The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

Drying peppermint leaves

14.4 years ago dehydrator, herbs, peppermint 7 Comments

Excited to try out my new to me food dehydrator, I collected some peppermint leaves from my 2 year old peppermint plants which is fighting the confirms of the 1 gallon pot I have used to keep it from consuming my entire flowerbed, lawn, house, etc.

For the best potency, it is best to collect mint right before they start to flower and first thing in the morning when their oils are at their peak.  Given it is a couple months before they will be flowering I picked them in the early afternoon.

If they were dirty you should wash them off and pat them dry with a paper towel and add directly to your dehydrator.  In my case we had a rain the night before and they were very clean so I skipped the washing step.

Next I simply put them into the dehydrator at 100F degree and in a few hours later they were all crumbly and looked like what you see below.

To store the leaves I went with the poor man’s vacuum packing technique…Ziploc bag and sucking the air out with a straw which should keep the herbs fresh for a few months.

Lastly I tried out the product by taking a pinch of the leaves and quickly breaking them up with my fingers and added them to a tea strainer.

After a few minutes of steeping I had some good looking and tasting peppermint tea.

I would say my testing of my new dehydrator was a success…now off to see what else in the fridge I can dry out.

Propagation of strawberry plants

16.2 years ago strawberries 10 Comments

My strawberries have stopped producing berries and now have started send runners all over the place. During the berry growing season I would pinch them off to let the plants use their energy creating delicious berries. Now those runners are not really doing any harm I have decided to let some of them live and propagate them into some small plant trays.

I grow my strawberries in the open end of cinder blocks and the rest of my vegetable garden is surrounded by gravel so not really any place for them to go, with the exception of taking over my vegetable garden. Given they will not grow in gravel and I like vegetables in my vegetable garden I have redirected them into some plant trays (ironically the same ones I brought the plants parents home in) filled with potting mix. All you do is simply put the end of the runner in the soil and it will do the rest. To keep the runner from popping out of the soil, the normal convention is to create a U-shape with a paperclip to hold the runner in place underground, for whatever strange reason I couldn’t find any of these anywhere in my house I opted for bent bamboo skewers. After about a week you should have your very own baby strawberry plants at this time you can cut the “umbilical” cord from the mother plant. Now the next question is where I am going to put these new plants…guess I need to make a new garden bed or find some friends that want some strawberries next year.

Getting the garden ready for winter

15.9 years ago garden maintenance 2 Comments

The leaves are changing and falling the days are getting colder and I am personally coming to the end of my vegetable growing season. I do have a few post season activities before I completely call it a year.

Remove plants: Now my plants have lived a good life but now need to be removed. I mulch my lawn so I am always lacking greens for my compost bin so this is a good time to get some new materials. Most of my remaining plants are tomato, pumpkin, and cucumber plants which have some tough skins so I will chop them up with my lawnmower prior to add them to my modest bin. While you have your mower running this is a good time to let it keep running until it runs out of gas to avoid gumming up the engine when you fire it up next spring. This is also a good time to inspect and sharpen or replace the blade since if you are like me you will completely forget about this when you finally get around to mowing next spring.

Fertilize: If you only can fertilize one time throughout the year now is the time because turf grasses have the ability to store food during the winter months to allow a very quick rebound after the winter months. My primary concern is for my lawn which I am applying alfalfa pellets, since we have had some intense rains these past weeks they should break down quickly and not have the appearance of goose poo for too long. While applying I also allowed some to fall into by beds to help microbial activity and give my empty beds a head start for next spring. Be sure to avoid beds with and vegetation since you want to avoid any new growth with first hard freeze coming up.

Turning the soil: This can be a controversial activity since messing with the soil can inhibit microbial activity though turning the soil now can give you a head start next spring. My motivation is more on the lines if killing baby slugs (I know I am cruel) The slug activity in my garden was pretty minimal but I have concerns the few visitors may have decided to raise a family in my bed for next year. If I simply turn the first few inches of the soil I can expose the tiny slug eggs which birds will eat as a snack and any remaining will be destroyed during our first good frost. As an added benefit this will be a good time to catch up on my slacking in weeding during the last few weeks.

Taking care of your tools: Now is a good time to find those missing tools that may be hiding in your yard and garden. I have no idea why manufacturers choose to make these things green; almost like they want us to lose them to buy more  If you find any of your tools it is a good idea to put a light coating of oil on metal parts of your tools. You can also apply some Linseed oil to the wood portion of your tools.

Frosting on the top: At this point my garden is looking pretty good….even tempted to start planting though I will resist the urge. I have a plan to hold me over this winter but that will require its own post. After I have had a couple good frosts to kill off any slug eggs I will break open a couple of my bags of leaves and spread on a solid layer on top of my beds. Not only will this provide some food and temperature protection for the worms in my garden but whatever remains will be a great addition of organic matter for my garden.

Now with all this work I should be ready to start gardening way earlier than I should next spring…will I ever learn.

Earth Day in the garden

14.4 years ago cilantro, cold season crops, garlic bulbs, onions, peppers, tomato 3 Comments

I decided to take the day off to catch up on some things at home and as I ended up outside of course I went right to the garden. 

We have seen a few warm days here in the Northwest and in my area we haven’t dipped under 40 degrees at night so seemed like a good time to plant a few of my tomatoes spending their time this winter in the grow box.

