Your yard tests positive for lead or heavy metals, time for some soil remediation information. Today we talk with GF Contributor Brian about he removed lead and heavy metals from the soil in his yard.
Rick and Eric will be back in September with more cool stuff.
We will be making a video about this this fall, stay tuned.
Photo from MorgueFile.
Tracy joins us to talk about the renovation. Stay tuned for more new stuff in September! thx, eric.
A new Squash Vine Borer treatment to control Squash Vine Borers and keep them from eating your squash plants. Squash Borers live inside your squash plant and eat the plant from the inside out until you have a dead squash plant. Are your Zucchini plants dying? Summer Squash too? The culprit is likely the borer. Here’s a video how to on a new squash vine borer treatment that uses Bt.
Many times I hear of people who walk into their vegetable garden and find all their squash plants wilting and yellowing. Check the base of the stem, where it enters the soil. If you see this orange frass that looks like wet sawdust like in the photo below, you have squash vine borers in your plants. If left untreated, there’s a good chance you will lose the squash.
In this video we are using Bt, Bacillus thuringiensis var kurstaki . This is a naturally occurring organism that, once it enters the gut of the borer, causes it to stop eating. Bt is considered an organic treatment, allowed by the OMRI ( Organic Materials Review Institute )
The adult moth of the borer lays its eggs in the soil at the base of the squash plant, then the eggs hatch and the borer chews a hole in your squash plant, enters the stem and starts eating. The Bt is injected into the stem of the squash plant at several intervals. The goal here is to get the borer to ingest some of the Bt, so you want to inject the Bt in front of where the borer is currently chewing. Watch the video for how to do this.
This Bt is not to be confused with GMO BT, which has been genetically spliced into plants. This is a naturally occurring organism that we are harnessing to kill caterpillars. Below are our other videos on how to prevent squash vine borers, let us know any suggestions or comments below:
Squash Vine Borer Treatment method #2
Squash Vine Borer Prevention and Treatment method #1
Check out our Squash Recipes Here
Martha, a long time fan of GardenFork, sent me this t-shirt she embroidered. How Cool Is That? Each letter is hand sewn with a lot of detail – doesn’t show in the photos here, but its not an easy thing to do.
So a big public thank you to Martha. Look for this t-shirt in an upcoming GF video! eric.
Start Podcasting Now. Start a podcast by listening to this podcast. Kevin emailed me asking about how to podcast, and I suggested we do a skype call and create a podcast on podcasting!
Creating a podcast consists of:
Preparation involves whatever you need to do to set up the recording, schedule guests, research topics, create a discussion list, schedule the recording.
Recording the show can be as simple or complicated as you want it to be. We use Skype to do most of our shows, and we use a plug in by Ecamm called Record A Call to record the skype call.
At this point you can just convert the audio recording into an mp3, or edit the recording to include music, introductions, and remove glitches.
You have to post the show on a server that is connected to the internet. You can use inexpensive hosts like BlueHost or HostGator, you don’t need anything fancy. Keep the site design real simple when you first start. Use the default wordpress template. Simple is Good.
You then need to create an iTunes compliant RSS Feed, here is some info on that from Apple.
We post each audio recording on our WordPress site as a post, and use a podcasting plugin to create the iTunes compatible RSS feed. We have also used Feed For All to create iTunes compliant RSS feeds
You can also use a service like Libsyn, who for a small fee, can take care of most of this for you.
I suggest you get a good quality USB headset
I use a Blue Snowball USB microphone, which I really like. Kevin, our guest here, is using a Blue Snowball microphone for this show.
For in person recording we use a Zoom ZH1 Portable Digital Recorder
You can use Garage Band or Audacity to edit the audio file.
photo from MorgueFile.
Here are some brief notes on our new Geek Show. We hope to post more info soon, but I wanted to get this show up and don’t have time to do the notes fully. Any additions are welcome.
Rick talks about Feedly, an RSS reader that he likes. Then we talk about using HootSuite to manage your social media presence, this is especially good for small businesses. Mike is interested in using this for his electronics startup.
We then move onto curating the internet. Eric likes Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings blog and how she uses a monthly donation system with paypal to fund the website. Mike talks about Reddit, which is kinda wild west sometimes.
