Last fall I helped a neighbor dig a bunch of potatoes, and we were given a few bushel baskets of potatoes for our efforts. The potatoes were pretty darn simple to harvest, as the garden soil was nice and loamy, it dug easily with a garden fork. The hardest part was not hitting the potatoes with the fork, there were so many of them.
I took our part of the potato harvest and put it in bushel baskets in the basement. I didn’t clean or was the potatoes before storing them, I think its best to leave them caked in dirt for the winter. Pretty neat to be able to walk into the basement to pull our of a basket some dinner.
It ended up we didn’t eat all the potatoes we had harvested, and this spring, I noticed pale sprouts coming out of the bushel basket, aiming for the basement window.
Found this in the basement..
I wasn’t sure what to do with the sprouting potatoes, as I hadn’t planned on growing potatoes this year. Last time we grew them, we had the Colorado Potato Beetle Invasion, watch the video here. Then this weekend I decided to put them in the garden. If you’re wondering how to plant potatoes, its not rocket science, and potatoes are pretty forgiving, which is a good thing, considering I’m the one planting them.
The potatoes had become a tangled mass of sprouted seed potatoes, a giant ball of roots, potatoes, and sprouts.
I dug out part of one of our raised beds, added some time release fertilizer and azomite, a rock powder, and gently planted the seed potatoes.
laying them in the bottom of a raised bed
As I covered the seed potatoes with dirt and leaf mulch, I tried my best to get the potato sprouts to point up thru the soil.
gently covering the potatoes
Not sure what’s going to happen, but I think the potatoes i planted will be good. I’ll mound the potatoes once or twice with mulch or some straw or other compost like material, and I’ll work on the Potato Beetle problem.
Looking for a pesto recipe? or how to make pesto? Watch our Pesto Recipe with a new twist, we’ll use parsley instead of basil. This same recipe works great for basil pesto BTW. Parsley is super healthy and easily found in the store or your backyard garden.
Eric’s Parsley Pesto Recipe
1 bunch of flat leaf parsley
2 cups grated Romano cheese
1 cup walnuts, whole or chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
quality extra virgin olive oil
Grab your bunch of parsley and swish it around in a large bowl of water or you salad spinner filled up with water.
Cut off about 2 inches of the stem end off the parsley bunch. Then cut the parsley bunch into thirds, drop into a salad spinner and spin away. You want to remove as much of the water as possible. If you don’t have a salad spinner, you can roll up the parsley leaves in a dish towel to dry them out.
Add the parsley to your food processor, and pour in about 1/4 cup of the olive oil. About 6 glugs, I think.
Turn on the food processor and get the parsley cut up and mixed in with the oil.
Take the walnuts and toss them into a pan and toast them lightly. Don’t forget them on the stove, as they burn easily. I know this from experience.
Take the grated cheese and walnuts and crushed garlic and add to the food processor.
Top off with more olive oil, 6 glugs or so, and turn on the processor. If the machine sounds like it is bogging down, add more oil. Process to the consistency you like. I like it not over-processed.
You can now add this to pasta or spread on bread or garnish soups with. Its real good.
What do you think? Do you have a pesto recipe or suggestion or idea? Let us know below:
Steve and Scott join us today to talk about how the are starting a homestead, what they are planning to do, and where they are getting good information on homesteading. Their homestead will be in Northern California. Scott has a fun blog called Holy Crap I’m A Hippie, and Steve produces several podcasts at the Farm Cast Network site. The books we talked about on our how to homestead show include Build It Better Yourself, which is out of print, but you can find them for sale used.
Mike and Eric talk about Mike’s Ford Bronco from the mid 80s, and then Eric joins us to talk about aquaponics, which is a pretty cool system for growing food and fish. His aquaponics blog is here.
You can listen to Rick talk about how to set up an aquaculture farm here on this GF Radio show. Rick has rented a large greenhouse and starting up an aquaponics greenhouse.
Then we move to viewer mail about being prepared for disasters , eric’s idea for floating houses, and the listener call in line. neat. call us 860-740-6938
This hasn’t ever happened before, but all our apple trees are blooming this spring. Usually there are a few that don’t bloom. At least two of our trees bloom biennially. Here is the oldest tree in a view from our house. Last weekend was rainy with fog, so it looks great in the yard.
I had dug up a few sage plants last fall and managed to get them thru the winter in the greenhouse. The trick I’ve discovered is to not let the soil dry out. Even though the greenhouse is not heated, it can get pretty warm in there on sunny days, so paying attention to the soil worked out.
