Posted on 09/08/2017 5:40:24 PM PDT by greeneyes
The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds.
From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you.
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Healthy food, and desire for additional independence got me into this gardening hobby. When the garden slows down, the homesteading/cooking "heats" up. LOL
Garden produce is winding down. Still have a few apples to dehydrate. All the peppers and squash are on the rack today. Celery stumps/stalks are nice and green - don't know if they will ever have big stalks, but there's a lot of nice leaves and short, small stalks. The leaves I plan to use for soups/seasoning, and the small stalks can go in tuna salad or anything that needs a little crunch.
Tumeric root and ginger root are doing pretty good too. Will soon need to bring them indoors. Will be shopping for green house/sunroom this month to see what we can afford.
I need to get the rye bed ready and plant it, then start on the wheat and triticale. I still haven't found anything definite about planting triticale. For winter wheat, I'm supposed to wait until the first frost before planting, but triticale is a cross between wheat and rye, so I'm not sure about it.
I'm trying a new wheat this year - white winter wheat. I have some potatoes that are blooming and another patch that need digging.
Additional adventure in homesteading activities this week - they had a great sale on whole pork hind end this week at 88 cents per lb. limit one. So since I always just chop up the meat and pressure can it, I thought how hard can it be?
Well, I have a good set of knives, but unfortunately the butcher knife disappeared, and the others need sharpening but I couldn't find the sharpener thingy that came with the set.
So it was a little tougher than I anticipated. I was wishing for a meat cleaver and saw before I was done. Hubby surprised me this afternoon with a gift of a new bigger cutting board and a beautiful chef knife with a red handle - he couldn't find a butcher knife anywhere in town. Said if I was going to be wrestling with big blocks of 20 lb. meat, I needed bigger and better equipment. LOL
So there were some bones that I couldn't quite get the meat off, and decided to just throw them in the crockpot-that always get meat off the bone. There was about 4 lbs. of fat, and I didn't want to waste it, so I just threw it in the crockpot too.
I pressure canned half the meat and intended to use the "broth/fat" instead of water to can the next batch. I figured I'd just skim that fat off and have a nice batch of broth. LOL
I'd say the jar was 98% lard (of course I did fish out the meat for bbq already). So now I have about a quart of lard to use to fry chicken or something. This also led me to do some research on rendering fat in the crock pot. Next time I should put the meat bone in a separate pot. I kinda thought that, but was too tired to really dig out another crockpot and just did what was easy.
I remember that my granny used to fry potatoes in fat to clarify it, so I may just try that with some of it to see what it does-maybe I can make some biscuits with it when it's clarified.
Some people have enquired about Marcella. I managed to find a post on another site - she's ok and even though the city where her condo is located was hit, the condo was not damaged and there was no flooding-which she thought sure it would flood. So that's a relief.
Prayers up for all especially those in these turbulent natural disasters. Have a great weekend. God Bless.
Pinging the list.
Glad things are going your way, greeneyes!
Yes, a kind garden thread reader sent some my way and it’s been very exciting to see it going along.
I would LOVE to have a little greenhouse.It can get pretty brutal during the winter around here.
We have some brutal days, but nearly always get a few breaks of more moderate weather.
Still, I don’t like to have to buy fresh veggies from the grocery store, and I do like fresh for stir fry, so that’s the main thing is to have some home grown additions to the usual winter fare.
The space in front of my patio door works pretty well, but it is getting more and more crowded, so it’s not really big enough. It should also give us more space for starting seeds in the spring too.
We’ve been saving for a while, but something else always comes up, so I’m going to knock on wood that we get it this time.
Today was gorgeous, and I refuse to turn on the heat until November. It’s a matter of Bushido with me! :-)
I was born and raised in new England, and am part Inuit! If I turned on the heat in September I would not be able to live with the shame. LOL!
I have always been the same way. Just won’t turn on the heat till November and no air conditioner till mid June.
Hubby snuck the air on early this year, and I felt like I was freezing when I’d go to the basement to get on the computer. Thought about getting out the heating pad, but didn’t want to use the electricity.
That dang bill goes up every year, and for the last 5 years, I’ve managed to reduce the useage. I hate to see what this years average will be.
Time flies faster and faster every year it seems to me.
but I don't like turning the heat on too early...
past spring, I turned my heat off for good at least 3 x, when the cold weather came back...lol....
eastern Washington has been very hot, very very dry, and very smoky....
not a happy end of summer here....hope the fall makes up for it with moderate temps and some rain and clear skies...
I have gotten my electric bill down from over $100 to a little over $40.00. Just by being frugal! LOL!
Usual practice just fyi is to harvest the turmeric after the bloom fades completely. Good luck!
We used to have a wood stove in the basement. When both daughters returned home with their kids we added a kitchenette, bedroom, and bathroom to the downstairs, so the wood stove had to go.
If I had it to do over, I think I’d try to design around the woodstove. Anyway when the kids were little, we used to fire up the wood stove and the two fireplaces upstairs.
Hubby believed in a roaring fire in those days, and it was so hot that we all had to put on shorts. LOL
Now, we rarely use the fireplace, so I did buy one of those electric heaters for the basement that at least looks like a fire. LOL
Well I got mine down to 100 bucks from 200 in 2009, but it’s been steadily upwards since then - even though the actual energy used has gone down. Holding at around 150 now.
In upstate NY the landlords aren’t required to turn the heat on until Nov. There may be an exception, but I can’t recall for certain.
About a week ago I woke up wondering what the noise I was hearing was - turned out to be the furnace. The thermostat was set at 68, BAH! We adjusted it down. Pretty chilly here the past few days, but I like it.
Well, thanks for that - no bloom yet, so we’ll see how it goes.
So if Irma rolls through, is there no concern about flooding the strawberry fields? Anyway - good luck and stay safe.
The electric company keeps adding extra charges, so even if your usage goes down, the totals go up! Grrrr.
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