We talk about the new Canon 70D and its new auto focus ability in video mode. Use our affiliate link to buy it here: Canon EOS 70D
Eric uses the Canon T4i with the 18-135mm lens. Buy it here with our Amazon affiliate link
We then move onto Pinhole photography with a digital camera, which not everyone gets, but we talk about anyway.
Mike talks about a DIY camera mount for his iPhone, and asks if its ok to use an iPhone to make videos for the web.
Mike gives us an update on his electronics pinball business and the challenges of running a small business and the tipping point of being too busy, what its like to hire people, and all that.
Here is the article on how software startups are growing in Detroit.
Of course we talk about bees and the bee hive monitor.
we then we talk bout cooking BBQ and the Power Stoker BBQ monitor you can hook up to your meat smoker
We talk with Eleanor Justice of the Blueberry Girls Miracle . They are raising funds to buy a blueberry farm and turn the farm into a permaculture farm with demonstrations and classes. You can help Eleanor make this happen by visiting their fundraising site here.
photo from MorgueFile
Rick and Eric talk about weather data and GardenFork’s Allisonhouse weather station. Learn more about allisonhouse.com severe weather data and app here.
We then read a letter from Bob about his son helping with beekeeping and harvesting honey, which is great to hear.
Rick’s new blog of #podcastsworthhearing go to this blog: www.rhkennerly.com . And Eric brought up the CBC Ideas podcasts on the Knights Templar and other knight groups.
Eric did some mushroom foraging for oyster mushrooms and gave them to GF producer Sarah, check out Sarah’s mushroom rissotto recipe that she made with the mushrooms. You can read more of Sarah’s posts on her site, Punctuated With Food.
Rick made these zucchini fritters from Kevin’s A Garden For The House blog
Eric tells of using a dutch oven to bake a cake outdoors to keep your house cool in the summer.
We then discuss using buckwheat as a cover crop overseeding, Rick wrote about pollinators on our GF site here.
Rick tells us about this cool free tree identification app called Leafsnap .
Rick likes this: clyde’s garden planner guide, tells you when to plant, which helps.
For ordering garlic to plant this fall, check out filareefarm.com and Territorial Seed, and Johnny’s Seed.
You can learn more about having less of a grass lawn with SALT from CT college
photo from MorgueFile
How do you cut down a tree with a chain saw? Watch this GardenFork video. Watch us cut down a tree with a chainsaw safely. Be very careful when using a chainsaw or tree felling, if you don’t know what you are doing, hire a professional.
Tree felling like this is pretty straightforward, there were no houses nearby, and the tree was already leaning the way we wanted it to drop. The wedge cut was fairly shallow, and the back cut was a bit off, it should have been a more straight cut just above the wedge cut.
Going forward, we will be using more plastic wedges, which are driven into the back cut as the cut goes deeper into the tree. The wedges keep the tree from binding the saw, and help to push it in the direction you want it to drop. Do not use metal wedges. The metal wedges can damage the chain of your chain saw if they come into contact with each other.
And again, safety is paramount here, watch all our how to chainsaw safely videos here. Chain saw chaps are a must, I recently saved my leg from a nasty cut from the chainsaw because I had chainsaw chaps on. The chaps have a material in them that will bind the saw if the saw tears open the chaps, which are protecting your legs.
I use an all in one helmet that has a face shield and ear protection, plus i wear steel toed boots, long sleeves, and gloves. Be Careful OK?
Click here to watch all our chainsaw vids and related posts here
Let me know any questions or comments below:
How to keep the house cool without AC, or reduce your use of the air conditioning, with these simple ways to cool the house. An emphasis on simple ways to keep the house cool is the theme here. Cooking in the early morning, cooking outside, keeping the shades drawn are a few of the ways to keep your house cool.
One of the biggest ways to keeping your house cooler, is to use CFL bulbs in place of incandescent bulbs. The old style bulbs put off a huge amount of heat. Also using CFLs will reduce the amount of mercury in the air. This is because CFLs use less energy, fewer coal fired power plants – which put mercury in the air – need to be running.
Using smart power strips, that turn off power to electronics when not in use. HDTVs, stereos, printers are all ‘on’ when plugged in, even it they are turned off. Monica talked about smart power strips on a previous GF Radio.
