5.11.11

dinner from dirt


mesclun mix, baby brassica greens, cilantro and radish
Much is being touted these days about locavorism, farm-to-table, etc., etc...  Numerous studies have confirmed that the nutritional content of our food has an inverse relationship to the amount of time and travel it takes for said food to reach our swollen gullets.  And of course, there's the evidence of our tongues: fresh-picked just tastes better. 
   There's a growing market in the publishing sector for cookbooks designed to help us remember the lost art of enjoying our garden harvest. Before you rush out to buy one, dear reader, take the time to consider my favorite recipe and a few time-tested tips...

21.10.11

a case for overseeding, stoopid.

...
we got swiss chard, broccoli raab, baby collards, baby cabbage, baby kale, arugula, baby broccoli, salad mix thinnins, baby dill, parsley, french tarragon, baby cilantro, parlsey and thinly sliced radish. bag salad's got nothing on this.
      

      it's fancy, but it'll work. we may all be but blips in history, so let's celebrate that.  food production is in all ways beautiful and wonderful and good.  "what's so asinine about food production is that such a small amount of people do it, and such a large amount of people expect it."  So sayeth the Joe Knee.  wanna talk about art? the act of creation? how about growing and consuming vital energies? say what you will about thinning, babies are delicious ~ especially vegetative ones ~ and i spent an hour peacefully examining, caressing and culling the herd.
  • joani's going off on qwerty now . . . as a sexist tool. she hates us, sticks and holes. it's cool tho, cuz when she says "they," she means "wii."
     call yer thinnings "microgreens" and you can even exploit the heirs.
  

shua & joe-knee out; to live the good life

9.10.11

My No-Cost Keyhole Bed

  I learned about keyhole beds from Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway, an awesome permaculture primer.  The keyhole bed morphs the customary rectangular garden bed into a pleasing circle, with a narrow path to the center.  This layout maximizes the growing space by minimizing the area need for pathways.  I've been wanting to try it out, the berry bushes in the back were begging for some special treatment and they were already conveniently planted in a circular arrangement.
   A large part of my low-cost experimentation consists of gathering materials, so when i say my keyhole bed was no-cost, what i actually mean is that i spent no cash but lots of time.
  Let's get into the process:
  • My first step was laying out the circle, which i did by pounding a bamboo stake in the center of the berries and tying another stake to it 6ft away. Then i traced a rough circle through the grass and removed about 6 inches of grass around the periphery.
  • Next i began the process of sheet mulching (also called lasagna gardening).  Basically, with sheet mulching you're composting in place to produce friable soil.  There are lots of reasons to sheet mulch instead of tilling.  First of all, tilling is a major hassle, i don't like it.  Second, our soil is a complex ecosystem composed of creepy-crawlies, microorganisms, fungi and nutrients. Tilling disrupts this ecosystem. I prefer the long-term benefits of letting nature work the soil over the short-term benefits of tilling or digging, but of course there is a balance.  I will double-dig some beds once to loosen heavy clay soils if it's needed, but usually it's not if you plan ahead enough to afford yourself a little patience.
  •   The first step in sheet mulching is to lay down a layer of cardboard or newspaper.  This helps to kill grasses and weeds by blocking light and it invites our worm friends up from the nether-reaches to feast on the organic material you lay on top.  A warning: don't use cardboard or newspaper with colored inks.  Colored inks often contain traces of toxic substances that can leach into the soil over time.  Blank cardboard is best, black ink is second best (now usually soy-based ink).  I gather cardboard whenever workers in the dairy section of the grocery store are restocking (Saturday afternoon at my store).  Don't be a jerk, ask nicely for the cardboard and take it all, colored ink or not. This saves the workers from having to take out the cardboard, so they'll be grateful, and you don't seem like some sort of yuppie cardboard snob while you're in their way picking out only the cardboard you want.  When you get the cardboard home, remove any tape or glue, cut off blank cardboard from the boxes with colored ink (usually one or two little flaps), and put all the colored ink sections in the recycling.  I've found it's best to soak the cardboard in a pail of water before you put it down. If you use newspaper, you want to lay down 10-15 page thick sections, and definitely soak them or they have a tendency to drift off. 
  •   So, i've laid down my cardboard, making sure to overlap lest any beastly grasses should rear their ugly heads.  Now i've gotta start adding organic materials. I start sheet mulches the same way i start compost piles, with a layer of carbon-heavy material like leaves, woodchips or straw.  In this i case i used an oak branch that fell into my yard.  Next i add kitchen scraps, more leaves, grass clippings, anything close basically.  I also tossed in my nearly finished compost. 
 Generally, when you sheet mulch in the fall, you moisten the bed the same way you would compost, so it has the consistency of a wrung-out sponge, then you cover it with black plastic and let it all cook down until you're ready to plant in the spring.  This, however, is an experiment. So instead of covering my little baby, i'm going to continue adding organic materials throughout the fall.
  My keyhole bed is going to be my perennial polyculture experiment, meaning the focus will be on plants that don't require annual plantings (i'll probably have some self-seeding annuals in the mix), all mixed in together.  I've ordered egyptian walking onion bulbs that i'll plant by digging through the mulch and planting in the soil as soon as they arrive and i'll get some medicinal/edible plants like borage, comfrey, bee balm, garlic chives, tarragon...who knows?  This is the bed that will likely determine it's own planting based on what i find when... thanks for coming.
Want one?

