The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

How to collect and save onion seeds from your garden

15.8 years ago onions, seed saving, seed storing 16 Comments

Last year I collected cilantro seeds and they were a great success in my garden that this past Spring I made a commitment to myself that I would try to collect more seeds this season.  Though I wanted to get more I was able to collect seeds from my onions, jalapenos, and cilantro.  The jalapeno seeds were pretty easy I set some seeds aside on a paper towel while making some salsa.  After they appeared to be dry I threw them in a brown paper lunch bag.

For the onions once the florets (flower balls you see above) got real ugly and dry and I could see the black seeds emerging I placed them in a paper bag before the birds got to them.  I then put the bag on top of our kitchen cabinets and forgot about them for couple months.  Today I pulled the bag down and confirmed they definitely were dry.  To separate the seeds from the pods I broke apart (which happens easily) and placed the contents into a metal strainer.  I gently broken open any remaining pods and agitate the strainer.  This causes the small black seeds to move to the bottom, allowing the pods to float to the top and forcing many of the stems to fall through.

I then skimmed off as many of the stems/pods as possible leaving and putting the seeds into a brown paper bag until I can get into town to buy some more manageably sized brown envelopes (recovering from Seattle snowstorm)

After a few minutes of work I now have hundreds of onions seeds which I probably only have use for couple dozen.  Seed exchange anyone?

How to make your own vanilla extract

13.5 years ago cheap, storing, vanilla, vodka 21 Comments

Every time I buy vanilla I always have to stare at the bottles for a few minute contemplating if I should pay the extra cost for “Pure Vanilla” versus the imitation stuff.  Provided the real stuff costs 15 times more than the fake stuff when I walk away with my little eye dropper worth of pure vanilla extract for the small fee of $7.99.  Just for the record that equates to $638.72 per gallon, which makes gasoline look pretty cheap.

The last time I made this purchase I decided this is the last time I would be buying vanilla and in the future I would simply make my own.  After looking into the process I was blown away by how simple it was.  Take some vanilla beans seep them in some alcohol and wait until it looks like vanilla.  There are many advantages to making your own vanilla first of which is cost.  For the same $7.99 I purchased 2 ounces of vanilla for I can make 12.68 ounces of my own.  Another great benefit is as soon as you start looking for vanilla beans online you will see there are many different types to choose from creating your own special blends using beans from different areas as well as a variety of alcohol to infuse it in.

Many recipes I came across describe how to make super high concentration versions that require to to reduce your usage by quarter or half.  I decided to attempt to make some single strength vanilla so mine should be similar to that purchased in the stores.  I confirmed that commercial vanilla extract has 13.35 oz. of vanilla beans per gallon of alcohol.  Provided I am using 375 ml of alcohol in my batch I would need 1.33 ounces of vanilla beans which equates to approximately 2.5 vanilla beans, which I picked up for $2.99 for 3 pods.  Next was alcohol choice, for this you want something about 70 proof (35% alcohol) some obvious choice in this range are vodka, rum, or bourbon.  With a desire to keep costs low and a desire to be able to see how the liquid’s color changed I went with the second cheapest 375 ml bottle of vodka I could find (I splurged and spent the extra 50 cents).

Step 1: As mentioned above the process is very easy, you start by splitting the vanilla beans lengthwise.

Step 2: Take the split beans and cut them to one inch lengths.

Step 3: Insert cut beans into bottle of vodka

Step 4: Shake bottle (when you think about it)

Within a few days your alcohol will begin to get dark and have a nice vanilla smell, but keep holding out for the good stuff.

After about a month your vanilla should be fully infused and have some vanilla with approximately the same strength as the expensive stuff you buy in the store at a fraction of the cost.

Now at this point you have a couple options:

Option #1: Screen out the vanilla beans (and fragments) and if beans (after dried)are still fragment place them into a sealed container with a few cups of sugar to make your own vanilla sugar.

Option #2: Let the vanilla to continue to infuse and have progressively stronger vanilla.  For super flavor shake before using to get some of the bean fragments into your measurement.

Option #3: Top off the bottle with alcohol after use to have a nearly endless supply of vanilla.  Eventually you will need to add a couple more beans.

Since alcohol is naturally a great preservative, if you keep your vanilla out of light (or in a dark glass container) it should be good for about 5-6 years without losing too much flavor.

Hardening off plants in the grow box

15.5 years ago computer, computer power control, cucumbers, electronics, indoor growbox, tomato 3 Comments

When you have seedlings growing indoors or a greenhouse during their life they have had the opportunity spending it in a near perfect environment with controlled temperatures, consistent lighting, no wind, etc.  If you take this happy plant and move it directly into the wild (your garden) it can, and probably will, go into shock leading to its sudden death.  The solution to this problem is to hardening off the plant.  This is a process of slowly getting the plant accustomed to the real world environment a couple hours at a time.

You start by bringing the plant outside for two hours in the late evening or early morning hours.  If the plant begins to wilt let it recover indoors until it appears healthy again.  Each day increasing the amount of time it is exposed to the outdoors over 1-2 weeks period, or until the plant can survive a full day/night outside.  At this time it is ready to get its permanent home in your garden.

This process takes a lot of patience, which as they say is a virtue.  Unfortunately I believe I am missing this virtue.  My history of hardening off plants follows a similar pattern; bring out a plant in the evening with the full intentions of bringing it back in after a few hours, unfortunately I forget and it spends its first day out in the cold all night which normally the demise of my summer plants.

