GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Author: @rhkennerly

  • OMG – What Have I Done?

    You’ve signed a two-year lease on what? Have you taken full-moon-French-leave of your senses…again?

    I can tell…She, Who Must Be Obeyed, is intrigued with the idea of my going into business for myself.

    “Well…technically I’m extending my Melissa Bee Farms business into new areas, opening new markets, joining the green revolution,” I counter. “Besides, last year we both agreed I needed a bigger beeyard. I’m outgrowing the backyard. I’ve got plans! ambitions! projects! I need ROOM.”

    “And MONEY, lots of money. Besides, WHAT bee business? You mean that expensive soup kitchen for bugs-in-a-box, that bee business? Businesses make money; you’ve got another expensive hobby, not a business.”

    “Reminds me, I need to pick up another 20 pounds of sugar for syrup,” making a note in my iPad.

    “Again? Already…?”

    “er….want to see some pictures of the new project, she’s a beaut?”

    green house from rick kennerly on Vimeo.

    my new green house rehab project

    And so it begins. Secretly, I know She, Who Must Be Obeyed, is right: I’m in over my head…way over my head. The tape in my head is looping: Oh, My God – What Have I Done? I feel a bit sick and a little panicky. It’s put-up or shut-up.

    So, what should I do with this green house? (Yeah, I got some space for a beeyard in the bargain.)   The owner’s still clearing it out, but it’s mine for two years. That’s two years of lease payments, two years of electricity payments, two years of water payments, two years of buying supplies and materials. I have to make this pay…and I don’t have a clue.

    Sure, I’ve been through the Master Gardener classes and I can talk a good game. I grow a pretty good vegetable garden, but what do I know about Growing for Market? Running a green house? Hydroponics? Aquaponics? Marketing?

    I need your help. I need reading resources, web sites, advice, suppliers, ideas. If you’ve got experience growing for market, chime in.

    First order of business, making it weatherproof. First freeze is predicted for tonight. 

  • Can You Eat That?

    Can You Eat That?

    She, Who Must Be Obeyed, wanted “a-big-mess-o-greens” last night…and cornbread.

    “Fine. You pick’em, I’ll cook’em.”

    So a while later she comes back with a big-mess-o-mess.

    califlower
    The leaves of many garden vegetables are edible

    “What have you done?,”  I ask as I sort through the bale of leaves She dumps on the counter. Collards, fine. Chard, fine. But what’s this?

    “Honey, that’s one of my califlowers,” cut off in it’s infancy. And these are the tops of my radishes. And this looks like kohlrabi.

    “But they’ll make greens, right?”

    Which is an interesting question. Will they? Most cooks in the kitchen focus on what they’re after and compost the rest. If they’re after broccoli or cauliflower, they’ll lop off the leaves and toss them, keeping the florettes. Same with radishes and beets. But those leaves are all edible plant parts. If you don’t want to eat them now, save them for a mess-o-greens or a caldo verde, or wilt them into an omelet for breakfast.

    It’s easier, in fact, to list off the leaves of plants that are not so good to eat: tomatoes & eggplants (alkaline) are in the nightshade family, rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid. There are probably others, but they’re not common in the garden. As always, check if you’re unsure. Here’s a list of “Secondary Edible Parts of Vegetables“ to get you started.

    BTW, Eric’s recipe for DIY recipe for Baking Powder works great! The cornbread was a success. Well, off to find and dig up those radishes She lopped off last night. 

     

  • Podcasts Worth Hearing: Negotiations

    Podcasts Worth Hearing: Negotiations

    haggling
    haggling price

    The first haggler to mention a price loses, right? Wrong. The first person who proposes a price sets the tone & expectations of the entire bargaining session. Even if it’s just for self defense, I highly recommend Slate’s Negotiation Academy, a series of 10-minute podcasts, one per week, on the art of negotiation. Session 3 just published. http://slate.me/vanUPk

  • Free Leaf Compost, Thank You Neighbors – Rick’s Column

    Free Leaf Compost, Thank You Neighbors – Rick’s Column

    Tomorrow’s trash day and metal scavengers are already circling the neighborhood, but I’ve found GOLD! Gold, I tell ya’. My neighbors do all the work of sweeping and bagging these leaves for the trash guys. I just roll around the neighborhood picking up free compost material.


    Mulch, then re-bag with the mower, and 6 bags of leaves make one nice compost pile (older woody stuff in bottom, a few limbs stuck through sideways for ventilation).
    Cage is an end length of rabbit fencing and 3 old stakes. Should have some nice leaf mold by Spring.

