Posted on 08/30/2013 1:16:25 PM PDT by greeneyes
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It's over a foot tall and healthy. Another one is under the grow lamp and doing well, about 3 inches tall. I'll have to fill the other large tomato planter that has the trellis, and plant it in there. That container is large enough for it and one or two tomato plants.
MORTAR AND PESTLE - Does anyone on the thread have one? I didn't and have ordered one made of granite. I can use it to grind the Stevia leaves and any other leaf herb or whatever I need to grind. If power goes out, I've got the mortar and pestle to use for grinding. I'm also going to see if I can use it to break open the hulls around Sunflower seeds. This one holds one and a half cups.
If anyone has one, what do you use yours for?
We just started canning last year and the most important lesson to learn beside the pH business is to wipe your jar tops dry before you put the domes on to seal and leave enough headroom so your product doesn’t boil up and get moisture at the seal juncture. (As a noob, I make tons of errors, which is good because we all profit from them!)
I read about all that on the Ball website. Included in the canning tools I got is a plastic stick of a thing that one puts down into all sides of the product and that gets rid of bubbles. There is also ruler markings on it to measure the amount of headroom so you don't overfill.
I have a marble mortar and pestle and haven’t used it for years (since we relocated). Mr. Sg did a favor for one of our former neighbors and he gave us one of those volcanic rock things that Mexican people use to grind up stuff to make salsa. (It’s called a molcajete.) They sell them in the mercados if you have any near you.
P.S. I studied Italian when I went back to school (during the Kent riots—not a good time) and that’s why I remember some spelling. Our instructor was beaten when she taught at Columbia, so she crammed an entire semester’s work into the time period before spring break. Whatta slave driver lol!
Yes, a water bath is used. The “pickle” is a high-acid solution of vinegar, water, and sugar. The water bath processing allows longer, (”up to a year” unrefrigerated) storage, which is what I did.
But, being a pickle, they can be made in small batches, even a single jar at a time, to be immediately refrigerated. They will keep a few weeks in the fridge without any processing, and can even be made in a (non-reactive) bowl or other container, and just loosely covered.
Our ancestors (who survived, ny the way, despite it) often had barrels of various pickled foods in the cellars: pickles, corned beef, sauerkraut, pickled &/or limed eggs, etc for use until the fresh foods became available again. Canning, as we know it, was invented in the 19th Century.
Here’s a great site for you to check out; this is just one section of Pick Your Own. Other sections, which this has links to, allow you to find any pick-it-yourself farms in your area; tips on picking, and more. It also coves freezing, etc. http://pickyourown.org/allaboutcanning.htm
“Candying” is another way of safely & easily preserving foods for storage without refrigeration: candied ginger; candied flowers, such as violets & rose petals; candied fruits, uach as used in fruit cakes, etc. http://maddieruud.hubpages.com/hub/Candied-Fruit and http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Candying-Fruits/Detail.aspx are good places to start.
Got to stop before I overload your donkey! It’s the frustrated teacher trapped inside me trying to escape again.
You are all set! You are going to love your products! The flavors are astonishingly good. Most commercially canned stuff seems tasteless in comparison.
Dehydrating is a nice method, too. /johnny says dehydrated foods don’t keep well. We use vacuum bags and a nine-tray Excalibur, and it’s been satisfactory so far.
Could be. Could be some 'off-brand' ants. They're pretty controllable if so. Down here (because DE and borax simply are not available, unless you spend approx. a whole day to go into Panama City...and sometimes not then), flower gardeners simply bomb the hell out of the ants with Terro or some other organophosphate. Herb and food gardeners (generally) prefer to use a solution of vinegar, coffee grounds, cinnamon, garlic, black pepper and hot pepper. It works just fine, but in the rainy season one has to apply it a couple-three times a week.
Ants, just btw, hate the devil out of cinnamon -- everywhere, so I'm told. And, cinnamon is way cheap here, too. Me, I'd rather use a 3:2 mix of sugar and powdered borax. Kills the little bastids right after they eat it...and they apparently like to feed it to queens, too. Awwwwww, too bad.
Many thanks for your thoughts!
I'm reading on that and I'm going to do it. A woman in Lake Jackson has done it since the 1980s there and explained how she does it, seals the dehydrated food in vacuum bags in the absence of oxygen. Lake Jackson sits almost in the gulf water so it's very humid there, much more so than where I am.
I will get the Nesco square one and that's the one the Lake Jackson woman has. You have the more expensive Excalibur. Ah, you rich people. :o)
I copied that and will read the links. Thanks.
There's just something satisfying about running your fingers through a pile of seeds that you grew yourself. You can't buy a feeling like that.
