Low-cost gardening

Plants need basically three things. Water, light, heat. Anything beyond that adds to how healthy the plant will remain as it grows. A seed is self-contained food storage for the baby plant. The seed is large enough to get that plant growing and keep it healthy until it can sink its roots into the soil it assumes will be there.

So the seed won't start until the circumstances are right. Some plants need no light, or low light, or bright light for germination. Some need well drained soil, some need sand, or compost, and so on. But at the beginning they're all the same--light, water, heat.

In order to start a seed, you need to provide those three things.

Call me crazy, but I collect toilet paper rolls. Cut in half or thirds, they make perfect "peat pots" without the chemicals or the need to buy expensive specialty items. Stuffed with sphegnum moss (apx $3 per bag on sale, and a bag will last me at least two years) they create a place for the seed to rest, out of the water. The moss soaks up the water and keeps the seed evenly moist, as long as there is water in the tray.

My main tray for starting seeds is a rectangular cake tray from a grocery store. The base is black, the top is clear and it snaps on tightly enough to keep the water in. There are also no holes so bugs can't get in. A little water in the tray keeps my seedlings happy but not waterlogged. At full capacity it can hold about forty planting tubes.

The secondary seed nursery is also a cake tray, but this time slightly deeper. I can put the top on, but usually I use this one (or one like it) when the seedlings have secondary leaves and are ready to leave the sealed environment.

There they can grow until they are between four and six inches tall, depending on what I'm planting.

At that point I transplant them, into pots (saved from previous years) or into the ground. If I have two plants in each tube the tube is composted and I carefully separate the plants, keeping half the moss for each. Otherwise I plant the seedlings right in the tube. I have yet to lose any transplants this way, as the moss retains water even in the ground.

Gardening doesn't have to be expensive. It doesn't have to be difficult. By starting your own plants you know precisely what seeds are being used, whether or not fertilizer is used and what kind, and whether or not the plants are safe for your family.

Something to work on

The crazy herb lady is at it again. I'm bouncy and excited that spring! spring! spring! is here, so yesterday I spent most of the day outside--and today I'm feeling it.

It shows me how important exercise is. Honestly, I hate the treadmill. Walking outside is fine during the summer, but during the winter it's both cold and dangerous. Walking on the treadmill is boring, but the way my legs were hurting last night (after just carting some leaves around and doing a bit of digging!) tells me that I need to make this a priority.

Eating healthy is just one piece of the puzzle. I also have to make sure that I keep in decent shape, keep my brain active and maintain some semblance of a social life. If I intend to be living on my own at 80 or 110, I need to take care of what I have. Which is a really weird thought, you know? I'm halfway there.

I don't feel like it. I don't notice that I feel that much different than I did at 20. Just happier. And I want to keep it that way, which is going to require some effort on my part.

OK. So treadmill walking or neighborhood walking (I won't run on a regular basis because I want to keep my knees and hips, thank you very much) every day. Targeted exercise...the problem is that I see these things as taking time away from my writing. I need to work on that.

I can do it myself

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Laugh, probably.

I had a discussion with my sister a week or so ago about bread. She said she uses a commercial dough enhancer.

I'm just one of those "I can do it myself" people, and if you imagined a three year old saying that you hit the idea on the nose. I listen to people who claim to be amazing gardeners, but they use purchased seeds, chemical fertilizers, weed killer, bug killer, etc. I do NOT consider that "do it yourself" gardening.

Same thing with bread. Vital wheat gluten, dough enhancers, special flavors and odd strains of yeast...if I can't do it myself, I want to find a way. Of course I have to draw the line somewhere (I can't grow my own wheat--yet) but I try to do whatever I can. I do not want to be dependent on a commercial product that may not always be available.

So on the topic of dough enhancers. Commercial dough enhancers are made up of four elements: Gluten, acid, starch and sugar. Gluten makes the bread stand up and do tricks. Acid strengthens the gluten strands. Starch also strengthens the gluten, and the yeast eats the sugar.

Gluten is a commercial product, so I'm ignoring that. Basically if you use vinegar and a bit of potato flakes or rice flour, you have your dough enhancer. I'm baking tomorrow, so I'm going to try it.

Itchy feet

I started my first seeds last week. Broccoli and Cabbage are cold weather plants so I'll set them out once they're ready. The other was the seeds from an heirloom bell pepper. I "harvested" the only fruit in November (I'd been covering it every night) and ripened it on the windowsill. I'm not sure if there are any viable seeds, so I planted some of those just to see if they germinate.

I pushed a shovel down in the dirt. The boxes are thawed inside the covers (lettuce is re-sprouting) but everything else is still frozen once you get about a foot away from the walls and fences.

You can see me pouting.

I want spring to come! Right now!

Whole wheat bread

We're trying to be healthy, so for the last few months I've been trying to make whole wheat bread.

Last year we harvested a test plot of hard red wheat (this year we're going to try kamut as well as oats) and got about a half gallon of wheat. When ground, two cups of wheat makes about 2 1/3 cups of flour.

