We found mini microscopes on Amazon for about $3- Just opened up a whole new world for Ernie. Who knew leaves could be so amazing and textured and covered in teensy bugs?

This is what my garden looks like right now, and this is basically where everything will be.

In the top right corner are four garden boxes, each roughly 4 feet x 8 feet.

Along the top of the retaining wall is a border bed- by the stump is (what’s left of) my strawberry patch, after digging up  to replace a broken water pipe.  The bed is 2-3 feet deep.

Behind the stump is another planting area- the dirt is pretty bad down towards the street, but this is where the blueberries are.  Raspberries will be transplanted, along with permanent trellising, this month.

Along the side of the driveway is another planting strip- it’s about three feet deep, and about 15 feet long.  This is the only portion of our property that gets sun, so we made our front yard into the garden space.  We are VERY lucky to have understanding neighbors, who view all this as an improvement over the neglected state of the yard before we moved here 4 years ago.  Very lucky.

Our permanent fruits right now are the fig tree, in the lawn; plum tree, in the back yard; blueberry bushes; strawberry plants; raspberry canes; thornless blackberry canes.  I planted 6 asparagus crown last  year along the wall, but they didn’t make a good showing- it’s a wait and see game right now to see if they’ll survive.

My favorite resources for shoe-horning plants into tight places are here, but I’ll be adding these to the “gardening resources” tab at the top of the page.

• Edible Landscaping, by Rosalind Creasy (Great tips for slipping edibles into your landscape)
• Four Season Harvest, by Eliot Coleman (Using your garden space year round.  Check out his Winter Harvest Handbook too.)
• Carrots Love Tomatoes, by Louise Riotte (Companion planting BIBLE)
• All New Square Foot Gardening, by Mel Bartholomew (really shoehorning them together)
• The Urban Farm Handbook, by Annette Cottrell and Joshua McNichols (I’ve been to her urban garden.  Umm, wow.  I’ll be talking more about this book- go find a copy!!)

The trick to getting a lot out of a little space is to not think in monoculture rows.  Plant root crops with leafy crops, tuck starts in when you free up a spot, sprinkle lettuce seeds wherever the ground is bare, plant beneficials together like spinach that will shade heat-averse strawberries.  Also, think about growing up- squash, melons, peas, beans can all be trellised quite happily.  Container gardening is a great space extender- grow potatoes in old garbage cans or coffee sacks, use pots for herbs that like to run away, that kind of thing.  If you have space, start seeds in trays in a sunny window or greenhouse, so that when space frees up in the garden you can put them in the ground with a head start.

I started a garden book today- a running commentary on daily garden activities. One page for each day of the year, used year after year. A quick reference to remind myself that yes, we really waited that long for the tomatillos to ripen. I really did spend all July weeding.

Today I started my tomato nightshades, my cole crops, and my basil in the green house. I know the tomatoes, basil, and tomatillos will all come up when they’re good and ready. I have my doubts about the peppers and cabbage family plants. But, I’ve started them indoors three years in a row, and every year they all die off. So… Let’s live a little and try the greenhouse this time! Today was a pretty cold day, and the greenhouse registered 46, which was a bit warmer than outside. Let’s see if we get some sun and pop those seeds out of their shells!

At it’s most basic, yogurt is a really simple process.

1. Heat milk to kill pathogens.
2. Cool milk to NOT kill yogurt cultures
3. Add yogurt starter and flavor
4. Keep it warm.

The recipe is here.

You’ll need:

• 1 large pot
• 2 clean mason quart jars with screw on lids (use wide mouth!  save your sanity trying to get that last scoop out!)
• candy thermometer (needs to show between 100 and 185 degrees Farenheit)
• small cooler that will hold the two jars
• half gallon whole milk
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 8 ounces store bought yogurt

About the store bought yogurt: Yes, you can save yogurt from one batch to use in the next.  I never remember to do that, and it’s about fifty cents to pick up a little tub when I buy my milk.  Totally worth it for me.

