Eric talks about high efficiency toilets, and why they can clog, its not what you think, usually. Also a story on having to unclogged a toilet and the final remedy that really worked. The toilet snake is a specialty item you can buy at your hardware store. This whole toilet subject was started by our friends at http://rootsimple.com
High Efficiency toilets are next on this exciting episode. The white paper Eric references from Niagara : http://www.niagaracorp.com/resources/dyn/files/753677za85dd204/_fn/HETs+and+Drainline+blockages+2012-02-29.pdf
Paper wasps and Yellow Jackets are revisited on the show. We read a comment from Oregon Rick about his experiences with paper wasps and yellow jackets. Wasps like the mashed apples that fall from apple trees, as do yellow jackets, so we are careful during apple season.
Watch our bacon grilled cheese show here: https://gardenfork.tv/bacon-wrapped-grilled-cheese-recipe-gf-video
Watch our DIY pallet compost bin video: https://gardenfork.tv/pallet-compost-bin-plan-gf-video
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Wade from up north asked if we could help with this strawberry pest identification, so I am posting his email to us below, along with some photos.
________
Last summer we decided our hoop houses in the middle of the yard were unsightly, and just not performing that well. We tore them out and built a single (building a second next week) 3×8′ box on the north fence. I transplanted 6 sad little strawberry plants and had low expectations. All summer they thrived and shot off as many runners as they could. About 20 plants were well established and still bearing in late fall.
We had a very mild winter and early spring. The little strawberries kept trying to poke up through the snow in February!
I picked my first ripe berry Jun 2nd (last frost by almanac is 25 May) and now I have to go out and pick 3 cups of strawberries every other night! This is starting to feel like work! 😉
I’ve started to notice some berries are chewed on and caught this little guy in the act. Can you identify him, and is there anything I can do other than hose down my delicious strawberries with pesticide (this is not an option). I had chicken wire over the box to keep the birds out, but have now removed it in hopes they’d rather eat bugs than berries.
_______
Any ideas on the strawberry pest identification? At first glance, I do not recognize this caterpillar, but it clearly has a taste for strawberries. Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments below:
I got a wasp identification email from a friend this weekend.
“Not sure if these are bees or hornets. Any thoughts? We have two nests.”
I get a lot of these ‘are these honeybees?’ photos. I am always surprised when I do get this question, because I think most everyone knows basic insect identification. But maybe I might have the same lack of knowledge when it comes to cat breed identification. They are pretty much all the same to me.
Kelly of the Root Simple website wrote about wasps recently, and that’s what prompted me to action this time. Without getting into the weeds of insect names, these are not honeybees. They are wasps. The common name is paper wasp or umbrella wasps, and if the nest is in an out of the way place, leave them be.
Wasps are pollinators and eat problem insects in your garden. Some of them also eat apples, especially fallen apples that have been split open or mashed by the lawnmower. This is a bit of a problem in our yard when we have a large apple crop. As one of our Labradors, Charlie Pup, likes to eat fallen apples as well.
Wasps, also known as hornets, generally are only aggressive if you mess with their hive. Yellow Jackets, while part of the wasp family, can be quite nasty. Quick Tip: Yellow Jackets nest in the ground or rock walls, you usually find them when mowing the lawn and you run over a nest.
The nest in the photos above will have to be removed, as it is right next to the door of the house.
Paper wasp nest start out as a paper comb of cells that looks like an umbrella, when it is small, it is tended to soley by the mated queen. As the nest grows, the hatched young take over many of the jobs of running the nest. The wasps will then start to cover the nest with a papery covering. If you’ve seen one of those giant wasps nests, its probably a bald faced hornet nest.
Bald Faced Hornet Nest
Wasps do not re-use the same nest every year, so if you find one intact after a hard frost, you can take it down and save it. They are amazing, I think.
If you need to neutralize a wasp nest, I suggested buying the foaming wasp spray that can shoot 10 feet or more. Get as close as you can while having a clear exit path, and spray the nest at dusk or at night. If you spray the nest during the day, you will not kill all the wasps, and wasps will return later in the day and buzz around the dead nest.
Unless they are right near the door of the house, I leave wasps nests alone. We get them under the gutters of the house, but they don’t bother us, and I know they are eating up insects in the garden.
