The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

Create your own organic kitchen garden in 2013

11.7 years ago garden planning, guest post, kitchen, organic, vegetables 3 Comments

With a continued focus on healthy eating this year and the recommendation to eat healthy, organic foods where possible, what better way to incorporate the two by creating your very own organic kitchen garden in 2013. With a little planning and imagination you’ll soon experience the joys of planting and growing your own food that will see you kitchen stocked with fresh produce all year round. Celebrate the seasons and get in touch with the foods that should be cooked with and consumed throughout the different cycles of the year and you’ll be sure to be taking in maximum vitamins with every bite without any of the pesticides.

So how do you get started? The first thing you need to consider is the available space you have within your garden to dedicate to growing food. You’ll need a bright sunny spot that is relatively sheltered from the winds and ideally as flat as possible to allow for even water distribution across your plot. Make sure you have easy access to the plot, ideally locating it as close to your kitchen door as possible to ensure you can reap the benefits of popping out into the garden whilst cooking to pick your herbs and vegetables for your meal.

To achieve the best results, start off simple and choose vegetables that are known to be easy growers such as lettuces, Swiss chard and chives. Add to this some tasty beetroots and radishes and you’ll soon see just how much fun growing your own food can be. To achieve success with your vegetable growing you need to ensure that your plants have access to as much sun as possible – ideally at least 6 hours each and every day.

If your garden tends to fall into the shade halfway through the day you might want to consider planting directly into containers rather than the ground to allow you to move your plants into the sunny areas with relative ease. As the seasons change and the position of the sun moves around your garden you might find this one of the most valuable tips to consider.

Container growing also opens up the opportunity for those people without gardens to participate in growing their own food and can do very well on even the smallest sunny balcony or patio. All you need to do is ensure that your pots are large enough to take the full growth of the plant, add plenty of drainage holes and water on a daily basis. For best results add a liquid fertilizer once every fortnight and you’ll soon start to see results.

If you have a sunny window in your kitchen this is a great place to grow your favorite herbs from and fills the space with an incredible aroma. It’s also the ideal place to start off tomato plants, bell peppers and squash that benefit from that extra bit of nurturing and protection in the early days. What’s more, bringing your organic garden directly into your kitchen in this way is incredibly inspiring when meal planning.

Before planting your seeds you need to ensure that your soil is as fertile as possible. Add essential nutrients by working the soil through with rich compost manure and high quality fertilizers before you get started to guarantee your end result of delicious, healthy produce. On top of this you will need to maintain a regular watering routine, depending on the weather and soil you have planted into and the types of vegetables you are growing. As a general rule, leafy vegetables need to be watered more frequently than root vegetables. Be sure to add proper drainage to your soil to allow your vegetables to have the best chance of growing fully. Compost or bark chippings achieve this for you easily.

With all this in mind you are now ready to plan your own organic kitchen garden to ensure you are supplied with tasty, home grown food all year round. With some daily dedication to your plot you’ll enjoy following the seasonal patterns of planting, pest control and feeding as you watch your vegetables grow, inspiring you with ideas for new recipes to experiment with for highly nutritious, cost effective and deliciously organic mealtimes.

Author Bio: The article is being written by Peter Smith. He loves to renovate his home every year for purchasing new furniture or accessory he trusts the brand Mayer Blue.

Plan your garden with Sprout Robot

12.6 years ago gardening software, indoor seed starting, robot, seeds, sprouting 4 Comments

I came across Sprout Robot in the past week, you simply create an account and provide your zip code and it will give you a complete calendar of planting dates as well as follow ups when to expect sprouts to form, when to bring out, harvest etc.

When a new event is coming up you will get an email similar to the one below letting you know what is new to plant that week. 

When you connect to the site you then can “Check-In” and check off the tasks you have completed which get updated with next event for that plant.

They also have an option where they will even send out organic seeds just in time for planting in your area starting at $19.99 a year, though personally I have plenty of seeds saved for at a couple of years in my refrigerator.