Today I have one more tomato ready to chop up for seed, along with 2 big cucumbers. And, one of the tomatoes that I cross-pollinated is almost ripe. I'll have to be careful what I pick from now on, because most of the tags I used to mark my crosses got blown off! Fortunately, I also pinched off all the other buds in the cluster every time I made a cross, so as long as I'm careful I should be able to tell which is which.
My bean tipi keeps falling over and leaning on the fence. I thought it was the wind, but yesterday I went out there and scared a squirrel out of it, so I think the wind is getting help. Another reason to pick the bean pods the moment they turn yellow.
I counted kernels on one of the ears of corn I have drying. If it had been pollinated properly, each ear would have over 260 kernels of corn on it. I was expecting them to be a lot smaller than that. I might be able to plant a good patch next year after all! I thought it would take at least 2 or 3 years to expand my seed supply before I could grow enough to eat from.
Oh, and good news, my strawberry patch is outstripping the rabbits! I've started getting berries again, even though they still keep snitching.
Peaches, almonds, plums, and apricots are all pretty closely related, but every description I’ve read of almond fruit said that they were green and astringent.
If you crack open any of the stonefruits I listed, the seed will look like an almond. But they also contain cyanide. As far as I know, only the “Sweet Pit Apricot” can be used for both without any special treatment.
(You can detroy the cyanide in the other ones by roasting the nuts. They can then be used like almonds.)
In short, I’m confused. Sounds like a tree got the wrong label put on it.
:-D Thanks, Silentgypsy! You are welcome for the report!
I’m so excited I stuck and am sticking with my little plant friends. I am amazed at how much I’ve been learning this year. They say that learning things keeps away Alzheimers. Hope that’s true! Well, if it is, no gardener ever needs to fear!
ROFL!!! You tell ‘m Marcella!
I have one, Marcella! Mine is granite mortar with a ceramic pestle. I’ve used mine to grind fresh spices and herbs. That’s basically what you will be doing with your Mr. Stevia. It also is handy if you want to powder a medication from pill form so it can be tucked into some jam or ice cream if a person has difficulty swallowing.
I dare say, as one becomes adept at learning herbal remedies, the grinding of herbal substances with mortar and pestle and combining them with others could become quite useful.
I wrote an article on Survival Podcast website about herbs/spices that are medicinal and what they are used for and put the links where to go to read about each one, how much to use, etc.. I haven't finished copying the info. at the links for my own personal use. I did buy all the spices/herbs in bottles. If you want to read that article, let me know and I'll give you the link where it is.
The problem is, I don't have ANY growing, don't know where to get the plants or seeds or whatever, so I'm at a loss. If you grow this stuff, maybe you could help me by telling me what you grow, where you got it, and what it takes for them to grow. I would grow them in small grow bags as I don't do ground dirt.
For the mortar/pestle, I'm always thinking about having no power and that piece of equipment would be extra good to have as well as have now.
The Excaliber pays for itself pretty quickly. Nine trays means there’s still jerky left after taste-testing the first batch. ;)
Thank you Marcella. Even the plants they didn’t eat didn’t do well, hence the lack of a green thumb. :-)
I like the idea of fertilizer stakes and the row covers. I did buy grow lights but I started plants too early. I’ll start a bit later next year.
Yep, next year....sigh......
I think it was maybe last March when Johnny talked me into getting on the gardening thread and learning how to grow food plants and I've never grown anything. Every plant either got murdered or the sun burned them to bits because I thought ground dirt was where one planted plants and that full sun meant full sun. I found none of that is true.
Growing where and what is an individual decision based on one’s own individual location, one’s physical limitations, and what murderers around you are waiting to devour what you plant. An evaluation of all those factors has to be made to come up with a working plan for the individual.
Johnny has no squirrels around him (pretty sure he ate them all), he hasn't complained about birds (he probably ate those too), I know for sure he ate an ugly dog as he called it (it was really a pig), and there are no deer to bother his plants.
Some here have deer problems and other animal problems. I saw a young possum in my garden a few weeks ago, and nearly had a heart attack, like I need another freaking animal?
Anyway, all have to make an individual plan that works for him/her, so I did. In my opinion in order to grow food plants, ground dirt is to walk on, not plant in if I'm going to grow food plants. You have to do the same thing - find solutions to the problems you have right there in your growing space.
Since I have dumped ground dirt for growing smaller plants, I could plant a fruit tree in that dirt garden space. I've read about putting netting over a whole fruit tree before the fruit is on there so animals can't get the fruit when the fruit is there. Netting is cheap. Even dwarf fruit trees grow to eight or ten feet. Most fruit trees are approved for growing in my region. I can have a dwarf fruit tree.
See what you can come up with to solve your particular problems and help guarantee your plants will live and produce. See, I think a green thumb comes from knowledge, it's not something you were born with or not.
Guess I need to write a short book on the philosophy of green thumbs.
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