Whole wheat bread is a little trickier than white bread, because white bread flour often has additives and extra gluten and such nonsense. So making a good loaf of bread from a white bread recipe is pretty much a no-brainer. Apparently I thought I wasn't being challenged enough.

My first attempt was a disaster, the loaf dry and small, with little visible rising. Adding additional yeast didn't make much difference.

The second attempt (after doing some research on the internet) was half whole wheat (half hard red, half kamut) rather than all whole wheat. I used it to make rolls for Thanksgiving, and while they weren't as puffy as I would have liked they were OK.

Then I tried half and half kamut and wheat, the other half white flour, and found an interesting trick on the internet.

The night before I bake, I mix all the liquid and half the flour (the wheat half) + half the sugar with a 1/2 t of yeast. I mix all that together and leave it in the refrigerator over night. If I'm making whole wheat bread I mix the rest of the flour with additional water and let that sit as well. If I'm just using white flour for the other half, the rest of the ingredients can be mixed in just before the first rise. Basically the wheat needs time to hydrate and the bran needs time to break down so it won't destroy what gluten there is. In the morning I add the recipe equivalent of 1/4 to 1/3 of the required water (so if the recipe calls for 2 cups of water I'll add 1/2 cup additional water, or a little more) and the remaining ingredients.

Everything else follows the recipe.

2 T yeast + 1/2 t yeast (yeast can be mixed in dry)
2 c water + 1/2 c water
1/2 c sugar (can replace with honey)
1/4 c shortening
1 egg
2 t salt
6 1/2 c flour

Mix 1/2 t yeast, 3 1/2 c flour, 2 c water, 1/4 c sugar, let sit overnight
Add remaining yeast, remaining water, remaining sugar, shortening, egg and salt. Mix in remaining flour as usual. Let rise until doubled in bulk (about 1 1/2 hours), then beat down, divide and let rise again. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.

Made four loaves this morning, and the only difference between wheat and white is the flavor and the color. :)

Nip it in the Bud

In the last few weeks I've been hearing a lot of people talk about illnesses, mostly colds. Everyone wants the magic bullet that will kill the thing before it becomes debilitating.

There's an old phrase that some might have heard but few would know the meaning of.

"Nip it in the bud" literally means to nip (or cut off) the bud before the fruit appears. If you don't want the fruit, kill the blossom. If you don't want the cold, you need to catch it when it first shows its head rather than waiting until it's gnawing at your ankle.

There is no magic bullet that will kill a cold, but there are a lot of things you can do to keep it from becoming a monster. The same things that kill any other disease.

First, a healthy immune system. Vitamin C and D support immune system function, as do zinc and selenium. Vitamin B is another important vitamin for immune system function. Ironically, most of these items are found in fresh fruits and vegetables, something that was once much more difficult to acquire during cold season. Coincidence?

Lots of sunshine will take care of the D problem (although during the winter we all mew ourselves up like we're hibernating). Antioxidants also help build a strong immune system, but they are easily destroyed by excess heat--i.e., eat fruits and vegetables raw or steamed rather than boiled. Processed vegetables out of a can are better than nothing, but most of the nutrients are gone.

Another irony--the vitamins taken out of our food are re-processed and sold as vitamins on the shelf. But that's a rant for another time. Where were we?

Oh. If your immune system is in peak shape (which very few are) it will throw off the effects of most bacterial or viral diseases easily.

So when a cold rears its head, you need to take action.

1) A tablespoon of honey, morning and night. Taken on bread, in an herbal tea or simply from a spoon, honey has a multitude of beneficial vitamins and minerals that make it a miracle food. Too bad the bees are dying, huh?

2) A clove of crushed garlic every night (and every morning if your stomach will handle it). Eat it WITH the skin. Don't peel it. Whether in a capsule, a bowl of spaghetti or raw, garlic is an anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-biotic all rolled into one tasty little package.

3) Vitamin C, as much as your system can handle. If you have the chewable vitamin C, use them as lozenges rather than the chemical drops you buy from the store. Save those for the sore throat stage. Orange juice, pineapple juice

4) Drink. Lots. Drink water until you leak, but leave the sugar drinks and caffeine drinks strictly alone. That's a general rule for all the time, because they make you lose more water than you get from them. It's the definition of a diuretic.

5) Sleep deprivation is one of the most common maladies in the modern world. If you can go to sleep an hour earlier or get up an hour later, it will help.

6) Destress. A no brainer, but sometimes the most difficult to do. Meditation, breathing exercises, reading a good book--whatever it takes.

Winter Garden Update

I went out this morning and my potatoes and pepper (inside the hoop house) were dead. I dug them all up and planted peas.

So it appears that potatoes are an OK late season crop in the hoop houses, but the "Sandy" temperature last night was in the high twenties and we're typically 5 to 10 degrees below the posted temp in the winter, so it might have gotten down into the teens. In either case, potatoes don't do well at 38 degrees (assuming that the temp in the hoop house remained 10 degrees above the outside temp). Lettuce, carrots, beets and onions are just fine. Lettuce and spinach continue to sprout.

I put up a "high" hoop house for the cabbage and broccoli. We'll see how well that does in the first wind-storm. :)