2012 Gardening wish list

11.8 years ago gardener, gifts 2 Comments

 

Maybe you are looking for something to add to your Christmas list or a fellow gardener you still need to buy for here are a few items on my list…let me know if anyone needs my address (smile).

	Though my homemade computerized grow box works pretty good there is something appealing about having something like this Indoor Grow Tent to provide some more growing space and also clean things up in my growing area in my garage and well as improve the light efficiency with the light reflective properties of the sides of the grow tent.
	Even with my grow box I am always running out of room for my seedlings each winter/spring so having an extra Seedling Heat Mat is a pretty inexpensive way to start some seeds with just the cost of a seedling mat and cheap seed flat you can enable a head start to your garden.
	For many years I did most of my gardening squatting down or hunched over now I am getting order I can not maintain these positions as long as before so the addition of a classic kneeling gardening cushion can be just the thing to save my knees as well as my back during prolonged weeding and planting.
	I have mentioned the book “All New Square Foot Gardening” at least a few times previously and do already own a copy and is a great resource which I turn back to at least once per season.  This is on my list to pick up for friends and family just starting out with gardening as a gift this season.
	I originally purchased this same set of kid friendly gardening tools when my oldest daughter (11 now) was just barely walking.  Now with our third daughter using them (almost 2) they have held up well but probably is about time to get a new pair.  Not only does this give the kiddos their own tools to “help” in the garden but I must say these are actually quite functional to do a little weeding or minor digging when in a pinch, which I have done at least in a few occasions.
	No matter how carefully I plan each year I always seem to miss some dates on either ordering seeds on time or getting seeds into the ground.  The Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook helps with this problem by providing weekly reminders of what vegetables you should be order/planting and what preparations you should be doing in your garden.  This can be a very helpful tool in getting a little more organized in your vegetable garden.

 

Looking for more ideas for yourself or a gardener in your life?  Check out our previous gardener gifts post.

How to make chipotle pepper powder (smoked Jalapenos)

14.1 years ago chipotle, jalapeno, smoker 14 Comments

In my last post I talked about my quest for a cheap smoker to make some of my own chipotle pepper powder.  Typically chipotle pepper powder is made using red ripe jalapenos and smoked for about 24 hours.

Given my lack of ripe jalapeno peppers (had 3 small ones) and it being the beginning of August I opted to make an alternate variety of brown chipotle powder.  While picking pecks of jalapeno peppers I also noticed I had some sweet peppers with no plans so decided to use them to make some sweet smoked paprika.

I started by splitting the jalapeno peppers from step to end (leaving other side attached and pulling  them apart slightly.  If you want a little less heat you can scrap out the seeds and membrane they are attached to, but given my current tolerance to peppers I probably wouldn’t really tell the difference so I kept them in.

I then sliced the sweet peppers into slices in approximately the same width as the peppers with hopes they would end up drying about the same time (should have gone a little wider then pictured below.

With the pepper neatly arranged on my Brinkmann Smoke’N Grill Charcoal Smoker and Grill (El Cheapo Brinkmann aka ECB) it was time to start smoking.  Though you can smoke peppers and many temperatures, from my research traditionally they are smoked at 125F using hardwoods such as hickory, pecan, apple (or other fruit woods)  I personally went with a combination of hickory and apple wood.

With the little experience I have done with my new smoker, I decided that doing this with charcoal (if even possible) would lead to a lot of smoker tending and much lost sleep.  This led me to pick up a $10 electric hot plate at my local Bartell Drug Store and a heavy duty pie pan at a thrift store for $0.50.

Next I placed the electric hot plate and pan with a handful of wood chips (soaked for 30 minutes) on a small cinder block and placed my smoker (fire/water pan removed) over the my heater contraption.  After playing with the variable temperature on the hot plate I found that about Medium/Medium High produced some decent smoke as you can see in the video below (this is a little too much I turned it down just a hair after recording video)

 

After closing everything up the smoker was cooking at a perfect 125F, now this would be terrible for BBQ meat but perfect for smoking peppers.  Ever 3-4 hours (when smoked stopped) I emptied the ashes out of the pan and added new water soaked chips and waited.