A while back I was contacted by a young man who built our plywood boat, and he made a video about it. I thought it was brilliant, and arranged with his parents to have a quick talk on the phone.
A thank you to Will’s parents for arranging the phone call. I got to speak with both of them and they are great people. And of course big thank you to Will for building the boat and making the video!
I was talking with my co-host Rick about my interview and he said that Will would probably enjoy taking classes at a maker space. Use this directory to find one near you
Here’s how we harvest potatoes. It isn’t rocket science, its just dirt. Watch our how to video first.
Like I said, its not rocket science to harvest potatoes. The most important thing is to not pierce the potatoes when harvesting them. If you use a shovel or gardenfork, you may pierce them. No big deal, just cook those pierced potatoes for dinner tonight.
I think the best tool to harvest potatoes is your hands. Gloves help. Most of us don’t have massive rows of potatoes, so hands work pretty good. Besides, we have them nearby. Just add gloves.
Storing potatoes is harder than harvesting potatoes. For best storage, the potatoes need to be mature. Dig up a potato and see if the skin rubs off easily. If it does, the potato is not mature. You could still harvest potatoes at this point, but they would be for cooking in the near term.
To store them long term, you need to ‘cure’ them. Two weeks of dark storage at high humidity, about 80-90%, and then 40-45F at high humidity. A cool basement may be a good place for storage, check the humidity level first. Cook up any damaged potatoes, they can ruin a crop if left in storage. Learn more about potato curing here.
What are your thoughts? Suggestions? Let us know below:
The best grilled cheese recipe I’ve ever made. Inspired by a BuzzFeed video, I had to make our version of this grilled cheese. It tastes wow.
Childhood memory of slices of process american cheese, unwrapped from the plastic, laid on top of white bread, and put in the toaster oven. I’m thinking processed slices of cheese like that were made for grilled cheese. I did not move on to grilled cheese recipes that used two pieces of bread for awhile. Then in college I discovered you could add ingredients into the grilled cheese. First came tomatoes.
That sandwich was in the dorm cafeteria at college. Friday was chili and grilled cheese. Its still a great Friday sandwich now.
Some thoughts on this Grilled Cheese Recipe
I made this and it was instantly my favorite sandwich recipe. You can’t eat this everyday, but you can make it in about 10 minutes. Plus it smells great in the kitchen while making it. And the dogs become very attentive during the whole process, not leaving the kitchen.
I found that square bread did better, as did thicker bread. Probably the best bread would be a thick potato bread, but I couldn’t find any, so we went with a sturdy white bread and cut it into a square.
For cheese I used a grocery store sharp cheddar. You can argue all day about the best cheese to use in a grilled cheese sandwich, but to keep it simple, we used cheddar. I have seen recipes where they grate the cheese over the bread, I used slices. Works for me.
The bread was not buttered or oiled. The bacon takes care of that plenty well. What was surprising was the bacon grilled cheese was not very greasy. You do not have to completely cover the bread with the bacon wrapping. You do have to hold the sandwich on its side to cook the side bacon. Important.
Hilling Potatoes is the middle step when you grow and harvest potatoes. Not sure what hilling potatoes is? Watch our how to video and read on.
Hilling Potatoes, what is it?
Potatoes, the crop, grow along the stem of the potato plant. When you plant your potatoes – video here – you plant them 6″ deep in the soil. To get a better crop, once the plants grow above the soil line, and are about 12″ high, you add about 6″ of soil along the potato plant stem. ( you can add more soil, if you want, its subjective) This adding of soil along the plant stem is called hilling.
We use raised beds, so hilling potatoes is easy, we remove some of the soil in the potato bed, then dig down 6″ to plant the seed potatoes. When its time for potato hilling, we add some sort of fence alongside the raised bed, and add soil, burying the stems of the potato plants.
You can use different materials to hill. Straw, compost, leaves, soil, or a mix of all this. With straw you may get mice burrowing into it, so keep an eye on that.
If you have a long planting season, you may be able to hill the potatoes twice, and get a larger crop. We aren’t able to do this, being in New England. We’ve also found that hilling potatoes much past 6-8″ doesn’t yield many more potatoes. Your results may be different, that just the way gardening is.
