Hydroponic Gardening

I have been itching to get dirty again working in the garden.  Spring is nearly here and the snow has melted at the house.  Daffodils are starting to poke through and I saw my first forsythia blooming today!  Spring has to be my favorite time of year as life starts popping again.  The bees fly and the birds do what birds do in the Spring.  It’s just inspiring to me…I figure I have survived another Winter.

How the garden area normally looks

We’ve had a bunch of snow this year in WV and it is melting.  Showshoe Mountain in WV actually had more snow this year than they had at Vail, CO.  Snowshoe had 227 inches while Vail had 223.  So, couple the melt with a good bit of rain and we’ve got flooding around Charleston and elsewhere in WV.

Note the fence and white birdhouse posts

The same view...you can barely see the white posts

There's the fence

We live on top of a hill in Charleston so we don’t really have any any danger from flooding at our house.  Our garden, the one I have been itching to get into, is at Emily’s grandparents’ house which is near the river and a creek that drains one of the big nearby hollers.  It is currently under about 5 feet of water.  Nearby houses have significant amounts of water in them and many folks have been forced to leave their homes.  Even with the flooding, the Corps of Engineers report that flood control dams prevented the water from coming even higher (check out the pictures.  We were planning to have Abigail’s birthday party at the South Charleston Rec Center pool…which is now under water).

It’s hard to complain when I consider that our family is safe and our house is intact.  Nonetheless, I am still bummed that the garden is under water and my garlic that was planted last fall is undoubtedly ruined.  I suppose I will have a chance to work in he garden soon enough.  First order of business will be hauling off the trash that washed in.  We’ll have to find a compromise with the ducks and fish we have seen in our garden and consider a new place to plant our garlic this coming Fall.

6 Comments

warren, March 15th 2010 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Garden, Nature, WV

Vodka…sweet!

Today, I wrote an article for Not Dabbling in Normal about the benefits of growing stevia, a plant that naturally produces very sweet leaves.  One can chew on the leaves and get a pretty good rush of sweet, but it’s not terribly convenient or attractive to grind up leaves when cooking.

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I decided to make a stevia extract which is a liquid into which the sweetness of the stevia leaves has been concentrated.  I saw a variety of articles and recipes on how to make stevia extract, but two in particular caught my attention.  Each required a liquid to make the extract.  One used water, the other used vodka.  I decided to try both varieties and see which I liked better.

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I am not much of a drinker.  In fact, I am pretty much not a drinker at all except for the occasional medicinal shot of brandy when I have a sore throat.  Aside from that, I don’t know the difference between varieties of alcohol.  I walked into the local drug store and headed for the liquor aisle where a huge array of vodkas greeted me.  I didn’t know one brand from another so I decided the surest way to pick a good vodka must be by the aesthetics of the label.  I looked and looked and debated, but I finally settled on Gordon’s vodka.  See?  Doesn’t it just look pretty.  The simple light blue label just seemed pleasant to me…it must be good stuff.

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So I got the vodka and headed home.  To make both the vodka and the water-based extracts, I coarsely cut stevia leaves until I had 2 cups for each recipe.  I don’t really know what a coarse cutting is, so I decided to use coarse language as I sliced the leaves into chunks.  I can’t really see how it will help make things sweeter, but if the recipe calls for cussing, I figured I better oblige (actually, I called in Emily…she’s the pro).

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(Research…purely for research)

So, into a mason jar I added 2 cups of leaves and one cup of my liquid – vodka in one jar, water in another.  I covered each and will let it stand for 24 hours gently shaking the jars a few times during that period.  I started the brew last night and the liquid has turned green by this morning.  The vodka-based extract is greener so I suppose it has drawn more of the essence of the stevia out.  At the end of the soaking period, I will filter each through a coffee filter and then simmer the extract over medium-low heat for 30 minutes to concentrate the extract and remove the alcohol.  It’s best to store the liquid in a jar in the refrigerator for future use.

