was a plant here when I moved in over 17 years ago, and it is unlikely that the residents planted it there as the back yard was not really cared for until the house was redone. This is one of the crowns I took from the original plant. I only managed to harvest two crowns from it though. If I tried to separate the others I would have risked the ones I did rescue.
Now, my blueberry plants:

Brand new blueberry bushes. I know, they look like sticks. 

This is the first time that I have planted blueberries. I foolishly ordered them before checking out how to grow the. My family had them at one of our houses in New England, so hey, how hard could it be? Well, the soil needs to have a low PH (high acid) in order to  for the bushes to fruit, and that can take a while to really set in. Since I had these in the house and no time to wait for the soil additions to make the site a proper host for the plants, I decided to put them in containers with a nice soil mix and an organic addition that will lower the PH of the soil. I do not expect for these bushes to stay in the containers forever, but they should last long enough for me to properly prepare a site for them. I am so excited!
Most perennial fruit don't really bear fruit the first year after transplanting, so I really wanted to be certain I got started as soon as I could. Now, let's hope that they make it long enough to settle in to their new homes.

Strawberries! Right at the center bottom is the baby strawberry plant.

Speaking of fruits, here are my strawberry plants! Yeah, they are pretty tiny, but they were planted towards the end of Fall, so this is great. One of them even sent out a runner that rooted already! I believe that I am supposed to discourage that the first year, and I did cut it off from the rest of the plant to keep it from sucking all of the energy out of it, but there is is, all rooted and seemingly happy. Well, in so far as a plant can emote.

Fall planted Swiss Chard and some persistent spinach

This will never cease to amaze me. On a lark, late into the Fall, I decided to grow some late season rainbow Swiss chard and spinach. I was perfectly happy with the two meals I got from the planting, and while I knew I was wasting some, I left the rest to overwinter. Every once in awhile I would check on them over the winter when the snow would clear from the clear dome I had over them and every time I would just stand there in wonder that they made it while my rosemary up and died. This is what was left. First greens of the year to munch on, though I have read that they might be bitter from growing so long. 

Week...? I don't know, but these are my tomatoes, still kicking!

Almost all of the seedlings in my house are doing really well. My lufa plants are not germinating well, but I finally have a couple of sprouts out of the nine I planted. I am so happy I started those indoors, or I would have been very disappointed.

So, that is all that is going on at the Inbetween Homestead right now. I have been making some mixes like a baking mix and cake mixes as well as a new brownie mix I am going to try. My husband gets overwhelmed with long recipes, so this sort of thing lets him bake with less stress when I am at work or school.