Second, every recipe I’ve ever seen says that you need to use plain yogurt.  Lies.  I’m making vanilla yogurt, and I can use vanilla yogurt as my starter!  Just keep in mind that the store bought, flavored, yogurts are chock full of sugar and thickeners…those things will be in your final product.  Yeah, it’s just a little, but that might matter to you.  (It stopped mattering to me when my grocery store stopped carrying 8 ounce cups of plain yogurt- I didn’t want to buy a tub of starter and mess around with freezing it, then thawing it when I wanted to make yogurt.)  Whatever you get, check the container and make sure it has “live and active cultures.”  I’ve never seen a yogurt that didn’t carry this label- I’m not sure it would even BE yogurt if it didn’t have cultures in it?  But still- you need the bacteria to make new yogurt for you, make sure you’ve got ‘em.  If you have a favorite brand of yogurt, try using it for your starter!  Different brands might use different cultures, and perhaps you have a preference for one over the other?  I’ve used Dannon, Tillamook, Brown Cow, Kroger…all made nice yogurts.

To start, get your milk and yogurt out of the fridge.  Leave the yogurt out to warm up, dump the milk into a big pot over low heat.  Stir it occasionally, and let it get about 185 degrees- you’ll see a skin forming on top, and you’ll see a good amount of bubbles around the edges.  This temperature will kill any bad bacteria in the milk.  (Yes, it’s a fresh carton of milk, yes it should be totally safe.  But do it anyway!)

Take the milk off the heat, and let it cool down so it won’t kill the good bacteria in your yogurt starter- you want it below 120, and 105-115 is perfect.

Stir in your vanilla, yogurt starter, and sugar.  A 1/4 cup of sugar will make a tart yogurt.  A 1/2 cup of sugar will make something my kids beg for.  And it’s still way less sugar than store bought!  I once compared the sugar in Jell-O pudding to my daughter’s favorite vanilla yogurt from the store- they.were.the.same.  (I let her eat pudding for breakfast that day.)  A half cup of sugar is 8 Tbsp, which is mixed into 8 cups of milk.  So that’s a half Tablespoon for every half cup serving of yogurt (1 and 1/2 teaspoons.)  It’s sweet, yes.  Probably treat level, but if you’re trying to show your kids that home made is yummy just like store bought…ease them into it.  You can use less next time!

The faster your yogurt sets up, the sweeter the final product will be as well.

So, let’s get it set up.  Once your milk has cooled, you stir in the sugar and vanilla and yogurt starter.  Don’t beat it silly, it will get frothy.  But do try and work the lumps of yogurt starter into the mixture, so that they can do their job.  Pour  your mixture into two very clean quarter mason jars, and screw on two very clean lids.  I find plastic lids in my canning section at the grocery store- if you don’t have a stash, get some!  (You’ll have about a half cup of the milk mixture left over- drink it while the kids aren’t looking, it’s delicious!)

Put your sealed mason jars into a small “igloo” cooler, and fill the cooler with hot tap water.  Shut the lid and walk away!  My yogurt is generally done in a few hours, perhaps 4?  Totally depends on how warm the house is, and how warm it stays in that cooler, and how warm the milk mixture was when you poured it in.  You can check it after 4 hours by picking up a jar and tilting it a bit- if it looks solid enough, it’s done!  But, if you mess around with the jars while they’re still setting up, they won’t set up properly.  When it’s done, stick it in the fridge!

Now, if you want greek yogurt, that’s easy.  Take your finished yogurt and dump it into a tea towel-lined colander over a bowl and let it drain in the fridge till it’s as thick as you like it.  If you leave it a really long time, you’ll get something that looks like cream cheese.  It’s delicious on french toast, but you’ve been warned!  Save the whey that drains out for your bread baking, or soaking grains in.  I haven’t messed around with making ricotta with it, I wonder if it would work?  It would be sweet, though, haha.

One word about your finished yogurt- it will begin to separate, and the whey will seep out.  It looks weird, it’s totally normal- you didn’t add gelatin or thickeners like the companies do.  Drain it off.  Also, if you stir your yogurt, it will get runny and won’t set back up again.  Again, no thickeners.  So serve it up in great big scoops, and enjoy!

