GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Author: Eric

Sandor Katz on Fermentation – GF Radio 316
https://gardenfork.tv/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/GFR316.mp3
Sandor Katz join us to talk fermentation, and how to make sauerkraut, and just how much of our food is a product of fermentation. Sandor Katz is the author of The Art of Fermentation, An In-Depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World.

We talk about the ubiquity of fermented food in our world:
- Cheese
- Bread
- Chocolate
- Coffee
- Condiments
“So many of our food staples and gourmet treats are products of fermentation” Sandor points out. Eric brings up the bread starter he is working with based on the Tartine Bread book. Sandor points out how just adding water to flour will start fermentation. He has a starter and makes pancakes with his starter.

Buy Sandor Katz’s Books Here (affiliate link)

Sandor Katz on Food Safety

“Fermentation is actually a strategy for safety” says Sandor, explaining how fermentation wipes out the bad organism that can cause food safety issues

How to get started in fermentation

Sandor suggests starting with vegetables and a container you have in your kitchen. You don’t need any special starters. Any kind of vegetables will work, you can mix them together, add seasonings. Chop up your vegetables, add some salt, enough for it to taste good, squeeze the vegetables, bruise them to allow the salt to interact. Stuff them into the glass or ceramic jar you have, get them submerged under the liquid. You can put a plate with a weight on it to keep the vegetables under the brine. Leave it on the counter in a darker corner, with the jar slightly open. If any mold appears, scrape it off and allow the vegetables to ferment more.

You can let it ferment a week or month, and then when it tastes to your liking, you can move it to your fridge.

Sandor then talks about the cabin he is restoring with volunteer help, and the workshops he hosts. You can get more info on his site about where he is hosting fermentation workshops.

Watch our fermentation videos here

Listen to Daniel Gasteiger talk fermentation on this GF Radio episode

Easy Fermentation Recipes & Foraging Tips with Leda Meredith – GF Radio 355
October 28, 2013
Plywood Boat – Fail or Float? – GF Video
The Improved One Sheet Plywood Boat with fiberglass seams. How to build a plywood boat despite just about everything going wrong… The perfect DIY project!

What started out as our EPIC Plywood Boat video featuring the Ford F150 Limited that Ford loaned us for the weekend instead became a story of perseverance despite record low temperatures, huge thunderstorms, and really cheap duct tape.

Plywood Boat with fiberglass: A Lesson

The idea here was to improve upon our original plywood boat, which has been a very popular video on our site and YouTube. The original boat used strips of wood and caulk for the seams, which added weight and wasn’t always exactly waterproof. I also wanted to use a new thinner plywood I found at the store that is sustainably harvested. Thinner plywood and lighter seams would mean a lighter boat.

I have a good friend who uses fiberglass a lot, and he gave me some fiberglass tape, which was perfect for the boat seams. I had read online about how to dryfit a plywood boat using duct tape to hold it all together while you added fiberglass to the seams.

This all sounded great in theory, in practice is was another story. Things I’ve learned about working with fiberglass:
- It smells real bad, use a high quality vapor mask, don’t cheap out on this.
- It does not work well in cold temperatures
- It sticks to itself and your gloves.
- Its not easy to use from the get go.
- You need someone to help when applying fiberglass
- Don’t buy cheap duct tape.
Despite applying the fiberglass in the garage with the doors open, the smell was quite strong, get a good mask. And if the temperature plunges, consider choosing another day to start this project. Also pick up some good quality nitrile gloves, you will use quite a few of them.

We all make mistakes

What this video is more about is to plan and persevere. What can go wrong will, and it was a weekend of everything going south quickly. In the end we triumphed. How do you push through to get stuff done? Let us know below.

A big thank you to Mike Levine and Scotty Monty of Ford Motor for the truck!

Original boat design based on Deek Diedricksen’s boat.
October 28, 2013
How To Make Kombucha, Sake, Cider, Beer with Emma Christensen – GF Radio 315

Make kombucha, sake, cider and other fermented liquids on GardenFork Radio. Emma Christensen, author of True Brews: How to Craft Fermented Cider, Beer, Wine, Sake, Soda, Mead, Kefir, and Kombucha at Home, geeks out with Eric about fermentation. The first ‘ah ha’ moment comes when Eric learns from Emma how to make ginger ale and use champagne yeast to add bubbles and a tang of taste along with the ginger. The dried yeast package works fine, btw.