Above are a New Yorker and Persey both of which are new for me this year.  They have been growing great even with my neglect during their youth.  I also have some Green Zebras, Husky Cherry, Sweetie Cherry, and Yellow Cherry.  I did attempt Red Brandywine but the seeds I got appear to be duds.

Given it is always good to have a Plan B so I have twins of these tomato plants still in puts which I can bring if a cold snap comes and kills off the plants I ambitiously planted in the ground.

Elsewhere in the garden I have some herbs: Parsley and Oregano, with Basil being an unfortunately casualty which I will plan on buying from the store and try again next year.

Next I checked out my larger garden bed to see my peas, cilantro, onions, carrots, lettuce, strawberries and garlic

Lastly I checked out the peppers in the grow box which they will stay until we have some warmer nights (at least 50 degrees) otherwise can cause significant stunting of growth.  So until then they will remain happy in the grow box and given they are still pretty small, still plenty of room to grow…

Building a BBQ Smoker

14.1 years ago cheap, jalapeno, smoker 8 Comments

After many suggestions that I should smoke my jalapeno peppers in comments of my making jalapeno pepper powder post, I decided to give it a try.  After doing a little looking most recommendations say to use a new or very clean smoker so this eliminates using my propane grill as smoker and an excuse opportunity to make myself a smoker.

After a little research on the internet I determined my two potential proposed homemade smoker solutions.

First is Anton Brown’s flower pot smoker, which takes a couple of terra cotta pots and a 16 inch grill.  This is electric powered using a hot plate topped with a pie pan full of wet wood chunks/chips.

The second design I liked was the aluminum trash can smoker design, which is basically the same idea as the flower pot design except (obviously) you use a garbage can instead of the flower pots.  You use the hot plate and pie tin in the same manner.

Armed with my design ideas in my head I was off to my local home improvement store to pick up some materials.  I first started with the flower pot design but I couldn’t find the azalea pot bug enough to cover the bottom terra cotta pot, nor a grill to fit.  That along with the estimated prices being $60-70 dollars not even including the electric heater.

Optimistic I checked out the aluminum garbage cans, though there was a similar problem of not being able to find a grill to fit right.  I thought about creating a couple supports using metal rods or attaching with a few pieces of wire.  In the end the cost of the can/grill minus the electric heater was about $50-60 and I get the great aesthetics of a garbage can smoker in my back yard.

This led to my eventual purchase of the Brinkmann Smoke’N Grill Charcoal Smoker and Grill for $40 or as it is affectionately known online as the ECB (El Cheapo Brinkmann)  Though not as DIY as the previous two versions but given it was cheaper, looks a little better in my backyard, and I have the option of cooking with charcoal seemed like the obvious choice.

Though the hacker in me could not resist making a couple of minor modifications.  First I added a real thermometer given the Warm/Ideal/Hot was a little lacking in specific information.

Second I used some of my leftover wire from the construction of my soil sieve cut to size with the corners bent to elevate the charcoal about an inch from the bottom to allow the ashes to not smother the lit coals.

I completed the 2 hour curing process using charcoal and will be smoking some peppers this labor day weekend, so stay tuned.

HomeTown Seeds: 3-Tray Kitchen Seed Sprouter Review and Giveaway

14 years ago seeds, sprouting 57 Comments

Last year I played with sprouting seeds in a mason jar to hold me and the kids over during the winter until it was time to start growing for the following spring.  The process worked great but I ended up with way more sprouts than I could consume and most of the sprouts were wasted.  One option was to use smaller jars and stagger the starting of the seeds, but this would leave me to fill and drain 3-4 jars a couple of days.

Fortunately Hometown Seeds has a product (3-Tray Kitchen Sprouter) that solves these problems for me and when they asked it I would want to review this product I jumped at the chance.

The kit comes with 3 trays and a packet of 2 oz of organic alfalfa seeds, which you can fill each with a half of tablespoon of seeds to get a full tray full of sprouts in 2-3 days.  Each tray is easily removable so you can choose to create 3 trays worth of sprouts at a time or create start a new tray every day to always have a fresh supply of sprouts.

After you have added the seeds you put the pieces together and simply fill the top reservoir with water and the sprouter does the rest.  The sprouter uses a syphon technique to allow the tray to partially fill with water before draining to the tray below it, to repeat the process for any other trays you have.

Here you can see the syphoning in action.

I have not tried it myself but I don’t see any reason if you bought multiple kits and stack them as high as you want and have a sprouting factory on your kitchen counter.

Overall I was very impressed with the sprouter it was easy to use and entertaining for my 6-year-old to watch the water drain through the various levels.  Also produced clean quality sprouts without making a mess all over the kitchen counter.  The only negative observation is sometimes the seeds/sprouts can clog the syphon if too many get packed together.  Fortunately when this happened to me, I simply removed the plastic syphon cap and pushed away a few of the seed/sprouts blocking the drain and didn’t have any problems after that, but something to keep an eye on.

Here are some sprouts I after growing for 2 days…tomorrow they will go on some sandwiches.

Hometown Seeds has also graciously offered one of these sprouting systems to readers of CVG, so if you are in the continental United States, just enter a comment below and I will pick a winner at random in one week (9/18/2010 Midnight PST)