After 16 hours in the smoker, I decided that was enough and  here are how the peppers looked before moving them to the food dehydrator to complete their drying process.

I wanted to use the peppers for powder so I made sure they were very brittle and I moved them out into the dehydrator at 130F for about 20 hours.  Though for softer leathery peppers could be used in sauces (chipotle adobo sauce) you could leave them in for about 12 hours for slightly softer peppers.

Green Jalapeno Peppers (Meco “Brown” Chipotle Peppers)

Red Jalapeno Peppers (Morita Chipotle Peppers)

Sweet Peppers (Smoked Sweet Paprika)

Just for fun I decided to combine a couple of each variety into my Magic Bullet with the grinding attachment and made some powder which I am storing in an old spice container.  The rest I stored in a Ziploc bag.

How to use chipotle peppers

• BBQ Spice: Good addition to injections or for food that does not have the advantage of staying on the grill long enough to get a nice smoky flavor (steaks/hamburgers/chicken)
• Chipotle Mayonnaise: Take a cup of mayo and add 1/4 to 1/2 tsp. of chipotle powder to give a very different flavor to your traditional mayonnaise.
• Chipotle Salt: With flavored sea salts becoming so popular lately, you can save some money by just adding 1.5 to 2 tsp. of chipotle powder to 1 cup of sea salt.  This along with a little freshly cracked pepper is a very simple seasoning for a great tasting steak.
• Chipotle Adobo Sauce: Add 1 tsp. of chipotle powder to 1/4 cup of ketchup to make your own great tasting chipotle adobo sauce.
• Pizza Sauce: Like the taste of wood oven pizza but lack the wood oven.  Add a 1/2 tsp. of Chipotle powder to 1 cup of pizza sauce for a wood oven baked flavor.
• General: Add to soup, salsa, spaghetti, chili, tacos, salad, vegetables, breadsticks, sandwiches, or anything else you want to add a little spicy and smoky flavor.

Closing Remarks

As you can see this little spice is very versatile and has many uses on your outdoor grill and/or kitchen.  Like most spices your chipotle powder should last for 12 months in a sealed container, but you can keep the flavors more potent by keeping the peppers intact and only grind them when you need to use it (or will use it in the next month or so).

Vermicomposting – How to harvest your worm poop (castings)

16.6 years ago harvest, vermicomposting, worms 6 Comments

Now your worms have been working hard eating, pooping, and reproducing so now it is time to harvest the fruits of their labor (worm castings) There are a few methods to harvest worm castings so I will briefly describe a few:

Dump and Sort Much like it sounds you simply dump out your worms and castings onto a plastic sheet. Sort through and catch as many worms as you can and set them aside.

Divide and Harvest Move you compost and worms to one side of your worm bin and fill the other half with new bedding. For the next couple weeks only bury food on the side with the fresh bedding. During these two weeks a majority of the worms will move over to the other side where you can harvest the castings minus the worms.

Moving on Up Create a second bin which you place on top of your existing one (Rubbermaid containers and 5 gallon bucket worm bins work great for this) and fill it with clean bedding and food and after a couple weeks the worms will migrate into to the new bin. Now you simply harvest the lower bin.

Using any of these methods I would suggest using a soil sieve like I showed how to create previously to better separate food/bedding from the castings and either use the remains in your next bin or put them right into your compost bin.

How to prevent weeds in your garden

14.9 years ago organic, weed prevention, weeds 5 Comments

I doubt there is anyone who enjoys pulling weeds, though now at the end of the season is a great time to do some preventive measures to prevent new growth next season.