Learn to grow potatoes in this video, and in the following videos we show how to hill potatoes and how to harvest them. Growing potatoes is not hard, but there are a few terms you need to be familiar with. We’ll go through them below.
How to grow potatoes – step by step
Potatoes are best grown from what are called seed potatoes. At first, I didn’t know what that was, then I realized seed potatoes are just like regular potatoes, but they have gone to seed, in a way. They usually have little sprouts coming out of them, kinda like flowers or vegetables that have gone to seed. Hence the term seed potato. One big difference that you may want to look for is what’s called certified seed potatoes. This means they have gone through some sort of inspection process to be certified free of disease.
Seed potatoes can also be some potatoes you find in the back of your vegetable drawer that have started to sprout. Yes, you can grow these. They may not grow out to be amazing, but they will probably work. Many people find potatoes growing in their compost pile, because they tossed some old potatoes in there. And then you know what’s going to happen.
Some people will cut a seed potato into two or more pieces. I do. You want at least two ‘eyes’ or sprouts on each piece you carve. You can either plant these directly or allow the cuts to dry overnight.
Potatoes are usually grown in a trench, or if you are using a raised bed like we do, you would remove some of the soil in the bed. This is to prepare for hilling the potatoes. Plant the potatoes 6″ below the soil level in the trench, with most of the potato eyes pointed up.
Cover the seed potatoes and water them in. They will take a week or so to pop up out of the soil.
This is the first of our how to grow and harvest potatoes video series. Watch the next video here:
Rick joins Eric to talk about the new microphone that you all helped buy, the ATR2100 USB microphone got a lot of good feedback. Use our Amazon link. This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but I earn a commission from. Thx!
And a big thank you to all who have written reviews on our iTunes page, that really helps.
Eric found a new podcast called Makercast, find them on iTunes here.
The cooking of corn starts out the show, should one soak corn before roasting? A viewer suggested using a brine to soak the corn, which we had not thought of it. Corn can be eaten raw, FYI.
Eric is having a problem with his IMAP mail server, with emails being sent to the spam folder that should not be there.
Rick tells us about Pollinator Awareness week. And Eric tells of a neat post about paper wasps on the Root Simple site. These wasps are beneficial, so don’t spray them, OK? Listen to the Root Simple Podcast here.
Rick’s Potato Tower project is going well, made out of a round circle of wire mesh, Rick will update us on this project later in the summer.
Our neighbor’s new black lab puppy Blaze has been showing up in GardenFork photos.
Rick tells us about his 1TB solid state drive, he likes it.
Here’s my Troy Bilt Flex review after using the Flex Power Base and the Wide Area Mower and Pressure Washer around the GardenFork Testing Grounds. The testing grounds, otherwise known as my yard, are typical of what your average homeowner has: grass, trees, some weeds, dogs.
Full Disclosure: Troy Bilt has compensated me for my time and provided me with their products. Opinions are mine own, and I don’t work with companies that aren’t a good fit for me or the GardenFork audience. More info here.
I’ve known the Troy-Bilt brand for many years. Their rear tine rototillers are the best, I think, and make life easy, especially if you’ve ever wrestled with a front tine tiller.
So when I was asked if I’d like to try out Troy Bilt’s new Flex system, I signed on. The delivery truck brought 3 boxes of Flex components, and I got 4 free wood pallets from the truck driver. Neat.
Attachments snap on to Flex Power Base
The Troy-Bilt Flex Review
Here’s the way I describe the Flex system: Its all based on a power unit that a bunch of different tools snap onto. The Flex base is like the rear half of a walk behind self propelled snowblower with a PTO out the front that snaps into several different attachments. I like the idea of having one power source and a bunch of outdoor equipment attachments. So I only have to maintain one engine, not an engine for every outdoor power tool in the garage. Plus, you save on garage storage space – the attachments have a smaller footprint – making it all easier to store.
Power Base on left, Mower deck on right
If you’ve ever been on a working farm, all the tractors have a PTO (power take off) shaft on the back and sometimes front to run different machines, this is the same concept for the Flex line.