Emma suggests a first timer starts out making soda. All you need is an empty recycled soda bottle and a juice of your choice. You can make your own juice if you want. With little work you can make DIY soda. neat.

Eric and Emma talk about how to make cider, – we have a few how to make hard cider videos here – and Emma lets us in on some tips on the best way to make hard cider. Eric wants to know whether one should try the wild yeast method or continue to sulfite the cider before pitching the yeast. Emma lets us in a a new flavor term called ‘ barnyard flavor’ as she experiment with sour yeasts. We learn that lower temperatures are best for hard cider fermentation and that some ciders can have high alcohol content, depending on the sugar content of the apples.

For experimenting with wild yeast hard cider, Emma suggests to try a one gallon fermenter, which is a brilliant suggestion. This way you don’t waste 5 gallons of cider on an experiment. Emma suggests using a 2 gallon jug or carboy for the initial 1 gallon fermentation, and then you can transfer it to a 1 gallon jug for a second fermentation and storage.

Its Easy To Make Kombucha

We move into how to make kombucha, which is a strong tea with a scoby added to it. Emma likes to brew kobucha herself so you can control how it tastes. If you like a sweeter kombucha, you ferment it less, and you can add ginger or fruits like pears. Cultures for Health is one place to buy a starter scoby.

You can read more of Emma’s Posts on her blog, follow her on Twitter, or read her posts on TheKitchn .

Buy True Brews Book On Indie Bound Here
Buy True Brews Book On Amazon Here

October 21, 2013
Adopt A Rescue Dog and Feel Great – GF Radio 314

October is National Adopt A Rescue Month, and we talk about the good vibes you get from adoption. Rick and Eric suggest adopting a mixed breed dog rather than a pure breed. While Eric does have pure breed Labradors, purebreeds are more prone to in-breeding, which can result in joint disorders, deafness, all sorts of not great health things. Rick does Cairn Terrier Rescue and notes the number of rescues has dropped a bit with the economy recovering somewhat. Read more from the American Humane Society here.

Salmonella is next, and of course Rick found this very interesting news from the CDC. The idea here is that washing a chicken before cooking it can atomize or throw into the air, salmonella. When you wash a chicken, water gets sprayed around your sink area, and with that water, the potential for spreading salmonella, which can then spread to raw foods, your hands, etc. Eric points out how careful he is with his hands and what they touch after he has been handling raw meat. The benefits of a sink faucet with one of those automatic on features is clear to us now. Eric brings up how the motion sensor on switch for the faucet can also save water. How many times have you walked away from the faucet and left it running?

Our fascination with weather continues, and the availability of great radar imagery from Allison House, the severe weather data company, learn more about them here, and download their app. (Allison House is a GF sponsor)

Standing Desks! Eric wants to build one, do you use one? Let us know. Eric is thinking some sort of Ikea hack standing desk is the way to go. Stay tuned, working on the planning phase now. Perhaps with a treadmill below the desk…

Rick suggests stepping away from the desk, he tells of sitting in the park at a table, and finding the table full of ticks while wearing shorts. Fun.

Rick’s Minimalist Computer Desk keeps down desk clutter

October 17, 2013
DIY Cider Press Video – GF Video

Homemade cider press built by my neighbors Gene and Priscilla. A hydraulic cider press that uses found materials from a log splitter and a tree chipper, Gene built this from parts he had. Use this video and the photos here as a basis for your own cider press plans. This is really cool to use, and it would be a blast to build as well.

Build your own cider press

You can do this! It will take some time, but its do-able. Its helpful to have some metal skills or ask a neighbor who does to help. You’ll want a bunch of people around anyway to help with the cider press, its a lot of work to process all the apples, apple mash, and bottle the cider.