Eric is a big advocate of spray foam insulation, and we talk about the use of blown-in insulation using cellulose, which can be put on top of the existing insulation in your attic space.
Using trees to shade your home, or to shade the outdoor air conditioner compressor, is one suggested by Rick.
The house cooling tips were inspired by a post in Mother Earth Living.
How to cut down a tree with a chainsaw is discussed, with our recent chainsaw video. This was quite a large tree to cut down. Again, use a chainsaw with extreme caution, and be very careful. If you are not sure what you are doing, hire a professional.
stumpshot70 is a lumberjack that Eric watches on YouTube.
We talk about digital SLR cameras, aka DSLR cameras. Eric uses a Canon T4i with a 18-135mm lens. Rick is looking at the Canon 70D, which seems to be better at auto focus in the video mode.
Rick’s Podcasts Worth Hearing, a curated list of interesting podcasts, can be found here: http://rhkennerly.com/
The article about crabgrass can be read here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=crabgrass-carries-on-chemical-warfa-13-07-09
photo courtesy MorgueFile
1811 August 20. (Jefferson to Charles Willson Peale). “I have often thought that if heaven had given me choice of my position & calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the productions of the garden. “no occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, & no culture comparable to that of the garden. such a variety of subjects, some one always coming to perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the success of another, & instead of one harvest a continued one thro’ the year. under a total want of demand except for our family table I am still devoted to the garden. but tho’ an old man, I am but a young gardener.”[10]
Squash! Squash! Squash! &
Powdery Mildew : Compost tea, baking soda, NEEM oil – always add a bit of soap
Tomatoes : race with blight but my grafted tomatoes are resisting…so far
good habits dealing with blight and mildews clean debris, cut out damage, and sanitiize,
hands gloves tools move disease faster than wind or insects
What’s Wrong with My Plant? (and How do I fix it?) Deardorff & Wadsworth
kind of flow charting http://ow.ly/mJdp4
What’s Wrong With My Vegetable Garden?: 100% Organic Solutions for All Your Vegetables, from Artichokes to Zucchini: David Deardorff, Kathryn Wadsworth: 9781604691849: Amazon.com: Books http://ow.ly/mJdsh
Good Bug Bad Bug: Who’s Who, What They Do, and How to Manage Them Organically (All you need to know about the insects in your garden): Jessica Walliser: 9780981961590: Amazon.com: Books http://ow.ly/mJduI
An authoritative link regarding legionnaires disease and hot water temperature in residential hot water heaters: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2094925/
Regarding evernote & twitter. Just as we recorded this piece, twitter stopped support for RSS feeds, so the If This, Then That (ifttt.com) recipe no longer works. A good work around, though, is to follow @myEN (see https://twitter.com/myen for directions ) and you can send tweets to your Evernote account from twitter.
BTW: iftt.com is free and has recipes to automate a whole lot of different processes with about 30 different social networking, feed readers,and on-line tools.
While mushroom foraging, we came across a giant crop of oyster mushrooms right near our house. I think these oyster mushrooms were on a dead maple. I have to get better at tree bark identification ( there are some links to books below) . As always with edible plant identification – be sure to double check the identity to be sure what you are mushroom foraging is an edible mushroom, OK?
Oysters, once you see them several times, become easy to identify, though they do come in different colors. These oysters were just off the road surrounded by poison ivy, so again, be careful. I used a ladder to get to these.
Of course we made a video about the mushroom harvest, which we will post later. Our producer Sarah was talking about the oysters we brought back to Brooklyn for her, so i wanted to share photos of the harvest. These oysters popped out of the dead maple after several days of heat followed by an afternoon shower every day. It was like clockwork, every day at 4 pm it would rain. I was wondering if we had moved to Seattle or somewhere in the Northwest.
To find mushrooms, pay attention after it rains, often times I find mushrooms have popped up after a storm. When you do run across them, use your identification books to check the identity. I suggest two mushroom books here.
