Welcome, New Year!

I did some garden chores today...mixed my latest batch of bokashi into 3 of the self watering containers. I was set to do this Christmas Eve, but it rained, so I had to wait for a reasonably nice day and today was it. I'm down to having one large SWC to put compost in, and I think that will be ready to go in a month or so. Before I need them, definitely.

Project Garlic apears to be doing FINE. I peeked under the mulch and there are still happy looking garlic leaves poking up! I was pretty hopeful when I went and found the SWCs nota giant frozen solid mass. The boxes of mesculun I have outside the bedroom window also look reasonably well, and they are at a bigger risk for freezing, I think. yet they are still growing (very slowly) and look pretty good. If we get and nasty storms, I'll pull them inside, but they may be ready for greens in March.

Today's plan is to plot out when I need to start seeds. And finish out my seed orders. I've gotten catalogs from Burpee, Cook's Garden (a gorgeous one this year!) and Seeds of Change. I am likely NOT going to order from Burpee, but I will order from Cook's and I need to flip through Seeds of Change (the garlic came from there) The plan is to get my orders out by mid January so I am ready to roll in March. I'm not ordering much this time, since I have a lot left over from last year that I can use again.

I've been steadily using up what I out up last summer too. Today it was Jersey blueberries in the pancakes. YUM. I've been amazed by how good the produce I froze last summer tastes....as much of a pain as it was blanching and bagging, I think it was definitely worth the effort to do it. I may go and invest in a Food Saver for next summer since that is supposed to help save freezer space--I don't have much! I will probably venture into canning this summer too...I definitely want to put up some tomatoes, maybe make sauce and salsa for winter...

Bokashi

I think in fall of 2006--it was shortly after I joined the Yahoo Edible Container List, at any rate, that I started to feel a little funny about the amount of stuff I was putting into the trash, and I quietly wished I had room to compost. I live on the second floor of a house--I rent, so setting up some big project in the yard was out of the question. It didn't occur to me that I COULD pull this off until the Bokashi system was mentioned on the Yahoo list.

This things works PERFECTLY in an apartment enviroment. It is meant for scraps and stuff, but I do put some of my garden waste in to it too. It uses a 5 gallon bucket that you dump your scraps in (and you can even put meat scraps into it, and paper towels, tea bags, all that sort of stuff) and then add a handful of wheat bran that is impregnanted with microbes. Once your bucket is full, you sprinkle in some more wheat bran and keep the bucket closed for 2 weeks (or longer.)

After 2 weeks you have scraps that are pickled. They don't smell GREAT--very vinegary--but its not horrible either. What you are supposed to do at this point is go dig a hole and bury the contents of the bucket, and then wait another 2 weeks and plant away. What I do is dump the bucket into a 55 gallon trash bin, and cover it with dirt from old pots, or bury some directly into the bigger containers I use or tomatoes. I can testify that in 2 weeks, stuff you bury in a trash bin will turn into nice compost. You do want to cut up stuff, because bigger chunks (corn cobs, avacado pits...ask me how I know) don't break down so quickly. Sometimes you get white fluffy mold in the bucket...that's OK.

While the bucket is initially composting, it makes a liquid you can use as plant food, or just dump down the drain. You're supposed to drain the liquid off every 48 hours...I don't do that so often.

You can probably make your own Bokashi buckets--or you can buy them. You can also buy the bran or if you're really hardcore and have space, you can make your own. Arbico Organics has the buckets and bran, but I will warn you, the bran can take WEEKS to arrive so don't wait until you're nearly out to order it. I have 2 buckets which works well for me--it takes me about a month to fill one. I'm emptying one this weekend, actually.

This is a really excellent explanation of how the system works My bucket lives under my kitchen sink, and you'd never know it was there. I use the liquid that come soff the bucket as plant food, as I mentioned--its about 240 ml (4 ounces) to 2 gallons of water. That stuff does smell a little, but it dissipates quickly.

So, the upshot-if you live in an apartment, you can still recycle your organic stuff pretty easily and in a way your landlord won't even know you're doing!

This week's bread

Last night/this morning I made wheat bread. I love love love waking up to the smells of baking bread at 5 am! This recipe also comes form the Bread Machine Cookbook. I also recommend NOT using the whole wheat setting if your machine has one, as this gives a longer rise time, and if you're me, you end up with a giant loaf that almost escapes the bread maker!

1 cup water
1/4 cup butter
1 egg (optional--I used it)
2 Tbs sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 cup bread flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup nonfat dry milk
1 1/2 tsp yeast

This is nice and light and really good. I ended with a loaf with a giant muffin top that I had to cut off to store the bread. I'll probably cut this up and use it at dinners.

Plotting and Planning

This weekend brought the season's first nor'easter. It was pretty much over by noon on Sunday here, and was mostly wind and rain. I dealt with it by making my final garden plans for 2008--heck, soon it will be time to start seeds, right?

So, here is what I grew last season, that I plan on repeating:

Leaf lettuce/mesculun
Carrots
Beets
Radishes
Snap peas
Blue/yellow peas
Green/yellow/purple beans
Bell peppers
Cucumbers
Sungold cherry tomato
Sweet 100 cherry tomato
Lemondrop cherry tomato
Watermelon(Sugar Baby)
India Paint Eggplant
Nasturtiums

Plants that are still in pots inside include catnip, anise mint, pineapple mint, chocolate mint, peppermint, and Kentucky Colonel mint (that I may be losing to aphids), chives, parsley, summerlong basil and strawberries. They will go back outside when it warms up again.