This cider press uses a chipper, much like those that are in electric wood chippers, to mash up the apples. I love the use of a traffic cone to direct the apple mash in the right place. The racks that hold the mash are custom built, be sure the racks have slots to allow the cider to drip out. The cloth is muslin.

The apples are first washed in a mild bleach solution and then rinsed in two buckets of water. A 5 gallon bucket with holes drilled in it works well for this. Any bruises or blemishes are cut out of the apples.

After the apples are pressed, the cider is filtered and pumped through a UV sterilizer. UV light kills bad bugs in the cider, its a simple way, i think to have good cider and not have to pasteurize it to sell. Your local rules might not allow this, so check first.

You can freeze cider to be able to enjoy it all year. Leave enough space in the containers for some expansion as the cider freezes.

We’ve made hard cider from Priscilla’s press, you can check out our how to make hard cider videos here

October 16, 2013
How To Harvest Garlic – Grow Garlic Video Series – GF Video

Learn you how to harvest garlic properly, and how to store your garlic. We showed you how to grow garlic in the first of our grow garlic videos – link below – and now its the middle of summer and time to harvest and store the garlic.

The question I get most often is when to plant your garlic, the second is when to harvest it. Garlic is usually harvested in middle to late summer, when the plants start to turn brown, but not completely brown. If you let the plant go completely brown, the bulbs will be falling apart and starting to rot. Pay attention to the scapes to see if they are pointing straight up, and then the plant will start to go brown. Pull a bulb or two and check the condition of the bulb.

Grow Garlic, Then Harvest It

The bulb will still have a lot of moisture in it, and most people will air dry the bulbs before using them or selling them. I’ve even seen farmers who put the bulbs in large plastic trays, stack the trays, and then put a fan underneath the trays to push air through the stack and dry the garlic. Personally, I tie the garlic into bunches and hang it in the shed for a few weeks. Avoid putting the garlic in damp areas, which will invite mold to start, which is not a good thing.

If some of your garlic has brown spots on it, it is still ok to eat, most people just cut around the spotty areas and you are good to go. If you want to save garlic seed, set aside the largest cloves for the fall planting. The idea here is that the largest cloves will yield large bulbs. Check out Filaree Farm to order garlic.

Let us know your thoughts on garlic growing.

October 15, 2013
Quick Cherry Tomato Recipe

An easy cherry tomato recipe for last minute dinner.

You’re tired, and not sure what’s in the fridge, and you need to make dinner: this is me all the time. I saw some cherry tomatoes on the counter and thought about our roast cherry tomato recipe video. So in go the cherry tomatoes under the broiler and the pasta on the stove top.

I debated in my head, should I put some Italian seasoning on cherry tomatoes before they go in the broiler? I figured the broiler would just burn the oregano and all, so I didn’t.

I didn’t time the tomatoes, I just waited for them to start popping. I didn’t want them all popped and deflated, just starting to crack and the juices to be hot. So when that all started happening I pulled them out of the broiler. 2 servings of this fits nicely into a 8 x 8 pan, btw.

I like this kind of thing because it makes you look like a genius but is wicked simple. Olive oil certainly helps make you look like the genius you are… Olive and salt on the cherry tomatoes before they go in the broiler mix with the tomato juices in the broiler to make a nice sauce for the pasta. And of course some more simple magic, good cheese, makes this work too.

Don’t cheap out on Romano or Parmesan cheese, OK? I bought some inexpensive parmesan at the store the other day, because that’s the only thing they had , and it tasted like soap mixed with cream cheese. Not good.

Cherry tomatoes are pretty forgiving, they last a while on the countertop. The fresher ones pop more in the broiler, the off-season cherries have a tougher skin, but they still work for this just fine. Not sure why some stores put cherry tomatoes in a cooler, I think it affects their texture.