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Everywhere I have read says that I will need to dilute the extract with water before using in a recipe.  I suppose the sweetness of the mix is very powerful.  I’ll know more about that soon!  We’ll use these extracts in cooking and I’ll report back later.

So, what do you think?  Have you heard of or used stevia (or truvia, the store variety)?  Did I buy a descent variety of vodka?

18 Comments

warren, October 15th 2009 | Tags: ,
Posted in Food, Garden

A Garden Dialog

The time has come to stow the garden. It seems like just yesterday that we were fussing over getting the seeds ordered. Before we knew it, we needed to get them started…we were late getting them in afterall. Of course that’s typical. We watched patiently as the tiny spouts pushed through the ground. It was almost as if they doubled overnight. Of course…they did. They grew and grew and the most beautiful array of blossoms came.

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Honeybees and bumblebees and all manner of flying critter visited to taste the sweet nectar. Of course, they got creative and sometimes visited the habaneros right before the sweet bell peppers…not so sweet any more. Everything grew and grew and we watched eagerly, waiting for the chaos of canning and cooking to begin. It’s hard to beat the food we get directly from the garden. It’s hard to beat the fun of cutting and chopping up the harvest and stuffing it into canning jars. It’s hard to beat the sound of the pressure cooker clicking away it into the wee hours of the morning.

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but…
“Gee whiz, are we still canning stuff?” “When will this stuff ever end?” “This garden is killing us.” “Oh, just freeze all of that. I can do no more canning!” “Next year, we are absolutely not planting as much!” “This is craziness!” “In fact, I don’t want any garden next year! We need to have a life too!” “NO GARDEN!”
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but…
“Ahhhh…look at out pantry! It’s full! That work wasn’t so bad afterall, was it? It’s definitely worth it! I mean, look at all of that free food!” “Free? Do you remember last month when…” “Oh yes, I know, but did you see all of that free food?!” “Yeah, I know.”

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“So, it’s a little early, but don’t you think we should think about what we want to plant next year?” “Oh yeah…and all that free food…we should definitely plant more!”

15 Comments

warren, October 13th 2009 | Tags:
Posted in Garden

My sunny disposition

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Even though I don’t care much for fall and winter, the sunflowers in the garden certainly do a lot to brighten my day during this time of the year.  Initially, it’s hard to get over their size.  Sunflowers are huge.  Maybe they are too huge to even really hold themselves up, but, as I have said before, I love the optimism that they seem to symbolize.  I suppose in the wild economic world in which we live, their bold yet simple existence is just what I need.

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(sorry to the box-elder bugs that I caught in a private moment)

Anyhow, enough of that philosophical stuff…I also am fascinated by the pattern of the seeds in their head and the apparently sweet nectar that draws so many bees and other bugs.  It seems like every time that I look at the sunflowers, they have a new bug climbing on them.  In addition to bouying my mood, they sustain insects in a typically difficult part of the year when most nectar sources dry up.

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I love sunflowers…not like I love Edward Cullen or Mountain Dew, but as far as natural things go, they are the tops in my book!

12 Comments

warren, September 16th 2009 | Tags: ,
Posted in Garden, Thoughts

Garlic, you sure do clean up real pretty

A couple of weeks ago, we harvested garlic that we had planted last fall.  We dried it under cover until Emily’s grandfather got sick of finding the dried out dirt from the roots on the hood of his truck.  We knew it was ready based on his blood pressure.

I took down all of the garlic from where it was hanging and loaded it up in the man-van and headed for home.  You see, I treat the man-van very much like most folks would treat a pickup truck.  Emily, on the other hand, sees it more as a family vehichle.  Of course, this causes some contention between us, but I always figure (as someone wisely said) that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.  Anyhow, I loaded all of the garlic into the van and brought with it a bunch of dried dirt.  Emily’s blood pressure headed north as well so I knew the garlic was done.