What I want to try this year:

Garlic (planted already, and hopefully still ok)
Hot peppers
Spaghetti Squash
Zuchinni
Soy Beans (I like edemame)
Head Lettuce
Large tomato variety--Rutgers
Paste/sauce tomato--New Jersey Giant
Swiss Chard- Rainbow/Bright lights (I have no idea if I like to eat chard or not...I probably will like it, but it is GORGEOUS to look at!)

I am planning on ordering the eggplant as plants from Cook's Garden, and I will order my hot peppers as plants from The Chile Woman. I have not dealt with Chile Woman yet, but she has a zillion kinds of peppers and she was recommended on the edible container group.

I am ordering seed for the spaghetti squash, zuchinni (Black Beauty), soy, and tomatoes from Baker Creek Seeds. A friend introduced me to this catalog and I find their prices really good for seed, and I like their philosophy. The catalog is a stunner, too. They have ALL KINDS of heirloom plants. If this batch of stuff works out, I may try some other things from them in 2009.

I'll need to build some more self watering boxes for the tomatoes, since I only have 4 for tomatoes bow, and it looks like I want to grow 5 tomato plants.

This week's bread

Since it is winter, there is not much to talk about, but I also feel I need to keep posting to keep the ball rolling on this blog. I have a few things I DO want to discuss in greater detail, but I need time to really write those up. So, instead what I though I would do is share a bread recipe each week.

I make bread every week, usually on Monday. I have a bread machine and I love it, so these are all bread machine recipes. I try to make a different bread each week because I like variety. Most of my recipes come from a 1991 cook book called The Bread Machine Cookbook by Donna Rathmell German. That is where this one comes from. It is for Rye Bread:

Medium Loaf--put ingredients in order into your bread machine, or use order specified by manufacturer.

1 cup 2 Tbs water
1 Tbs Vegetable oil
1 1/2 Tbs Honey
3/4 tsp salt
2 tsp caraway seeds
1 cup Rye flour
1 3/4 cup bread flour
3 Tbs nonfat dry milk
1 1/2 tsp yeast

This is supposed to be a New York style rye. Its close but not really quite there. I think it might be different if I rolled this out at the end of the dough cycle and made a real loaf out of it, but I'm not sure--the texture is not quite right for "real" rye bread to me.

Anyway. Enjoy.

Good Timing

...I guess...we got our first real snow today. i did not bring my greens boxes in (I got distracted before leaving for the night) and they are pretty pissed off looking salad greens on my window sill. I also think that my garlic boxes froze--at least the top of the soil is hard. Maybe the roots are OK. Its out of my hands right now!

One of tomorrow's projects will be to put all my seeds away in the freezer until March when I get planting again. Next up will be inventorying what I have and ordering what I need based on my garden plans. Then I need to build more boxes and start the cycle again.

I think next year I am going to try to keep things rolling indoors (greens at least) but I need to research that....

Welcome to December

I finally put my garden to bed today. Well, mostly....I plan on putting some compost into the big boxes once its ready, and that is likey to be around Christmas. I compost household stuff with a couple of Bokashi buckets. It works pretty well. I'll have to write about it later this winter.

The garlic still appears to be doing well! I really hope it doesn't freeze. I packed more leaves around them today since it is going to freezing tonight AND we may have snow. I should probably bring my salad greens in too, though they have toughed out a frost we had already.

Even though it is winter, I have started to plan next year's garden. I started my tomatoes in March last year. If I'd been thinking ahead, I would have started some tomatoes inside for the winter--I am lucky in that I have a sunroom that gets decent light year round. That experiment will need to wait until next fall!

Last year I grew:

Eggplant
Bell pepper
carrots
Basil
Chives
Mint (several varieties)
Salad greens
Beets
Striped tomatoes (did not work out well)
Cherry tomatoes (lemondrop, sungold, and sweet 100...all fabulous)
Nasturtiums
Watermelon
Peas
Cucumbers
beans in three colors!

A lot of this is in my freezer at the moment.

What I want to add in/change:

A large tomato variety
Soybeans (I found seeds and I want to make edemame)
Hot peppers
Spaghetti squash
zuchinni
head lettuce
garlic (in progress)

I think this means Iw ill need to build a few more large self watering boxes. I made a bunch last spring for my tomatoes, and they were a definite improvement over what I had been doing before--I could get away with watering tomatoes oevery other day in the hottest part of summer as opposed to 3 times a day. I used (and modified) instructions found here to create my self watering containers. They were pretty easy once I got rolling. I did not use PCV pipes, but a black flexible pipe that I got at Home Depot for like $4 for 10 feet. That made a lot of boxes. I use segments of hose for my fill tubes. I may change that.

I hang out on a great Yahoo list about growing veggies in containers, called ediblecontainergardens so I will share that now. It is really nice--lots of VERY helpful and fun folks, and it is one of the better organized Internet lists I have been on--the files section is a great index to the discussions!

More later as I decide what I need to order as seed....