So this works for me, its easy to make and then you’re done. What works for you? let us know below

Quick Cherry Tomato Pasta Recipe
Ingredients
•   1 pint Cherry Tomatoes
•   1 tablespoon Italian seasonings, oregano, marjoram, etc.
•   4 glugs Olive Oil
•   1/2 lb pasta of you choice
•   1 chunk Parmesan or Pecorino Cheese
Cooking Directions
1. Start the pasta to cook. Be sure to add salt to the pasta water.
2. Turn on the broiler
3. Wash the cherry tomatoes and place in a 8 x 8 baking pan
4. Drizzle the olive oil over the cherry tomatoes and put under the broiler
5. When the tomatoes start to pop, pull them out of the broiler
6. Scatter the Italian seasonings over the tomatoes and mix the whole thing while still in the baking pan.
7. Portion the cooked pasta onto two plates and pour the tomatoes over the pasta.
8. Grate cheese over the pasta, salt and pepper to your taste.

October 14, 2013
Rainwater Collection With Recycled Materials – GF Video

Build a Rainwater Collection system using recycled materials from your yard and the town dump! This rainwater harvesting setup uses recycled rain gutters and recycled water tanks to collect rainwater for your garden. Super simple to put together, this rig is on our friend Priscilla’s small farm. To do this, they used some found materials, rain gutters, and they had some old water tanks nearby. So they put together this easy rainwater collection system to catch the rainwater off their barn roof.

This rainwater collection system is powered by gravity. The barn and the tanks sit higher than most of the farm, and at the base of the tank is a regular garden hose valve where they connect a hose to water their garden. This is not a system for collecting potable drinking water, OK? This system works great for watering plants.

Rainwater Collection: Use What You Got

In the true spirit of Use What You Got™, Priscilla and her husband put this together by themselves. With a few ladders they attached the rain gutter to the edge of the barn roof, and then wired the second piece of recycled rain gutter to channel the rainwater to the water tank. Simple, and it works great, as you can see in the video.

A few things to keep in mind when building a rain water collection system, don’t use any tanks that may have held hazardous materials. If you don’t know what was in a tank or barrel originally, don’t repurpose it for watering your garden. I have seen gravity fed soaker hose systems for sale on the web, stay tuned for more videos on rainwater harvesting. In our garden we have a soaker hose drip irrigation system setup, and it is powered by a pump. Fedco Seeds Organic Growers Supply has drip irrigation parts for sale. Check out the links below for our soaker hose drip irrigation videos:

Click Here To Watch GF Drip Irrigation Videos

October 9, 2013
How to save tomato seeds – GF Video

Learn how to save tomato seeds from tomatoes in your garden. Watch our video, its super easy to do. Tomato seed saving works best with heirloom and non-hyrid tomatoes. Seeds saved from hyrbrid tomatoes will not yield the same tomato variety.

Save Tomato Seeds For Next Season

Simple right? Its not hard to save tomato seeds . The key thing to remember is to not use any of the seeds that are still floating in the tomato water after 3-4 days. These saved seeds will not germinate, as they still have that gelatinous membrane around them. There will be plenty of seeds at the bottom of your tomato seed container to dry for next year’s crop.

Remember to dry the seeds on plain copy paper, not paper towels. The saved seeds will stick to the paper towels, they stick less to the regular paper. It helps greatly to write on the paper what kid of tomato the seeds are saved from. Learn from my experience…

I keep all my seeds in the fridge or in a cool dry dark place in the basement. Save those silica gel packs from electronics packages, and put them in with the seeds, they absorb moisture from the stored seeds. You can also buy silica gel at a crafts store. Are there other methods for absorbing moisture in the seed packets? Let us know below.

Here’s how one GF viewer saves tomato seeds:

I save those but I keep them in a different fashion. If I find a tomato I like (heirloom, hopefully) I take a color photo of it before I cut the tomato. I then proceed to save the seed. I dry them on a plate myself. Once dried for a few days I make a small wax paper envelope, put the seed in and then staple it to the photo. If there’s some quality about the tomato I write that and the name, if I know the name, onto the photo. That’s my system for saving.

You might also consider doing a seed exchange with your friends, its a neat way to discover local specialty seeds. Or this could be the start of a new hobby of cross breeding tomatoes to create new varieties that work best in your micro climate. Neat stuff all round. Fedco Seeds has some great heirloom tomato seeds. Let us know your seed saving ideas below:

Click Here To Watch More GF Tomato Videos

October 9, 2013
More On How To Compost & Photography – GF Radio 313

We talk about how to compost, and Eric tells of of his idea to reduce traffic congestion with zipper merges.