7.10.11

paper plate pizza and other late night mastications



Stand and Deliver, O Children...
    Please note Exhibit A:

Because i respect You, i am shamed to admit that we've had several pizza nights since i promised to post the paper plate pizza recipe.
I swear i'm not a bad kid, just easily distracted, consistently engaged and persistently curious.
Meaning, of course,
i'm prone to lapses of consideration.
Forgiveness, please.
Above, you'll see a fresh concoction, compared to which the paper plate (read: convenience) variety pales. Nevertheless, at least with homemade processed food i know how to pronounce all the ingredients. And i'd like to become a pronuncitarian in addition to my other adopted dietary labels.
  The dough really is what makes this pie so ... i can't even find the words... i lifted it from here.  Follow the directions and you'll do fine.  But make some notes: the dough is very soft if made with all-purpose flour (what i use until i get a grain mill). So you have to be sensitive when you stretch it out or it rips easily.  I'd use bread flour if i had it or add a few tablespoons of vital wheat gluten if i'd thought about it.  The dough recipe through the link will walk you through the mechanics on the prep end.  I usually spend a few hours whenever i can and double the recipe to make a dozen dough balls, then roll them in an oiled bowl, bag them in cheap food storage bags (so you can turn the bag inside out onto a floured surface later), and pack them 6 dough-balls per gallon freezer bag. The day before pizza night , i move 3 to the fridge: 2 for pizza night and 1 for paperplatepizza (heretofore refferred to as PPP).
  There are a few things i do with the sauce, but there are infinite variations waiting to be tasted. So experiment or stagnate. All choices are ours for the making.  Joe-Knee's not a fan of tomato sauce in general, so i make a white sauce by mincing some garlic, onion and whatever herbs i have laying or growing around, and pouring maybe 2-3tablespoons of olive over it in a small glass container. Sprinkle some salt and crack some pepper into it if you want to church it up a bit. Then leave the glass container on the stovetop as you cook down some tomato sauce or preheat the oven.  The earlier you concoct this oil sauce, the more the flavors coat the pie.  
   For tomato sauce, i spice up some store-bought pasta sauce until next season when i hope to replace our purchased sauce with preserved sauce from the Amish Paste Tomatoes....mmmm... One of the big cans is usually enough for 2-4 pizzas depending on how much sauce you like (just remember: more sauce/toppings=longer cook time).  Adding any fresh vegetables to yer mater-sauce is always a good idea. I belong to the "grab&mince whatever we have around and toss it in" school of pizza sauce makery, but i always include garlic, onion, oregano or thyme, basil, and a pinch of sugar more often than not.  Now listen up, this is important:  allow your sauce to cool before you slather it on your stretched dough.  Hot sauce will eat right through the tender, delicious dough you've poured your heart and soul into and result in a napalm-like soggy mess. Trust me. Or don't. Who am i to tell you what to do? I wouldn't do it again, though, tell ya that much.
  Now, here's what makes a PPP a PPP:  the dough-balls made from that recipe are the perfect size for paper plates, so after you stretch out your dough you can just lay it on a paper plate and top it.  Sad to say, i haven't even attempted to try freezing any toppings on the pizza...i have a problem... a cheese pizza problem: i'd like to call it minimalism but in my heart i know i'm lying.  Might be a good idea to top it with fresh foods right before you pop the frozen finished product in the oven. 
Anyway, then i cover it with wax paper. Can't say i know why, but it's something i do. Maybe it has something to do with sticky dough...? Maybe i have a nondisclosure agreement so i couldn't even tell you that i get paid to sell it....if i did...which i don't.
Cut-Rite
Wrap the whole she-bang in a gallon freezer bag and toss it in your ice-hole. I don't know how long they last in there because i always find a reason to eat them. 
When you're ready to eat one too, cook it the way you should always cook pizza:
  • as hot as you can get your oven, 
  • on stone or tile (preheated 30min-1hr preferred) or the underside of a baking sheet or flat cookie sheet (on which you build your pie),
  • as close to the heat source as possible (stone on floor of gas ovens, lowest rack in electric models)
In about 10 minutes you should see one of these in front of you:
and from your periphery, a BLUR!
the insidious suburban pizza mole!
from cyberspace with love,
shua.