The sage leafed out again, and then I noticed two other plants growing in the pot. A Jack In The Pulpit and some Lambsquarter. What fun. We have some Jack in the Pulpit growing in the woods, but this is a rare random appearance.
And the lambsquarter is one of the new edible forage plants we talked about in a recent GardenFork.TV video. You can watch our wild and urban foraging video here on How to Eat Lambsquarter.
What happy accidents have you had happen in your garden this spring? let us know below:
Learn how to use your dutch oven to cook food outdoors, and learn how to grill steaks, meats and all things with charcoal from our guest Gary, editor of Cooking-Outdoors.com, a website about all things related to outdoor cooking. We learn how to light charcoal and how to not use charcoal, and how to cook food in foil packets, like how to cook salmon with dressing cooked in foil. Listen to the show and learn all about outdoor cooking. Call our listener call in line with your best charcoal grilling tips and suggestions and recipes. 860-740-6938
In the Gardenfork version of Car Talk, Mike talks about replacing the spark plugs, We update Tyler’s Storm Chasing, How to Make Donuts and Doughnut Recipes and we talk about when your food is expired. Your Food Will Tell You When Its Old says a GF viewer.
Eric talked about Gabfire Themes who have a new restaurant wordpress theme.
Growing and Cooking Rhubarb was one of the first how to videos GardenFork made, and as our rhubarb plants are just now popping out of the cold soil, I thought it a good time to pull one of our shows from the archive and repost it for those who may not have watched it.
Eric’s Rhubarb Crisp Recipe
1 quart of rhubarb chopped into roughly 1/2″ pieces
1/4 cup sugar ( you can add more if you like, but i think this works best )
Zest from 1/2 of a large lemon or all of it from a small lemon ( you can also use orange zest of a mix of lemon and orange ) and some juice from the lemon or orange.
3/4 of a stick of butter, cold ( leave in fridge until you need it )
1/2 cup flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 cup oatmeal – old fashioned style, rolled oats is best
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon – Penzy’s Spice has real good cinnamon
mix together the rhubarb, regular sugar, lemon/orange zest, and lemon/orange juice in a bowl and let it sit while you make the crisp, ( the part that goes on top of the rhubarb )
Get out your food processor and put in the cold butter, which you’ve chopped into cubes, add the flour and brown sugar with the cinnamon pulse this until the flour coats the butter and breaks it up a bit. It should still look chunky, not like sand.
Then add the walnuts and oats into the flour butter mix in the food processor , and pulse a few more times to mix them in and chop up the walnuts a bit. Over pulsing is bad here. Err on the side of less mixing.
Grease a 8″ baking dish. The glass ones are best for this, I think. Pour in the rhubarb mix and then cover the rhubarb with the flour oat butter mixture. Don’t over think this, the flour oat mix doesn’t have to be a super even layer over the rhubarb.
Put this in a preheated 375 degree oven for about 45 minutes. As always, your oven temp and baking time will vary from mine. I think those new convection ovens bake faster than mine. But then my oven was pulled out of a junked camper trailer.
The rhubarb crisp is done when the edges of the pan are starting to get burnt and the crisp is browning and the rhubarb bubbles a bit.
This goes real well with our ginger ice cream recipe, watch our how to make ice cream video here and get the recipe as well.
Learn all about urban foraging and how to be a locavore in this GardenFork Radio episode where we interview Leda Meredith, author of Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes and The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget
Urban foraging, Urban Homesteading, & being a locavore plus dance pretty much describes Leda, who is also the subject of two videos by Liza of Food Curated.
Book Giveaway:
We are giving away one copy of both of Leda’s books: Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch & The Locavore’s Handbook. Here is how to participate in the giveaway.
First: Add your name to the drawing by filling out the form below
Second: Like the GardenFork Page on Facebook, Facebook.com/GardenFork or follow us on Twitter Twitter.com/GardenforkTV , If you are not liking or following GF already > click on the FB Like icon or Twitter to the right >
[form form-1]
If you are not on Facebook or Twitter but want to be part of the drawing, please note that in the above submission form
Call us! 860-740-6938 Eric tells of another life lesson learned, whether we want to hear about it or not and Mike ask listeners about his and their commute to work. Is it a commute? Or quality time? Eric wants to learn how to publish a book, and what kinds of books should Eric write? And more about raising winter hardy varroa resistant honey bee queens, how to grow garlic and how to mulch garlic, should you soak seeds before planting them? and be prepared for disasters with Ready.org .