Rick talks about putting low rolling resistance tires on his Prius, and we recall some of the information that Daniel of MPGomatic http://www.mpgomatic.com/ told us. Listen to his appearance on GF Radio here.

We then get into hyper-miling, which Mike and Eric talked about on GF Radio here.

How To Compost is the next subject, with the new GardenFork How To compost video on composting. we talk about how to make a compost pile, and Rick wants to get an electric leaf shredder. Hot and cold composting is talked about, Rick has some suggestions on how to build a hot compost pile. We read some viewer mail and and answer composting questions. Can you just put vegetable scraps into your garden? How does the cold winter affect composting? We touch on pit composting and fence post composting as well.

Rick again is harvesting leaves collected by his neighbors, they do all the work and Rick gets free compost material for his garden beds. The electric shredder will help break down those leaves. The smaller the pieces of material, the faster they will break down.

Rick points out we did not talk about worm composting, aka vermicomposting. we plan on making a how to worm compost video, watch Rick’s excellent how to build a worm composter video here.

We move onto street photography, and the rights of people to take photographs, and Eric asks what are the rights of people whose photo is being taken? Rick brings up a recent court ruling that allows citizens to take cell phone video of police in public situations. Rick posted about this on his site here.

Finally, we would like to hear from you about other independent podcasts that you like. We love the podcasts from NPR, etc, but we would like to promote other indie podcasts.

photo by Alviman – MorgueFile

October 7, 2013
Chainsaw Cutting Firewood

Chainsaw Cutting Firewood this weekend, we dropped a dead cherry tree and we’re now using a chainsaw to cut the tree into firewood. For this to work, we use a timberjack, also called a peavey, to move the tree sections. Save your back, buy one of these chainsaw tools!

Chainsaw Cutting Made Easy

A timberjack, aka a peavey, is a simple tool that helps you wrestle large trees and logs. To cut help the chainsaw cutting firewood, it allows you to cut 2/3 of the way through the logs, then turn the logs over and finish the cuts. The whole goal here is to keep the chainsaw cutting to avoid the dirt under the log. Keep your chainsaw chain out of the dirt! Dirt in the chainsaw chain, bar, and clutch is a bad thing.

In the photos you can see how we have first cut the tree into sections, we then did the 2/3 cuts through the logs. Be sure to measure the firewood length. How wide is your fireplace or wood stove? Firewood for wood stoves is usually not as large as fireplace firewood. Learn from my mistakes on this one…

I cut this tree into manageable lengths first by finding parts of the tree that weren’t sitting right on the ground. In other words, where the tree isn’t making contact with the ground. This allowed me to make a full cut while keeping the chain and bar out of the dirt.

Read more about using a timberjack or peavey in this post here.

Here are videos we have made about using a chainsaw:

Cutting Down A Tree with a Chainsaw

Using A Chainsaw to Cut Firewood

How to ( Or How Not To ) Cut Down A Tree

You can buy a timberjack here

October 6, 2013
Zucchini Recipe – Squash Pancakes Recipe
An easy zucchini recipe for your zucchini squash harvest: Zucchini Pancakes!

I had bought a load of yellow squash and zucchini at the general store and thought i’d just saute some of it for dinner. Then I saw the Mark Bittman Cook Everything Vegetarian tome that I had pulled out earlier to look through. In it is a recipe for vegetable pancakes, and it reminded me of my fondness for latkes ( see our latke reipe video here ) and I decided to make zucchini pancakes. what fun.

The ingredients for this use the usual ingredients, eggs and flour, which work well to make a batter that coats and glues together the shredded zucchini. You can use a box grater to shred the zucchini, especially if you want to wear out some kids, but I use the food processor, which makes quick work of the job.

I also added carrots to the vegetable pancakes, aka squash latkes, because i like carrots. You can add in potato, sweet potato, beets, most any root vegetable. The title is Zucchini Recipe, but again, Use What You Got™.