This year I am using my grow box to harden off my plants.  Normally the grow box runs at about 68-72 degrees which is a great environment for my seedlings.  By allowing some hot air to vent and lowering the maximum temperature setting in the software I am able to bump the temperature down to a range of 57-65 degrees.  After a few days I will drop the temperature a few degrees until it has similar low temperature to the outdoors, while still staying at a safe temperature for the plants.

Given today using an unknown neighbor’s weather station we had a high of 48.2F and low of 35.1F I still have some time before I can safely bring my tomatoes/cucumbers outside but they should be toughened (hardening) up and ready to go when it is.

Small facelift to site

14.7 years ago Uncategorized Leave a comment

As you may be able to tell I have been doing a little work on the site. I finally got around to moving from Blogger to WordPress, I never had any real problems with Blogger, I just have a few things I want to do with the site that requires me to self-host and WordPress was the way to go.

I am still doing some clean up so please bear with the mess for a little while.

The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

Most profitable fruits to grow in your home garden

13.5 years ago blackberries, peach, raspberries, strawberries, summer 6 Comments

I previously did some analysis on the profitability of vegetables in your garden and there have been requests as well as my own curiosity of how fruits would stack up against fruit trees/bushes.

To keep things simple I made the assumption of fruit trees/bushes are fully mature with maximum yields.  So please take into account that you will see some variance throughout the years.  I have also used the fair market retail value of fruit when purchased by the pound, obviously all of these could be purchased cheaper by the bushel…but many of us you live in urban areas it can be difficult to make these discounted large purchases nor consume 48 lbs. of apples before they go bad.

After a crunched the numbers I was a bit surprised and happy to see blueberries at the top of the list.  I have four blueberry plants already in the ground and two more waiting to be planted.  Though one asterisk for this plant is that is take 3-4 years to really start producing but you get several years of good production and by buying a variety of plants with different harvest times, so unlike many other fruits you do not get a huge supply of fruit all at the same time.

Overall fruit compared to vegetables provides a similar range of harvest value depending on the variety.   There are a couple of differences that should be taken in to consideration:

1. Space: Fruit trees/plants range from a little over a square foot to over 60 square feet per planting
2. Time to Maturity: It can take several years for some trees to become mature and start producing high yields.
3. Size of Harvest: You could see hundreds of lbs. of produce within a couple weeks.  You will need to determine a means to actually use this (canning, pies, forcing on neighbors)
4. Commitment: Unlike annual vegetables if you decide you really don’t care for the produce it can be time intensive and expensive to switch out an apple tree for a difference variety.

Fruit	Harvest Value/ Square Foot
Blueberries	$         18.71
Pomegranate	$         13.38
Nectarine	$           8.64
Strawberries	$           8.13
Peach	$           7.90
Apple (Standard)	$           6.64
Apple (Semi-Dwarf)	$           6.40
Raspberries	$           6.23
Apricot	$           3.54
Plum	$           3.18
Blackberries	$           3.05
Pear (Standard)	$           2.90
Fig	$           2.66
Almond	$           2.56
Apple (Dwarf)	$           2.35
Walnut	$           2.28
Pear (Dwarf)	$           2.10
Cherry (Sour)	$           1.13
Cherry (Sweet)	$           0.84

As always the common sense principles apply:

• Grow what you like to eat
• Cost is only one factor to consider, you can’t beat real fresh produce

Why should you have a grow box?

15.7 years ago indoor growbox, indoor seed starting, LEDs, seeds 6 Comments

Other than the “Do you really just grow ‘strawberries’ in your grow box?”  question.  The most common question I have gotten is why exactly do I have a grow box.  Hopefully I will be able to answer this question below, as for the first question the answer is yes (without the fingerquotes)

Necessity:  I am cheap and don’t want to buy all my plants from local nursery or garden center, but do not have a good location inside my house to grow seedlings with a normal table/shelf light setup.  I definitely do not have the space to setup a greenhouse in the backyard.  This unfortunately forces me to do my growing in my cold windowless garage.  Using a grow box allows me to maintain a safe temperature for my plants no matter what the conditions are outside.

Control:  I have nearly complete control of the conditions inside the grow box.  I can provide my plants with the perfect temperature, humidity, lights (intensity and wavelength as well as day/night simulation) and even can simulate a slight breeze using a small fan if desired.  This gives me many advantages which I would not have even if I could grow indoors.  One example of this is growing peppers, which can be fairly difficult in our climate but with some modifications settings in the grow box can create the perfect conditions for it.

Saving Money:  Given my options such as the $20 PC Grow Box and my $6 Christmas Light LED Grow Box the cost of entry is pretty low.  You do have the expense of lighting the thing but given the 48 watts required for the PC Grow Box and 10 watts of the Christmas Light LED Grow Box even those maintenance costs are reasonable.

Portability:  All three of my grow boxes (PC Grow Box, LED Grow Box, Computerized Grow Box) all have a single plug that goes into the outlet and can literally be picked up and moved to another location if needed (try doing that with your greenhouse)

Scalability: Need more space in your grow box?  As little as $6 can get you a new one, or $10 worth of lumber can double the size of your existing one (assuming your old lighting can support the space)  You are limited to what your creativity can imagine.

Fun:  Call me crazy, but I like the idea of tricking my strawberries that it is a nice spring day and get them to start blooming and producing fruit.  If all goes well I can move the plants outside during the real spring and get even more harvest while freeing up some space for more plants.