Here are some of our mushroom foraging and how to cook mushroom videos for you:
Oyster Mushroom Identification
Click here to see our other mushroom identification posts
Cross check the mushrooms you find with several sources, books are best, I think. I use several books for identifying mushrooms , below are the mushroom identification books I recommend:
Click Here To Buy From IndieBound
Click Here To Buy From Amazon
Click Here To Buy From IndieBound
Click Here To Buy From Amazon
Keep your house cool and saving energy how-to info on this GardenFork Radio show. Rick and Eric give a shout-out to Bruce Berg, aka CheeseHeadBruce on twitter . Then we talk about how to hang a pre-hung door, and the value of hiring a carpenter to hang doors, it may save you money in the long run.
Rick brings up solar chimney, and how heat convection and pull in cool air and let hot air out the top of a building. A neat way to keep your house cool without air conditioning.
Eric talks about painting his flat roof white, which helps keep your house cool. The house roof is currently silver, but white paint has a higher reflectivity and will reduce the heat transmission. This and the spray foam insulation applied to the ceiling joists will help.
Street trees also keep your house cool. Eric asks about how people use passive cooling techniques
We move onto to Eric’s conversation with Dan Grey of MPGomatic and the good info on low rolling resistance tires. Rick agrees that the low rolling resistance tires makes a huge difference. He has them on his Prius and gets MPG in then 50 mpg range.
We also talk about ethanol, and have more questions than answers.
Rick says, “energy efficiency is the first best fuel we have” ; insulating your house – Eric just used spray foam insulation – can reduce the need for air conditioning
Rick talks about hot water heaters and how he uses a utility timer on his hot water heater, but cautions that one must be careful when using it.
On that note, we talk about how eric has had to open up his walls for renovation and he has slid on pipe insulation onto the hot water pipes while working on his house. pipe insulation makes a huge difference in keeping the hot water hot as it travels to your bathroom or kitchen.
Rick uses red christmas tree bulbs to trick the birds in to pecking those bulbs and they then wont peck at the red tomatoes.
we move on to bees and wasps. if you see wasps nests and they are not bothering anyone, leave them be. wasps eat bugs in your garden, especially the wasps that parasitize the tomato hornworm.
worm composting is next ,and how to make compost tea, which is liquid gold . rick adds one cup of sugar to his compost tea, and the sugar helps increase the beneficial organisms in the compost tea. the tea needs to sit in the sun for a day. stir the tea or use an aquarium bubble to aerate the tea.
rick talks more about using evernote and twitter, and we read viewer mail.
photo by wallenberg from morguefile.com
Fix a broken lawnmower wheel: watch our lawn mower repair how to video and get back to mowing you grass. The tire on our mower broke, here’s how to fix it.
When the lawnmower broke, the camera operator, who happens to love mowing the lawn, thought we needed to buy a new mower! No, for about $10, we fixed our grass cutting machine, and the camera operator is now out cutting the grass before dinner. Not a bad deal for me…
The lawnmower wheel repair was not difficult. All you need is a metric or standard wrench, depending on the make of the machine. An adjustable wrench will work as well, but the correct size wrench is better. Pay attention to how the tire is attached to the mower, remove the nut holding it to the threaded axle, along with any washers that may be with it. Take a picture with your cell phone as you disassemble the nut and tire unit, it will help with putting the whole thing back together.
Take the tire to your local hardware store to match it to a replacement. Our wheel was an 8″ diameter, which seems pretty standard for push mowers.
Bring back the new one and slide it on. There may be a metal or plastic bushing inside the wheel so the tire can fit on different diameter axles. Secret tip: use some anti-seize paste on the axle threads before attaching the wheel. If you ever have to remove the wheel again, this will make the job much easier.
Get a neat set of wrenches here. (Affiliate link)
And there you go. Job done, now how to convince your significant other that mowing the lawn is exercise?
We have a how-to video on how to tune up a lawmower here, and And a how-to video on how to sharpen the blades of a lawn mower .
A quick tour of the garden and what is going on in the yard here for you all. Let us know what you are doing in your garden in the comments below!
Get better gas mileage with your existing car with these simple tips. Dan of MPGomatic tells us how to increase the MPG of the car you own now, which is easier than going out and buying a new one.