Looking for an easy donut recipe? here it is: The Super Simple Doughnut Recipe. This is Eric’s version of the Pillsbury Biscuit Doughnut method of making donuts without the time and yeast. We will make donuts the traditional way soon, but I had to try out this cheater doughnut recipe which uses biscuit dough you buy at the grocery store. Next up will be yeast doughnuts and cake donuts, but we have to do the donut hack here first.
This easy donut recipe works best when the dough is cold, so keep the tube of Pillsbury dough in the fridge until ready. It is harder than it seems sometimes to open up the tube. Be Careful!
Kids like to play with dough, and while you have to teach them a healthy respect for hot oil, they could be involved with this easy donut recipe
My favorite donuts are the ones you buy at the gas station on the highway exit ramp. Those chocolate donuts in that little package, six donuts all covered with that fake chocolate. But you know it’s fake but you want to eat them anyway. Recently I bought some of those, it was late at night we were driving up the house and they were really good. But these cheater donuts are really good as well, and they might even be healthier for you than the chocolate covered gas station on the highway off ramp donuts. So let me know what you think below do you make these donuts are you making of the kind of donut would be good to hear from you
Do you have a great donut or doughnut recipe? And what about this spelling issue between donut and doughnut? Let us know below
Eric is joined by sister Tracy to discuss how to make pizza at home, and how not to make pizza at home. Its our home made pizza recipe show, where we debrief and ponder the deep question: store bought pizza sauce or home made pizza sauce? . Tell us your home made pizza secrets: 860-740-6938 or on our site, www.GardenFork.TV
Last night I was a guest of the Ford Motor Company in Manhattan. They invited me to come check out their new cars, trucks and SUVs before the opening of the New York International Auto Show. Really Cool. Craig Patterson and Scott Monty spoke about how they were using social media to introduce the new Ford Explorer. The 2011 Ford Explorer is the North American Truck of the Year, and it gets the best fuel mileage in its class.
Craig Patterson and the 2011 Ford Explorer
For 2011 Ford has redone the Explorer. What I thought was interesting are the new inflatable rear safety belts. In an accident the seat belts become airbags and cushion the occupants. There’s a video on the Ford Explorer website you can watch that explains the inflatable seat belts better than I can.
Ford Escape Hybrid
The 2011 Ford Escape Hybrid was on the show floor. Ford gave us an Escape Hybrid a while back and we did a review video about it, watch the video here. Our Labradors really like the Ford Escape Hybrid, lots of room in back for them and 34 miles per gallon in the city its pretty cool. The Escape Hybrid has echo friendly seats; biologists at the Ford plant in Chicago have devised a way to make the seat covers out of soy instead of oil-based products.
Eric likes this truck.
A favorite part of the Ford exhibit for me was the new 2011 Ford F150 with their Echo Boost Engine. It’s a dual turbocharged direct fuel injected engine that they torture tested full speed ahead for 164,706 miles.
Ford took took a random Eco Boost engine off the assembly line ( engine #448AA ) and started running it. First on a dynometer for 300 hours, simulating 10 years of use, then hauling timber, then running 24 hours on a Nascar track, then trailer pulls against the competitors, and then, Ford took the same engine to the Baja 1000. Ford has a neat series of videos documenting the story of engine #448AA on their site here. Click here to watch the whole series of videos . Well done videos.
Click the play button to watch the Torture Test videos2011 Ford F150 with EcoBoost EngineUnderside of the F150
Call us! 860-740-6938 Mike and Eric are joined by Monica to talk about home renovation nightmares, or almost nightmares, and how to avoid them. Monica is going through a home renovation right now, so we have first hand experience here for you. Our talk on switching from an iPhone to a Droid phone was inspired by a blog post by Mia Taylor here. We talk about Rescuing dogs from an approved dog shelter organization, PetFinder.com is a good place to start. How to fix your clothes dryer and which brand of paint you should buy for your home and eric being a hipster fill out our show.
Here are Sara’s photos of her home while working in Panama for the Peace Corps
When you walk up to a hive and see no activity, you immediately think, why are my bees dead. Watch here as we do an early spring beehive inspection to see what’s up
Tyler joins us to talk about stormchasing, ham radio, cloud watching, single malt scotch and Irish Whiskey appreciation. We talk about a great bed and breakfast in Ireland, The River Mill, owned by GF viewer Theresa. Tyler suggests the audio podcast Whiskeycast for those of us who appreciate Irish Whiskey, Single Malt Scotch, and all good things. Hiving Bee Packages and raising local queens, harvesting comb honey and bee webinars are all part of our bee discussion.