Right now Troy-Bilt has mower, snow thrower, pressure washer, and leaf blower attachments for the power base, I’m told a log splitter and a few other attachments are in the works. I’d really like that log splitter, it would make fast work of the pines I’ve been dropping for next winter’s sap season.
I chose the Wide Area Mower and the Pressure Washer attachments to test out. The back of my clapboard house has mold growing on it, so this was perfect. We’ll be making a video showing the power washing and mowing this summer.
First I snapped on the mower deck.
What I like about the Troy-Bilt Flex Wide Area Mower:
It feels solid. This is kinda intangible, I know, but you know how some mowers just feel cheap? This doesn’t, it has good feel and nice power.
The power wheels are better, they are pnuematic, meaning they have air in them instead of solid plastic wheels of many self-propelled walk behinds. The rig powers nicely through the lawn. The drive system is robust, unlike many self-propelled mowers that have a small belt that powers the wheels.
The mower deck is 28″ wide, so I’m already saving time from my 20″ wide walk behind mower. Rough math tells me that every 3 passes with the Flex is 4 passes with my smaller mower.
The front wheels spin free, so you can make surprisingly tight turns for such a large mower deck. You can also lock the wheels for when you are mowing on hills for better control.
Front wheels free spin or lock straight
The Flex powers through the yard at a nice clip with enough power to go up a moderate hill. The lever that controls the speed of the wheels takes a few minutes to master, the low end of the range is short, so when you grab the lever, it starts moving faster than you expect at first. You should wear ear protection, the Flex mower isn’t super loud, but it all adds up.
I then worked with the Pressure Washer attachment. Here’s where the advantages of the Flex system become clear. I don’t have to own a pressure washer that has its own engine, this pressure washer just snaps onto the Flex base. One less engine to maintain.
The pressure washer comes with 5 spray nozzles and 40′ of hose, plenty to get up to the 2nd floor of your house and wash the siding. It pumps 3,000 psi, which is more than enough for what you all are doing around the house. I used a friend’s power washer a while back and it was made mostly of plastic, this isn’t. Plus I like the hose rack, its large enough to store all of the hose, unlike some other washers I’ve used where the hose storage never works.
I know GardenFork is all about ‘done is better than perfect’, but sometimes the details matter, and the photo below makes that clear to me. When I put gas in the Flex tank, I saw the cap was chained, and the chain was metal, not plastic. It’s not something many would notice, but that tells me the people who designed this designed it to last.
I’ll be doing a Troy Bilt Flex Review video this summer, where we power wash one of the plywood boats, wash the back of the house, and power through my lawn in 2/3 the time it takes with the smaller mower I own.
UPDATE: here’s the video review of the FLEX:
To read more about the Troy Bilt Flex and other outdoor power equipment, here is their website, plus:
Kim of Sand and Sisal reviewed the Troy Bilt 4 cycle trimmer that has a ton of attachments. I got to use this gear when we went to meet Troy Bilt, and its a nice set of tools.
Eric is trying out different microphones, please let us know what you think be email: [email protected]
First we tackle stir fry at home, and the why it doesn’t work as well as at the restaurant. Eric has some answers, what are yours? Then we discuss cooking with ginger, along with the stir fry.
With two Yellow Labs in our house, here is my best house cleaning tip for dog hair. Its a battery powered lightweight vacuum. Dog hair is a constantly falling onto our floors. Whenever the dogs shake, there it goes. With this vacuum, I can keep on top of the mess.
I have a regular canister style vacuum, but its a pain to pull out of the closet, unwrap the cord, empty the bag, plug it in, etc. It does do a good job, but its a project to make it all happen.
I’m a little obsessed about the tumbleweeds of dog hair that seem to appear out of nowhere on the floor, or pile up in corners, under chair legs, or just everywhere.
With this Dyson cordless vacuum, I just hit the floor running. The battery powered vacuum sits in the corner of the kitchen, already charged, so when I need it, its there. Gone are those rolling balls of fur.
Cordless: I don’t have to wrangle with plugging it in.
Bagless: I easily dump the dog hair and dirt into the trash.
Lightweight: Makes for quick cleaning, easy to store in the kitchen.
Powered Floor Head: it has a roller bar to pull up the dirt.