P.S.  My friend Brando suggested that i post a cost analysis on the blog, and i think it's a great idea. This being, after all, a blog about low-cost living.  So look forward to cost analyses for future projects. In the mean time, here's the approximate cost of 12 PPPs:
  • $4 bag o' flour
  • $1.50 can o' sauce
  • $6 worth of cheese
  • 75cents worth of yeast
  • $1-2 olive oil
  • 75cents garlic
So that's about 15smackers for 12pizza pies, for an average cost of $1.25 per pizza. Zonino. Of course if you buy more toppings or like extra cheese your cost will go up, but the best toppings are always straight out of the garden.

19.9.11

handicrafts & small victories

   Work finally picked up again and, in the home repair and remodeling business, when it rains it pours so i've been a little busy, but we finally got the camera.  It must be made of some kind of magic because even i can take a clear picture with it.
   My bamboo t.p. holder still isn't finished-finished, but we're using it anyways, and here it is:
nifty, n'est pas?

     I also got a little wild for pizza night the other week and made myself a pizza peel out of a scrap of birch plywood.  I tried a new kind of dough: slow fermentation.  It's the best pizza dough i've ever made and the best part is it holds up as a frozen pizza. For less than $10 we were able to make 5 pizzas (could of been 6 but i wanted one big one). We ate 3 with friends for pizza night, and the other 2 i tossed, topped and froze.  Delicious home-made frozen pizza was the result, 10 minutes on the pizza stone in the oven at 450degrees satiated my insatiable craving for convenient pizza action.  The flavor and the cost made it a winner. I'm making it again later in the week so i'll take pictures and post the recipe for my soon-to-be-famous Paper Plate Pizza.  In the meantime this picture of my pizza peel will have to tide you over.
 
In other news, me and my neighbor are the proud parents of lots of seedlings, pretty much everything we put out in his yard has sprouted.  See our baby broccoli:
we were a tad liberal with our sowing, so all the plants need thinning out.
  Last but not least, I have finally achieved hot compost!  I made a temporary compost bin a couple weeks after we moved into the house...once we had too many kitchen scraps basically. As you can kind of see from the pictures, it's 4 straw bales sitting on a 3-tiered grid of bradford pear prunings.  The branches raise it of the ground enough to allow airflow but not so much as to separate the compost from the earth, where all the beneficial microbes are already living.  The straw bales insulate (and provide airflow) so you can make hot compost without having to fill the 3feet cubed dimension that most folks say is required for the compost to heat up (which breaks down organic matter much quicker).  The result of this slap-dash composter after 2-3 weeks is amazing. I wish you could smell it...it smells like summer in the woods, with tree nymphs and everything. I guess since i can't upload olfactory hues a photo will have to do...
now that's what i call black gold.
If you can believe it, that was a pile of grass clippings, leaves, coffee grounds, eggshells and vegetable waste just a few weeks ago.  I love facilitating decompostition.

12.9.11

Geeking out on planning

As you can see from the time stamp, i got a little wrapped up with planning this evening.
   I've worked out my master plan for our house by laying a sheet of tracing paper over my detailed drawing of the lot. Check it out:
 My goal is to have the 3 raised 4'x12' vegetable beds, the keyhole bed and the herb spiral installed this fall for spring planting.  The 3-bin composter should be built in the next week or two. 
  The herb spiral and keyhole bed are my permaculture 101 projects.  If you're interested in learning more about them on your own you can google-wack them, or stay tuned for future posts.
  I'll be taking cuttings from the fig trees in February for fall planting next year.  The worm bin is a spring project and i'm percolating my thoughtscicles to remedy my drainage problems.