Tyler’s personal blog on gardening, beekeeping, stormchasing and all things Tyler is My Chicago Garden
A friend of mine called me and asked if I would help him with a plumbing problem. His utility sink in his laundry room was leaking whenever you would turn on the water. The washing machine also drains into this sink and whatever was always leaking. Not a good thing. I crawled underneath and I took a look; sure enough there was what we would call some ‘unprofessional plumbing’ under the sink.
Arrow shows the leak site, notice how crooked the drain trap is.
As you can see from this first picture here there’s a 2″ plumbing drain coming out of the wall and then a rubber coupler connected to a huge brass trap that connects to an 1.5″ brass drainpipe. The rubber coupling does not have enough strength to hold that brass trap in place without any support . Rubber couplings are really good for plumbing but they’re not built to hold up that much brass. Looking at the picture here you can see that the heavy brass trap would put stress on the pipe that’s going up to the sink itself and the pipe started the corrode at the point where the brass drainpipe meets the trap. And before you know it just falls apart
So I took apart the trap and the brass drainpipe and the rubber coupling to find that there was a stub of metal pipe attached to the 45° angle pipe that’s coming of the wall.
2" metal stub with no threads. fun.
My plan, and of course all great plans never come out how we want them to, but I wanted to remove the 2″ stub pipe and put in a PVC adapter. The PVC pipe adapter I would use has a 2 inch pipe thread on one end to thread into the existing metal pipe, and and then you can glue PVC pipe to the other end of the PVC adapter. I would then connect a PVC trap to the adapter and then connect the PVC trap to the drainpipe coming down from the sink.
Two pipe wrenches in a very tight spot against the wall
Because the existing metal pipe stub was not threaded, I had to remove it. I put a pipe wrench on this stub of metal pipe and it would not move. I got two pipe wrenches on there and I could not get the thing to move. Part of the problem being that the drain pipe is coming out of the corner of a very small utility room wall so it was really hard to get any leverage on the wrenches. I even tried what I call a large chain pipe wrench – its a plumbers wrench that uses a chain rather than a regular jaw grip – I couldn’t get the thing the budge.
Chain Pipe Wrench can't budge the pipe
Another way to get this to ancient metal stub out of the 45 degree angle piece it was connected to would be to use a reciprocating saw a.k.a. a sawzall. You could take the sawzall and make two cuts or perhaps three cuts from the inside of the pipe out, cutting the stub in the three pieces and it would fall out.
But then I thought of a Plan B that would be much cleaner and simpler than having to use the sawzall to cut out the metal stub.
My plan B was to go to the plumbing supply store and get a rubber coupling that accepts 2 inch diameter pipe on one side and accepts 1.5″ diameter pipe on the other side. my thinking here is that the rubber coupling will attach to the to 2 in metal stub that’s coming out of the wall and then have a short piece of 1 1/2 inch PVC pipe sticking into the other side of the rubber coupling.
rubber coupling allows PVC to connect to metal stub
From that 1 1/2 inch PVC pipe I can attach a PVC trap and reattach the sink to the trap with a brass drain pipe i already had.
The trap i used is called PVC solvent weld trap. This kind of trap allows you to connect it to a PVC drain pipe on the drain end, and on the inlet side you can connect it to a PVC or brass 1 1/2 inch drain pipe from the sink with a slip joint. I glued the trap to the stub of PVC pipe that was coming out of rubber coupling and then connected the trap to the 1.5″ brass drain pipe that was sticking down from the bottom utility sink.
its a beautiful thing, this plumbing stuff.
I’ve found that sometimes slip joints aren’t always completely waterproof, so I always use some TFE plumbing paste with Teflon. It goes under different brand names but it’s basically it comes in a tube or a jar with a brush and it’s a white plumbing paste that has Teflon in it. I dab this around the circumference of the slip joints and it works really well plus it keeps you from having to take the plumbing apart again to figure out why it’s leaking
So after using the Teflon paste on all the joints I put it all together turned on the hot water and it was a beautiful thing. It did not leak.
So there you go, one of those things where your friend asks you to do something and you actually know what you’re doing, and didn’t blow up on you. Do you have stories about helping your friends and whether went really well or went really wrong/ I can tell you more stories about how someone went really wrong but tell us below about the good and bad one.