The biggest takeaway from our talk, which I was not aware of, is how the car’s tires have an effect on MPG. And this isn’t talking tire pressure – there is a new kind of gas saving tire that have low rolling resistance. These fuel efficient tires used to have a bad name, only showing up on hybrid cars like the Prius, but now these gas saving tires are on Corvettes and sporty Subarus. Dan is buying Continental Pure Contact Ecoplus tires
Here is an article on the NY Times site on better fuel efficiency with car tires. Dan offers a free guide The Roadmap To Better Gas Mileage, sign up for his email newsletter here, to receive a copy.
The other way to improve gas mileage is to use synthetic oil, which i had not idea would make a difference. Dan suggests if you change your own oil to buy synthetic oil in bulk, you can buy it in 5 quart containers. Look for it on sale and then buy a bunch, put it on the shelf for the next few oil changes. You have to recycle your used oil, and you can recycle synthetic oil the same way to recycle regular motor oil, take it to a auto shop or your town garage for recycling.
Another neat one is how hubcaps affect gas mileage, the smoother or flatter the hubcap, you will get an improvement in gas saving. Dan tells us about the Moon hubcaps that the high speed cars for breaking speed records use to minimize drag on their car. Truck fleets are now looking into these smooth hubcaps.
The number one way to save gas is to improve your driving. Drive with a light foot. Buy an instant MPG Fuel Gauge (Amazon link here) that plugs into the code reader port under your dashboard. This display sits on your dashboard and gives you instant feedback on how your driving is affecting how much gas you are using. There are some smartphone apps avail for this. Dan uses an app called DashCommand that can do data logging. You can also get high tech with bluetooth wireless rigs to connect to your car’s data.
Dan and Eric talk about the need for people to drive trucks, and Eric talks about the Instant MPG feedback readout of the Ford F150 Limited he drove last month.
Is ethanol gas good? Dan tells us about the pros and cons of using ethanol and E85 gas, and the best place to buy a used car at auction.
photo by dhester – morguefile.com
Make this simple rhubarb cake and and learn how to cook rhubarb in this easy cake video. This rhubarb recipe is based our Peach Dump Cake Dessert Recipe video, link here. What’s great about this recipe is that it doesn’t take long to bake and you’re ready to go out in the yard instead of being in the kitchen.
This rhubarb recipe can be adapted to use most any fresh or canned fruit. Like its cousin, the Peach Dump Cake recipe, it uses a quick cake recipe and adds in fruit. We found that simmering the rhubarb in some sugar before adding it to the cake batter works really well. Our oven usually takes longer than most to bake cakes, so this recipe should take about 30 minutes in your oven.
If you want to make this recipe and its winter, you can buy frozen rhubarb in larger supermarkets now. Neat. I imagine frozen would not need to be cooked as much beforehand, as the freezing breaks it down some.
We have a bunch of how to grow and cook rhubarb videos on our site, here is the link. Our first rhubarb video we did when our Yellow Labrador Henry was just a pup, and she was eating my notes while we were shooting the show. Watch our first rhubarb recipe video here.
Let us know your thoughts and suggestions and ideas in the comments below, are there new ways to use rhubarb in recipes? Have you ever eaten it raw? I have, it has quite a taste!
Simple Rhubarb Cake Recipe
Ingredients
• 1 cup All purpose Flour
• 1 1/2 Teaspoon Fresh Baking Powder
• 1/2 Teaspoon Salt
• 1 stick Butter
• 1 cup milk
• 1 1/3 cups sugar – use less if you want
• 2 cups rhubarb
Cooking Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 375F
2. Cut the Rhubarb into 1/2\’ pieces, toss into a small pan with 1/3 cup sugar over low heat, simmer for 5 minutes or until the rhubarb is slightly soft. You may want to drain off some of the water from this to keep the cake batter from being too wet.
3. Mix all the dry ingredients together
4. Add the milk and slightly cooked rhubarb. The batter may look pretty wet
5. Pour the batter into a greased 8 x 8 cake pan. I like to use a glass pan for this. It browns the cake nicely.
6. Bake for 30 minutes and test for doneness. The top of the cake should be nicely browned, but not too toasted.
7. This rhubarb recipe goes well with ice cream.
Rick and Eric talk about using a heat gun to melt the wax caps off of honeycombs
Eric asks if there is an intellectual property lawyer who might help out GardenFork
Then talk moves to spray foam insulation and sheetrock on ceilings
and viewer mail with Matty!