People process and store garlic in all sorts of different ways, but I like to cut the stalk off leaving only about 1-2 inches still attached to the bulb.  I knock off all of the dirt from the roots and then trim them down to 1/4 inch or so in length.  I peel a few layers of the outer “paper” from the garlic and that’s it.  One should not wash garlic to remove the dirt.  Of course, part of the point of drying the garlic was to remove excess moisture that would cause rot.  Garlic cleans up very nicely without water so I figure, there is no sense in taking a chance.

So, I did an actual count of the garlic we harvested and we have 116 heads hanging in onion sacks in our basement ready for use.  Some we’ll save for seed to plant this October but the rest we’ll use.  If we estimate 6 cloves per head, that means we have 696 cloves of garlic for use this year.

The really cool thing is that garlic is its own best medicine.  It seems to raise the blood pressure of folks in my family, but it also, apparently, is a good way to lower blood pressure as well.  Garlic is almost like a blood pressure perpetual motion device!

16 Comments

warren, August 25th 2009 | Tags:
Posted in Garden

She’s pickled and I’m sauced!

I tried and I tried but Emily got pickled the other night. Of course, the same night, I got pretty sauced so I guess we’re even. The garden hasn’t produced most things very well this year but we do have a lot of tomatoes and cucumbers.

(Ahhh…sauced!)

We’ve already made plenty of salsa with the tomatoes and peppers, onions, etc that we got. We figured tomato sauce can be used for about everything so we made a batch of that. It’s pretty easy really so it was ideal. We run the tomatoes through our Velox tomato press and then throw it all in a crockpot to cook down.  Some folks boil their tomato puree until it is half the volume.  We just throw it in the crockpot (uncovered) and forget about it for 24 hours.  By then, it is cooked down and we are oficially sauced.  I think we had about 2500 pounds of tomatoes and once it was all cooked down, we ended up with 5 pints of sauce.  We’ll run throuhg several more batches of sauce because it is so handy when we need to make something yummy over the winter!

(That’s the good stuff…I love the smell of vinegar and pickling spices)

Neither Emily nor I like cucumbers raw.  Emily doesn’t like them pickled either but she’s sauced, obviously.  Anyhow, I love pickles so we made a bunch with the cukes we harvested this year.  I grow dill too so we definitely made our pickles from some of the freshest ingredients around.  I suppose we could make vinegar, but I don’t think we’re ready for that yet.  Anyhow, I love making pickles because the smells of the ingredients take me back to when my Grandma canned pickles.  She canned tons of stuff and the smells and the warmth of the kitchen remind me of her<sniff, sniff>

(This is really a pressure canner but it’s deep enough to water bath can too…without the lid of course)

Ok, so it was a bunch of fun getting pickled too.  Don’t tell, but I figure we’re get pickled and sauced a bunch more times this summer!

14 Comments

warren, August 5th 2009 | Tags: ,
Posted in Food, Garden

It’s garlicky

I debated on facebook a bit earlier this week on how to spell garlicky…and I was informed of the correct spelling…so here I am to share it with you!  We planted garlic last fall (cause that’s when one plants garlic) and it has grown to maturity.  We planted 4 varieties.  I know we planted Metechi, Music, and Romanian Red.  The fourth variety is a mystery garlic which was presented to us as “wild garlic”.  I have no idea what it’s real name is, but it looks significantly different from the other types and produced nice sized, very pretty bulbs.  We’ll plant it again for sure assuming it stores and tastes good.

(Once you harvest garlic, you need to dry it out of the sun for a few weeks)

We’ve had a ton of rain in WV this spring and summer which has killed a large portion of the garden.  The garlic is about the only thing that thrived so I am really pleased we planted so much.  We’ll likely have to survive on it all winter since we won’t have many beans or peppers or salsa (a near staple at our house).  If anyone comes to visit, you had better “garlic up” before you come!


(These are the scapes from the “wild” garlic. They look very much like little heads of garlic as well. We’ll eat them sometime soon to find out!)

Ok, I’ll play sort of serious…we love garlic and there is nothing to beat fresh garlic.  I like it in just about everything and we use it about that often.  It’s great because it grows through the fall, winter and early spring and can be harvested in time to allow the gardener to plant cabbage or broccoli in its place (which is what we’ll do) for a later harvest.  If you have never tried growing garlic, you definitely should!