Built Well: Its just a smartly designed machine.
I read reviews that suggested I buy the bare floor attachment, and that was a mistake. I keep the power roller head on it all the time. It goes pretty good on carpet, and very well on floors. Of course, a full size vacuum is going to do carpet better, but its pain to pull that rig out of the basement. What is super handy is the ability to attach the power head right to the vacuum body, this way you can vacuum stairs and couches. Or dog beds.
A full charge will vacuum about 1,000 sq ft of house. You can buy additional batteries, and Dyson has a hanging rack to store it while it charges.
I’ve had this unit several years and it has worked great. Once the roller bar stopped working, but all I had to do is remove the roller and clean it up. It went back together very easily. One thing you have to remember to do is clean the filter. Do this one thing and you are good to go.
What I love is how the this rig allows spontaneous cleaning to happen quickly. I see the dog hair on the floor, hit it with the cordless vacuum, and its done. So yeah, this is the best house cleaning tip for dog hair.
Dyson has several models, they keep upgrading them. You can shop for them on Amazon here.
Build these DIY Storage Racks to store long stuff in your basement or garage using recycled lumber. These storage racks are good for long things, like lumber, kayaks, poles, canoes, etc.
I had some 2″x3″ lumber left over from a project, and I didn’t want to throw it away, so this recycled lumber became these cool DIY storage racks to hold lumber. What’s nice about this is you don’t need long pieces of lumber to make this happen, each piece of the brackets aren’t that long. You can adjust this design to the lengths of lumber you have.
I used 2 1/1″ coarse drywall screws to put this together and to secure it to the wall. I have a few favorite tools, and one of them is the Flip Bit, which is a screw bit and a drill bit in one piece that makes drilling pilot holes and screwing stuff together go real fast. I used 3 screws in each bracket to attach it to the wall. This DIY storage rack will hold quite a bit of weight, if you plan on something very heavy, switch out the drywall screws for wood screws, which have more lateral strength.
I use a laser stud finder to locate the studs in the drywall. If you are going to set these brackets into brick or cement, use a hammer drill and masonry bits. The cheaper stud finders don’t work, I think. You get what you pay for when buying these. The good ones last and will save you time in future DIY projects.
As a bonus, I had some metal shelf brackets laying around, and I screwed them to the bottom of the rig and hung my ladders. So I was pleased at what a space saver these DIY brackets are, one step further in my declutter project! Its great to get stuff up off the floor. Makes it much easier to clean and move around.
Rick joins Eric to talk about the DIY moment Eric had when he realized he could order replacement batteries instead of sending off a piece of equipment for repair. Might be obvious to everyone else, but not Eric.
We both love www.transom.org , a website devoted to helping people craft superb audio stories for radio and podcasting. They have a whole section of how to articles on recording, editing, and fine tuning audio productions that are very helpful to podcasters.
This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but I earn a commission from. Thx! https://gardenfork.tv/amazon
Jacqueline, a GF listener writes in to tell us about her kombucha success.
Jim suggest timestamping the GardenFork podcast episodes.
Mrs Gross tells about taking too long to make dinner and making pancakes instead.
Here’s a carrot salad recipe that’s better than the usual one. No raisins, this one adds toasted sunflower or pumpkin seeds, which works great for me, and I wanted to share it with you.
Many carrot recipes fail for me, they are too sweet and don’t have the best ingredients in them. This one climbs the ladder, and it should, considering the recipe came from a french bakery cookbook.
A friend of mine works at the Rose Bakery in NYC, and I tried their carrot salad, and then bought their well done cookbook, Breakfast, Lunch, Tea. This a variation on their carrot salad recipe. They suggest olive oil or sunflower oil for the dressing, I opted for canola. I think olive oil would not work with this, but now that I am writing this, I am wondering if I should try it with olive oil.
Time to grate some more carrots.
And on grating carrots – use the food processor, not a box grater. The box grater I have only has large holes for grating, and I don’t like how the carrots look after going through the large holes of the grater. I use the smallest holes of the discs that came with my food processor, and whipped through a bunch of carrots in record time. In the video you can see just how fast and how nice the grated carrot looks.