Kill your weeds early: The sooner you pull your weeds the easier it is to keep up with them.  In addition, if you pick the weeds before the mature and flower and drop seeds you will save a ton of time pulling weeds for every one of those seeds that drop.  Call me old fashioned but I normally skip the whole herbicide method and just pull the weeds by hand.  Not only does your lawn or garden immediately look better, there is no coming back to see if the weeds need another dose of spray and the whole environmental part of keeping some chemicals out of our water system.

Mulch: This is one I didn’t completely understand until I had been gardening for a while.  I for one never have found “beauty bark” beautiful and have always preferred the more natural look and benefits of fertile soil.  But that is entirely why you want to use a mulch such as ground bark, straw, pine needles, leaves, newspaper, rubber bark, or even some old carpet.  This helps prevent weeds in twp ways.  First, it blocks light from the potential little weed seedlings to make their way to the surface.  Second, they are not fertile mediums to grow seeds, which is exactly what you are looking for for your large flower beds which like to create good crops of weeds.  As a final benefit they help insulate and hold water down for the plants you want to thrive having great growth and eventually shading out those “poor” weed seedlings.  just 3-4 inches during the fall and your back should be bending over much less next spring.

If you are thinking, “What about my vegetable garden?  I want seeds to be able to grow in there next year.”  For your vegetable garden I highly recommend chopped leaves and a vegetable garden mulch.  If you happen to have a leaf blower/vacuum that will chop them up all you need to do is empty those bags in a thin 1-2 inch layer across your garden.  I used to have one of these though accidentally sucked up a rock which didn’t “chop” well and broke it so the alternate method I use is the following.  Bag your leaves throughout the fall and once the leaves stop falling dump them out in a long row in your yard.  Then use you lawnmower with bagger attachment and run them over until they are all chopped up.  You can also do this more frequently during the fall but I find this a good time to use all the gas in the lawnmower before the end of winter feeling more like I am doing something more meaning other than just letting the mower sit there until it burns off the remaining fuel.  With these leaves on the surface you smother any weed seeds and also block out all light to the soil.  When spring time comes you simply work in the decomposed leaves into the soil and your garden has a head start with some good organic matter.

Pre-emergent weed control: For some parts of your yard like your lawn mulching is not really an options so to protect against pesky weeds like one of my personally loathing weed, annual bluegrass.  Which grows and seeds so close to the ground it is nearly impossible to pull the plants to prevent the spreading.  Pre-emergent herbicides is the solution to this problem.  Pre-emergent herbicides work by preventing weed seeds from germination by inhibiting cell division in their tiny root system.  Given these plants are annuals a successful application can rid you yard of these weeds until they eventually blower over from a neighbors.  Pre-emergent herbicides can be purchased as a chemical or the organic method is applying glutton corn meal which normally can be purchased from your local feed store.  One thing to remember is that this also will prevent you normal grass seed from germinating as well so be sure to time your application after with with enough lead time to allow the pre-emergent from wearing off.

Grow a cover crop:  Growing a cover crop has two major benefits to your garden.  Various legumes, grasses, and buckwheat make good options for for cover crops to plants while you garden is empty.  First it creates a natural shade from the sun making it hard (or impossible) for seedlings are the surface to survive under their great shadows.  Second it provides organic mater as “green manure” to add nutrients to your soil.  One recommendation is to make sure you do a little research on the plant you choose as a cover crop, if you accidentally wait too long to “harvest” your cover crop it could go to seed and you may have an entirely new weed problem on your hands.

Cook the soil:  When all else fails apply some black plastic (thicker the better) covering to your planting beds and let them “cook” throughout the fall/winter.  Like mulch this will prevent any light and most water from entering the areas covered.  This will essentially cook the soil killing any weeds, seeds, fungi, or anything else living in that area.  Though this is very effective in eliminating weeds and disease from your soil it also kills everything else including good bacteria that your friendly worms like to visit your garden, so you soil may take sometime to recover and return to becoming living soil.  I would recommend this method as a last result when the previous methods have proven to be completely unsuccessful.

Just for some positive outlook, you can also think of weeds as green manure assuming you are adding these to your compost, so even out of control they still can decompose and help your garden…