I also got cracking on my crop plan for the raised vegetable beds.  The 3 beds subdivide into 6 plots so i can implement the 6 bed rotation i worked out for my ma's house.  I'll be using the Square Foot method in these beds like we do over at mom's.  It's pretty exciting to see how much variety you can grow in a relatively small space.  If all goes well, the front yard should keep us well supplied with fresh food from April to November.  Here's the planting plan for next spring:






























 


Thats packing:
  • 12 cucumbers
  • a plethora of mustard greens
  • 4 squash plants
  • 6 broccoli
  • 48 pole beans
  • 92 bush beans
  • 46 soybean plants
  • 27 leeks
  • 12 celery
  • 96 storage onions
  • 48 sweet onions
  • 108 scallions
  • 24 garlic bulbs
  • 12 tomatoes
  • 12 pepper plants
  • 54 shell peas
  • 54 snap peas
into 72 sq.ft. of space.

Am i biting off more than i can chew?
Better start practicing my mastication technique.

That's all i got. Backyard Beddies to beddy-bye.

11.9.11

Call me Planty McPlantpants.

This is my wild-card seed drop:
   Still haven't made it back to Ma's.  What    a            jerk.
   Work's been unexpectedly slow recently, but i've been keeping myself busy.
  • the Workshop is essentially functional.  Some organization is required, but it's the kind that organically organizes itself, seemingly spontaneously, as various projects are undertaken in the space. 
  • Rainwater collection has begun!  i went out and paid too much for a 275gallon tote and rigged it up at the potting shed before the runoff from tropical storm Lee hit us.  That thing was halfway full by the time we saw sunshine again:)
  • my first bamboo project is nearly complete.  As part of a general push in the direction of building things instead of buying crap, i built a toilet paper . . . (rack?stand?dispenser?_ _ _) . . . thing for our bathroom with Joe-Knee playing resident 3-D consultant.  I have a little bit of finishing work to do on it, but it's functional now.  Should be done by the time we get a camera, then i can show you.
  • A windfall salvage day fell into my lap.  One day brought me 5 buckets from grocery-chain bakeries; 2 metal trash cans, a wedging table (for pottery) and two wooden pallets from the dumpster of the local university; and around 300 decent bricks and a dozen or so cinder blocks from a house that got demolished in the neighborhood.  While i may have tendencies leaning towards hoarder-hood, i will put all of this to work soon. 
  A couple days ago i planted out some fairly old snap pea seeds.  There's 8 in containers and a random sowing around the mail box and along a low brick wall near the honeysuckle bush.  In our porch container, i cleaned out the sad little tomato and basil, added some more soil (because my filler materials are composting down) and planted dill, cilantro,  bibb and butterking lettuce... and left a small spot open for a succession.
  Today i went over to my neigbor's house to help plant the bed he keeps in the front yard behind his pitcher plants (awesome, right?).  Earlier in the week we pulled up a bunch of turnips he grew this year, so today we cleaned up the bed a bit and planted some seeds i bought during the garden-supply store mid-summer lull.  I was a little concerned about not amending the soil prior to planting, but i'm also concerned about planting too late.  Maybe I'll top-dress with compost when the seedlings start coming up.  We split his bed (maybe 3'x18') into 6 roughly equal sections (measured by stride length) and planted:
  • Beets, Tall Top Early Wonder
  • Radish, Cherry Belle
  • Cabbage, Early Jersey Wakefield
  • Kale, Red Russian
  • Broccoli, Waltham
  • Georgia Collards
  • Pak Choi
  • Mesclun Salad Mix
  The radish is sown among the beets, so we'll get a small crop of them in October, then the beets can fill in.  These are mostly cold or frost tolerant varieties once they're established.  My thinking is that should we get some frosts before they can reasonably handle it, we can just coddle them a bit with some plastic protection.  We're planning on just splitting the harvest and sharing surplus with other neighbors.
   My mama says that food gifts go a long way for the suburban grower (whose compost may smell for a day or two before it heats up, or grows food instead of grass, or might want some outlaw laying hens and wants prior consent of potential tattle-tells) and, after knowing her my whole life, i'm inclined to believe her.