When adding the dressing to the carrots, you might want to drain off some of the dressing if it collects in the bottom of the bowl. I found I had too much dressing for the amount of carrots I grated. But this is all eye of the beholder stuff, if you like a lot of dressing, leave it in. I used sunflower seeds in this version, but pumpkin seeds will work also. The small pumpkin seeds, pepitas, are good. The large ones won’t work, I think.
Carrot Salad Recipe with Sunflower Seeds
Prep time:
Total time:
A nice summer picnic or BBQ side dish, this is adapted from the Rose Bakery cook book.
Ingredients
8 carrots finely grated in food processor
1 cup pumpkin or sunflower seeds toasted
1/2 cup chopped chives or scallion greens
1/2 cup lemon juice – its ok to use bottled juice
3 tablespoons canola oil
1 tablespoon super fine sugar
salt & pepper for dressing
Instructions
Grate the carrots, and toast the seeds, combine carrots and seeds in a bowl with the chives.
Whisk the lemon juice with the sugar and some salt and pepper. Its best if the lemon juice is warm, so the sugar dissolves well. Mix in the oil to complete the dressing.
Pour the dressing over the salad and toss. If too much dressing collects in the bottom, you might want to pour off some of the dressing, saving it for some other food project.
Taste and add salt and pepper to suite your taste. Be careful with the salt, you can’t undo too much salt.
Here are additional photos of our DIY brick pizza plans. Easy to make and break down, you can build a pizza oven in a few hours and be making pizza in the oven tonight. Note the sturdy table the brick oven is on, this thing is heavy!
I used two pieces of tile backer board on top of a 1″ plywood base for the pizza oven. Use the cleanest bricks you have for the floor of the oven.
Recycled bed frames are become the angle iron to hold up the roof of the oven. The paint on the metal angle iron will burn off quickly.
Detail of how the angle iron sits on top of the side walls.
The back of the oven can be confusing, I used some extra brick to provide extra support.
Use hardwood to fire the oven, charcoal will not work. Leave some logs burning as you cook the pizzas, you need the constant heat from the wood fire to cook the pizzas.
Our backyard pizza oven is based on one in the book Bread , Earth, & Fire by Stuart Silverstein. Stuart’s book has a bunch of plans and info on building backyard ovens, go buy it here. it is available as an ebook or paperback. Read Stuart’s blog here.
There are edible wild plants in your backyard that you can forage for and make a great salad from. No need to go to the farmers market, you’ve probably got edible greens in your yard you can eat. Identifying and harvesting edible plants is called foraging, but I call it free food in your yard.
Below are some photos for plant identification, but be sure you know what these plants are. These are fairly unique plants, but be sure, OK? And make sure the area you are foraging has not been sprayed with fertilizers, herbicides, etc. You don’t want that stuff getting into your food. You can buy Leda’s Foraging Book here.
Some Wild Edible Plants:
Dandelion
When harvesting dandelion, you can choose to leave the plant in the ground and growing if you want. Just harvest the outer leaves and the plant will continue to grow. The leaves get stronger tasting when the dandelion flowers, but I think you’ll find the taste pleasing.
Plantain
Plantain grows close to the ground usually. Once it sprouts its flower stem, you probably don’t want to forage for it, as the older leaves are not as great to eat. They can be stringy.
Chickweed
Chickweed grows in nice big bunches, and if you cut off just the top 3-4″ of the plant, it will keep growing. It self seeds if you let some of the plants flower and go to seed. Then you’ll have more free food!
Garlic Mustard
Garlic Mustard is a non-native invasive plant. I see it along roads a lot. Harvest it by pulling up the whole plant with the roots. This plant will crowd out native plants, and most states want to get rid of it. The leaves taste like mustard greens, though not as strong. It has some good vitamins, so eat up.
Violets
Violets grow like weeds. There are some cultivated varieties, but the ones in our yard are wild edible plants, and easy to identify. They are low growing and have white – purple flowers. Harvest the flower and stem for your salads. They look great on a dinner table.
Erik Knutzen of the website and podcast Root Simple joins Eric to talk about toasters, straw bale gardening, grey water systems, etc. In other words, a typical eclectic DIY show from GardenFork.
See More Pizza Oven Assembly Photos Here
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