Someone please tell me why I came home with a dozen more seed packets today.  I think I have issues.

–Myrnie

Part of the problem is that these bushes make bright red, gorgeous berries, in the Fall.  So, of course, I won’t let my husband prune them until the berries mature, and I’ve had a chance to get them all for myself.  Which means it never happened, I should never put chores off.  Then, add 8 inches of heavy snow, and voila: total obfuscation of the garden path.

I hacked my way through today, with some really strong snippers and loppers, and gathered as many berry heads as I could find.  The baby kept me company on a blanket on the lawn (totally normal behavior for February, right, sitting in parkas and ski caps on the lawn in the sun?) and I wove all the berries into my grapevine wreath.

So there you have it.  You can totally turn yard clippings into decor.

Here we go.

Basil

Parsley

Early Wonder Beet

Green Mountain Broccoli

Brussels Sprouts

Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage

Early Snowball Cauliflower

green onions

Kale

mesclun lettuce mix

giant musselburg leek

tendergreen mustard spinach

bok choi

alaska early bush pea

royal burgundy early bush beans

scarlet nantes coreless carrot

cilantro

kandy korn sweet corn

cosmos

spacemaster cucumber

ground cherry

nasturtium

garden sunshine pepper

buran pepper

chocolate beauty pepper

scarlet runner pole beans

new england sugar pie pumpkin

amish heirloom pumpkin

cherry belle radish

french breakfast radish

olympia spinach

rainbow blend swiss chard

toma verde tomatillo

ace 55 VF tomato

principe borghese tomato

yellow pear tomato

purple top white globe turnip

lemon queen sunflower

calypso pole bean

butternut vine squash

purple carrot

heavenly blue morning glory

chaters double mix hollyhock

patty pan type bush squash

]]> http://doityourselfmama.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/2012-garden-plans-seeds/feed/ 4 doityourselfmama http://doityourselfmama.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/2012-garden-plans-seeds/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DiyMama/~3/sID4xSS2Y84/ http://doityourselfmama.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/a-new-diy/#comments Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:48:05 +0000 Myrnie https://doityourselfmama.wordpress.com/?p=456 ]]>

Homemade mayo is silly easy. I’ll post a recipe once I finish tweaking. (The dark color is from smoked paprika.)

Tired of fiddling with dough, to make two loaf pans and then free-form loaves with the rest of the dough, boules are the order of the day. Half bread flour, half fresh ground (hard red winter) wheat.

I’ll post the recipe to Chow Review, it’s a new family favorite from the peerless first edition of BHG cookbook.

This butter is amazing. I’ve also seen it named spoon oil, but the texture is spot on for perfectly softened butter.

To make it, you’ll need a saucepan, a jar or tin can, and small containers if you plan to portion it out. Also, beeswax and mineral oil, in a ratio of 1:4 by weight.

I used a tin can, but it wanted to float if I put much water in the pot, so do what you like!

Measure your wax by weight, and put it in the tin can- set the can in the saucepan and fill the pan about a third of the way with water. Heat this water bath on the stove until the wax starts to melt, and slowly drizzle in mineral oil. I used two ounces of wax and 8 ounces of oil. Heat together until totally incorporated- you can use a wooden spoon to help stir it along if you need to. Just know that this will be nearly impossible to get off of anything it touches.

Pour into containers, and let cool. I used old altoid tins.

To use, scoop out a bit with your fingers and spread it into the wood. Let it sit overnight to soak in, then buff with a cloth. This is great for wooden spoons, bowls, cutting boards, butcher block, etc. It would probably make a nice finish on wooden toys, since it’s non-toxic. I’ve been asked if another oil like olive or coconut could be substituted- probably, but you’d need to mess around with ratios to get a nice consistency in the finished product. Also, you don’t want to be rubbing anything in that will go rancid quickly. Let us know in the comments if you’ve played around with this recipe!