  • Baking Powder, How It Works – Rick’s Column

    Baking Powder, How It Works – Rick’s Column

    Corn bread was pancake flat yesterday, which got me to studying the recipe and the ingredients. Then I realized I’d never understood baking powder. What is it? what does it do?

    BP acts like yeast, releasing CO2 to make gas bubbles so the batter will be fluffy. Yeast do it by eating sugars and then farting CO2. BP does it by chemical reaction.

    It’s like those baking soda rockets we made when I was a kid. Fill the rocket with acid (vinegar) wrap a little ball of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) in a piece of Kleenex to delay the chemical reaction, and stuff the ball of baking soda into the rocket with the vinegar and ram the plug home…and stand back. Eventually the CO2 would propel the rocket off the launch pad, usually landing on a roof somewhere.

    Important safety lesson, do not stand over a charged rocket and look down with your remaining eye.

    Baking Powder is comprised of a base (usually baking soda–sodium bicarbonate) and an acid (usually Cream of Tartar–potassium hydrogen tartrate, an acid salt) in powder form, which prevents reaction. There is usually a filler, too, like corn starch or potato starch, both to add volume when measuring out and to buffer and slow the reaction. Dry, these items will not react. But any liquid activates the baking powder and causes it to off gas CO2.

    Here’s the lesson of where I went wrong:

    Lesson 1: I put the liquids into the bowl first and then added the dry ingredients. This allowed the BP to cook off before I mixed the batter and trapped the gasses. If BP had been the last item added, I might have gotten away with this, but when it’s among the first to get soaked, I was sunk. (This is the reason you’re told on the box to mix the dry ingredients first–I failed to follow simple directions).

    Lesson 2: I probably made the loss of CO2 all a lot worse by over mixing (again, this caution is on the box, so I failed to follow simple directions). BP, unlike yeast, releases a set amount of gas per reaction. If you mix the batter too much, you release all the gas from the batter and it goes flat. With yeast, they keep digesting sugars and farting CO2 until they die, which is why you can work a yeast batter loner.

    We use baking powder instead of yeast because we like biscuits in 20 mins vs 2 hours with yeast. (this also is why they sell “Yeast Rolls” and “Dinner Rolls” side by side. I never thought that there was a difference.)

    Lesson 3: there are double activation or double acting baking powders available. These act like single action baking powders when you get them wet, but also have a second reaction that is heat activated by baking, which give you a second chance.

    Lesson 4: honey (as well as buttermilk) is slightly acid. So I should have cut back on the baking powder and substituted baking soda because I used 1/4 cup honey instead of sugar in the recipe.

    Double acting baking powders have the same first acid, Cream of Tartar, but add another acid that is temperature activated as well, giving the pastry a second rise…or in my case, a second chance.

    Eric writes about baking powder, pancakes, and the baking powder recipe here.

    photo by EmmiP

  • Rice Cooker Repair – Rick’s Column

    Rice Cooker Repair – Rick’s Column

    Our $10 Wal-Mart B&D rice cooker stopped working last night. I just opened it up and, using a multimeter, found an inline fuse blown.

    I clipped the fuse off and reconnected the wire. I can’t imagine any real harm, since the circuit is gfi protected anyway. Am I missing something? Running a test batch of rice now to see how it turns out.

    BTW: if you’ve always wondered about those center spring mechanisms, they’re pretty simple…and interesting. The center plunger is not charged with electricity (unlike a lot of toasters, which are actually engaging electromagnets when you put the plunger down–hence the futility of slamming the plunger down, it not a mechanical catch of some sort). Inside, the rice cooker there’s a magnet on an arm connected to the front mechanical operating slide, a bit like a toaster–up is warm, down is cook. The weight of the water and rice in the pan hold the plunger down and the magnet sticks to the underside, closing the high heat or cook circuit.

    When enough water boils away, the spring pushes the plunger up, which lifts the pan and breaks contact with the magnet breaking the high heat connection. There’s a separate permanent circuit always connected for “warm” with it’s own little heating element. You have to unplug the whole thing to turn the warming circuit off.

    —-
    the system just “popped” open, turning off the high heat coil. Looks fine, but you always wonder…at least I do. OTOH, a rice cooker isn’t like a crockpot. We’d never leave it running all day. Any ideas? At $10 am I being penny wise and pound foolish?