So, anyone ever seen this “wild garlic” or know anything about it?

10 Comments

warren, July 16th 2009 | Tags:
Posted in Garden

I am tired…but I have raspberries

I am tired.  I get plenty of sleep most days but my tired is a little more than that I think.  I am tired of running.  I am not one to usually chase after stuff so that’s not really it either.  I don’t know what it’s all about (aside from maybe I am crazy), but I am tired.

So, for awhile, I am going to take pictures of simple things that make me not-tired.  Kim over at Achorn Farm is who made me realize that simple stuff is the best stuff.  I’d love to hear if you have stuff that makes you not tired…

Anyhow, we have raspberries now!  They are really starting to give the berries and Abigail loves to pick them and feed them all to me.  Fortunately, I can eat raspberries all day long!

So, here is a simple thing that makes me un-tired…

14 Comments

warren, June 9th 2009 | Tags: ,
Posted in Garden, Nature

I’m not George Bush

Back when the first George Bush was president, he (somewhat) famously said, “I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.”  In fact, he went so far as to ban broccoli from the White House and Air Force One menus.

Truly, it was a sad day in American history.  In a brilliant move, broccoli growers shipped 10 tons of the stuff to the White House (which was refused and later donated to food banks).  The funny thing is that the popularity of broccoli grew after President Bush’s statement.  I guess it sort of follows his presidency really.  No wonder he wasn’t re-elected!  It all started with his distaste for broccoli…the American people could not tolerate such a a trait in a President!

I never realized, but broccoli is very important in American politics and appears to swing elections every cycle.  Discussion of broccoli started back in Roman times but first figured into American politics when Thomas Jefferson wrote about it.  Let’s see, Jefferson, one of our most foundational leaders loved broccoli…yes, George Bush should have choked it down and followed after Jefferson!

We harvested our first broccoli the other day and it was delicious!  I have long been a proud broccoli-eater and am delighted to have fresh available again!  I think it is pretty clear…along the Presidential continuum, I am much closer to a Thomas Jefferson than a George Bush!

14 Comments

warren, June 3rd 2009 | Tags: ,
Posted in Fun, Garden

How I resist Edward Cullen…or…Isn’t my garlic awesome?


Some folks know that I am addicted to the Twilight series of books.  Basically, they are about a girl’s experience with a family of vampires, including one vampire named Edward who is incredibly handsome, smart, charming, etc…you know, all the stuff that guys typically aren’t.  I read the books and saw the first movie.  Edward is indeed a dreamy bugger.  Fortunately, I am a married man and also have my secret weapon… 

I planted just shy of one ton of garlic last fall.  It seems that most of it has done very well and will be ready for harvest later this summer.  Garlic is so fun to watch grow.  It starts in the fall and shows itself but then dies back over winter.  Early in the spring though, you will see it poking back up through the dirt and by late spring, it produces large, hardy onion-like leaves.  In a month or so, it shoots up scapes full of little garlic seeds (if you let it go that far.  The scapes are good to eat on their own).  It sort of looks prehistoric to me.  Anyhow, prior to growing our own, we never really used garlic much.  Once you try fresh garlic, though, you’ll never go back.  We use it in everything.  We can with it, we cook with it.  We even bake heads of garlic in olive oil to make a quick and easy spread for on bread (pour olive oil in between the cloves that you separate slightly, leaving them still mostly attached.  Bake at 350 until they are tender…maybe 30 minutes…serve the  cloves with bread.  Once baked, they are spreadable).

All this food talk is nice, but the most important thig about garlic is it’s effect on vampires.  I wear garlic around my neck to ward off Edward Cullen and his ilk.  As much as I like Edward, I am pretty sure that I prefer my human form and plan to stay that way!  If you have a Twilight addiction like me, I recommend you plant some garlic this fall!

24 Comments

warren, May 22nd 2009 | Tags: ,
Posted in Fun, Garden
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