The key to this Zucchini recipe

They key to this zucchini recipe is to remove some of the liquid from the mix. Summer squash has a lot of water in it. Salting it will draw out some of that water. You can put the salted shredded mix into a towel and wring out the liquid, or let it sit in a colander. You can skip this step, but the pancakes will be wetter on the inside. Its up to you.

Zucchini & Squash Pancakes in cast iron

This zucchini recipe tasks great with applesauce, sour cream, or thick yogurt. Have some suggestions? Let us know below.

BTW, if you have a bunch of beets, check out this Beet and Egg Salad Sarah posted on her site, Punctuated With Food.
Zucchini Recipe – Squash Pancakes Recipe

Recipe Type: Dinner

Cuisine: Vegetarian

Author: Eric Rochow

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 15 mins

Total time: 25 mins

A zuchhini recipe to use up that huge summer squash harvest.
Ingredients

8 medium 8\” long Zucchini or Yellow Squash

2 carrots

1 cup flour

2 eggs

1 tablespoon salt

2 teaspoons pepper
Instructions

Shred the zucchini, squash, carrots in a food processor

Toss the squash with salt and place in a colander to drain.

After 5 minutes, press the squash to remove some of the liquid.

Put the shredded squash, carrots, flour, eggs, pepper in a large bowl and mix together.

Heat a large fry pan – cast iron is good – with 1/4\” of vegetable oil.

When the oil is hot enough that a drop of water splatters in the oil, add the pancake batter.

A 1/3 cup measure works for us, it makes good size pancakes.

Cook the pancakes, when the the underside is brown, carefully flip it to brown the other side.

Place pancakes on a plate layered with paper towels in a warm oven while you cook the rest of the batter.

Serve with applesauce, sour cream, thick yogurt.
3.3.3077
October 6, 2013
Composting 101 – Backyard Composting Basics – GF Video
Composting! Learn how to compost in this video. What food can you compost? What food should not go in the composter? What kind of bin should I buy or build? Watch the show and let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

To compost in your backyard, you’ll need a bin of some sort. You can buy one – here are a few models – or you can build one – here are some GF videos with compost bin plans.

Composting Ingredients

Here is a brief list of things you can compost:
- Eggshells
- Coffee Grounds
- Salad Greens
- Corn Cobs
- Vegetables
- Newspaper, napkins, paper towels
- Light cardboard
Stuff you should not compost:
- Meat
- Foods saturated with oil
- Cat Litter and Dog Waste
- Cheese & Dairy Products
Most backyard composting takes months to break down, because of the lack of a large biomass, the pile cannot achieve the ideal temps for hot cooking of the material. But this isn’t a reason not to do it. Taking food scraps in to the backyard instead of the trash can is a super eco green way to live, and its real easy. There’s really no wrong way to do it.

Backyard Composting can be as simple as a pile of leaves and yard waste in the back of the yard, or in a more structured bin, its up to you. Whatever type you go with, be sure to aerate the pile, turning it over on itself, or lifting it up and poking holes in it. The pile needs air to work.

I’ve found that most of the compost accelerators don’t do much more than a good shovel full of manure will. What do you think? Let us know below:
October 2, 2013
Recipe Failures! – GF Radio 312

Recipe failures, and whether chefs skew their recipes on purpose when sharing them with the public, or is this a case of just poor recipe editing starts GF Radio. Eric had two recipe failures this weekend, one with pizza dough and one with sous vide slow cooker short ribs. Eric will try again for the pizza dough using a recipe from the Jan – Feb 2011 issue of Cook’s Illustrated. We talk about gluten development, over-working pizza dough, and overnight refrigerator rise. We’ve found that the overnight rise is key for pizza dough, it allows long gluten strands to develop with less carbon dioxide growth, so you don’t get big bubbles in your pizza.

Rick’s Water Feature with Bluebirds

Eric shows you a pizza dough recipe video here, and here is the Portable Brick Pizza Oven video.

The slow cooker sous vide controller Eric uses is from DorkFood, and it works well. Look for us to use the DorkFood sous vide controller to appear in future GardenFork videos. We have tried to hack a slow cooker sous vide controller, but realized this slow cooker sous vide rig is worth the price. Go buy it here

Are the temperatures that Modernist Cuisine states for sous vide cooking safe? Eric had the same question and found this great post by Douglas Baldwin, Sous Vide Safety, linked to by Reddit.