P.S. After some research, i've amended my hypothesis about our unripened figs. While i still believe that they're not getting enough sun, i think the hot, dry weather this summer probably stunted their fruiting cycle.  There's not much i can do about it now, but i can direct more rainwater to their root systems during the dry spell next summer.

8.9.11

making plans

   The fall planting season is upon us and I'm running a bit behind. 
   In addition to my experiments at our new house, I'm also working with my Ma to maximize production in her garden.  Over the years we've put in 6 raised beds that consistently produce, plus a double-dug bed by the front door, the landscape island where she grows cucumbers, and a spot on the other side of the front door where she's been growing tomatoes.  With the tremendous help of Stepfather Steve, we've begun work on 5 hexagonal keyhole beds in the backyard as well. 
  While we've attempted to grow our plants in different places in the 6 raised beds over the years, we've never really kept good records about what grew where, what varieties were grown and which ones produced the best.  After taking the Organic Growing Class at Cane Creek Farms through Georgia Organics, I've realized the importance of good record keeping for the micro-farmer (a term I prefer to "gardener").
    That being said, I post a plan for your perusal.  Any ideas or insights would be most appreciated.

There's that.
    I planted some snap peas, kale and broccoli yesterday, but I haven't even ordered our garlic yet.... I'm a bad kid...  here's hoping catastrophic climate collapse extends the season for me.

   As far as our house goes, I'm still working on the plan, brain-hurricaning and daydreaming, but I have my practical side as well (thanks mom) so I've measured our lot and created a drawing to work from:
i think the measurements around the berry bushes in the back may be a lil wonky.

   So now you should have a basic idea of what I'm working with...which is pretty much what I have too.

p.s.  hopefully we'll get a cheap camera this weekend and i'll be able to post pics of projects i've been working on recently. woohoo!

6.9.11

taking stock

first thing second: taking stock of our current resources....
   The house we moved into is awesome.  A 3 bedroom ranch affair with a fireplace, great insulation and two outbuildings, one an insulated shed with a covered porch that we've designated as our workshop and the other an open air shed that will be our potting and pottery shed, both with power and gutters.
  The front yard gets plenty of sun which is surprising considering the abundance of oaks in the neighborhood and the fact that it's on the north side of the house.
  The backyard harbors 4 fig trees, muscadine vines on a trellis attached to the open-air shed and a little circle of 2 maybe 3 small blueberry plants and another plant that might be some kind of raspberry.   Unfortunately the back only gets a little sun in the day which made me curious about the well-established figs and grapes.  Our next door neighbor grew up in the house and said they used to have a full-fledged garden back there when she was growing up, so my hypothesis is that the oaks in both backyards adjacent to ours have filled in in the intervening years and affected the fruit set (very few grapes and lots of figs that won't ripen).
   Which brings me to my next diatribe: the importance of neighborly relations.  I've lived in many places in suburbia and for some reason have never made the effort to really get to know most of my neighbors.  This is something I've resolved to rectify.  By talking to my next door neighbors and neighbors across the street I've learned about drainage patterns in the neighborhood, gotten permission to prune and take down trees to allow sun into the backyard, and been allowed to harvest an immense supply of rampant bamboo.  Holy crow, we've only been here a couple weeks.  It's time to integrate with our community, and I'm not talking about a community of like-minded individuals, I'm talking about embracing those who are geographically close regardless of ideology in an effort reclaim what it means to be human... working together not just to survive but to thrive.  Doing so will surely be beneficial.

preface

 This is how it is:
   You can call me "Shua," because you are the internet-machine, and i will call you, "You," so we can feel engaged in intimate dialogue despite our digital disconnect.
  Ok.
  Maybe i should tell you a little about the situation:
  Recently married, my partner-in-crime and i have decided to stay in the suburbs until she can finish her degree.  Our goal together is to ultimately live, work and play on a small, virtually self-sufficient homestead.  To this end, i've done enormous amounts of reading, taken classes and workshops and done some small-scale gardening.
    i am a capable craftsman with artistic tendencies, plus i love getting dirty.
   she is a talented artist with a lot on her plate as she wends her way through the hallowed halls of academia.
The experiment:  can we survive in suburbia fantastically?  can we live more sustainably, intentionally and justly in a commuter-consumer environment?  can we systematically remove ourselves from consumer-culture and become producers of goods and services not just for ourselves, but for our friends, family, neighbors & community?
                                        i sure hope so, cuz i never really liked the 'burbs
                                                             but i love a good challenge.

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