Douglas is the author of Sous Video For The Home Cook, which is on our wish list now. Lets see if we can get a review copy to share with you all.

We then move on to making hard cider, which will be a new GardenFork video soon!

Rick and Eric talk about photography, in a geek way, on the challenge of keeping your photo files backed up while traveling. Rick likes to shoot in RAW format for the ease of editing the photos and doing color correction, while Eric usually shoots in JPEG format, which is a compressed file format.

Eric Jaffe wrote about Tom Vanderbilt’s Why Traffic Happens talk at the Boing Boing Ingenuity Conference .

Eric and Rick talk about their great world view on traffic and driving, starting from this article. We learned of this article via Dave Pell’s great email, NextDraft, which you should all sign up for.

September 30, 2013
How to Can – Canning Tomatoes, Fruit, Vegetables : GF Video
How to can video! Learn how to can food: apples, peaches, can tomatoes, vegetables. Canning food is easy using the waterbath method. Use a big pot you already have as a canning pot and buy a funnel and a grabber tool and you are good to go.

Home Canning How To

This waterbath method is for high-acid food like fruits, tomatoes, pickles. You should use pressure cooker canning for low acid foods like meat and fish. You can buy a canning pot to boil the jars, but we use a big metal stockpot, the same one we use for brewing beer and cooking pasta. When using a stockpot for canning, place a towel in the bottom of the stockpot to keep the jars from touching the metal bottom of the pot. A GF viewer suggested tying together some jar bands with twist ties to form a base for the jars to rest on in the pot.

Some things to keep in mind when canning food:
- Be sure to wash the jars, lids, and bands with hot soapy water
- Do not allow any food to get on the rim of the jar or on the rubber area of the sealing ring. Wipe off any mistakes
- Allow the jars to cool for 12 hours and test the lids for seal. Some jars lids may still make the pop sound when they are taken out of the waterbath.
- Buy a canning funnel and tongs, they are worth it. Less spilled food and no burned hands!
Canning Funnel keeps the rim of the jar clean and sits nicely on top of the jar. Canning Tongs save your hands!

We based our information on one of the experts at Ball Jar Company, they have a great PDF on canning.

Watch our other canning videos here!

What are your canning tips? Let us know below:
September 23, 2013
Canning Food = Good : GF Radio 311

Rick and Eric talk about canning foods and how to can food, how to make compost and leaf composting, the benefits of massage therapy for back pain, Rick drops his camera, Hummingbirds and humminbird feeders & viewer mail.
How to grow Garlic? – fall is the time to plant, should have already ordered (be sure to mulch over) hard neck northern or at higher elevations, soft neck southern, Click here to watch our how to grow garlic videos

GF Produer Sarah’s new post on her food blog: Punctuated With Food
Bok Choy, Meatballs and Mushrooms
http://www.punctuatedwithfood.com/pork-meatball-soup-with-bok-choy-and-mushrooms/

Hotwater bath canning – vid

Feeding Humminbirds, based on information from Margaret Roache’s site – okay to leave sugar water out, it’s the lack of insects that drive them south. Jump off at Florida and the tip of south Texas for South & Central America
http://awaytogarden.com/birdnote-qa-hummingbird-migration

What to do with green tomatoes?
Leaving green tomatoes in the garden when the temps are 30-40 is the same as refrigerating them. Bring the green ones inside and put them on your counter. they’ll probably all ripen…eventually

If they go soft and wrinkly on the counter, slice and 30 or 40 minutes at 450° will do to the flavor. Put on a piece of parchment on a cookie sheet

photo from Morguefile.com

September 21, 2013
Rick and Eric are back! GF Radio 310

Rick and Eric talk about renovation, recording podcasts, and the usual rick and eric stuff. and how to frost your glass.

photo by morguefile

September 13, 2013
Tell Us Your Show Ideas! GF Video

What do you want to see on GardenFork.TV? Let us know in the comments below!

September 10, 2013