I just pulled the handcrafted hot-dog buns out of the oven. They came out pretty.
There's a reason I had a 4.0 in baking. ;)
/johnny
Posted on 12/27/2013 12:25:05 PM PST by greeneyes
“forgot to buy bread”
I ran out of fresh bread so had my tuna salad on fresh Ritz crackers. I still have some of those and a box of fresh Club Crackers.
I have boxes of bread mix stored that you just mix and put it in the pan and let it rise, then bake it, but I won’t go to that trouble just for me. If I was going to be isolated for a long time, I’d bake this bread. If power goes off, I have an actual oven to put under the roof outside and it runs on small propane bottles and is the same as a real oven so in case of a SHTF situation, I can still bake using that oven. I am fortunate to have a roofed deck as that was added to this house after it was built. You take one step up from that roofed lower deck and you’re on the larger upper deck where containers and chairs/table are. That was also built after the house was built.
Three hurricanes have come through here since I moved here, and the kitchen moves to the covered deck when that happens as power goes out and you never know when it might come back.
I put tarragon and curry into tuna salad...whether eaten with bread or crackers...
bgill,
You bet. My attitude is Why not? It could end up a roaring success.
I didn’t know about deer resistance, so I googled. Supposedly, they will (stay away). This a chart of deer resistant veggies (& looks like it has a bunch of helpful info on the main site). Scroll down a little.
http://www.deer-departed.com/deer-resistant-vegetables.html
Thank you for that info that they’re “prickly” (or whatever). I’ll watch it.
greeneyes,
We’ve used rosemary, but it doesn’t work that well. Garlic (tea) does but has to be resprayed &... it’s garlic.
I’m a skeeter attractant. I think you break a stalk/ leaf off the lemon grass & rub it on your skin. It’s such a pretty plant, too. Very tropical.
/johnny
I started with “family needs” guides, comparing several; as well went by memory of my parent’s gardens. You can find the guides online from several states’ university Extension sites, as well as in books or even on some seed companies’ sites. For canning & freezing, we’ll double or triple the numbers, IF it’s something we really like; or plant less than the guidelines, if we just want some for fresh seasonal use. OTOH, with us, space is not really a consideration; time, water, and effort are the limiting factors.
Some things, we plant a superabundance of one year, then let it coast from there for a while, doing the same thing with something else the next year. I just find it easier to have a lot of one thing, rather than dribbles and drabbles of a lot of things.
This year, it was carrots: we still have two large plastic bags of them in the fridge; and we canned about 40 pints, as well as dried about 6 quart jars full. Next year, I’ll probably plant a single packet for fresh summer use, and thin them mercilessly.
One epic year in Oregon, I figured ‘half won’t germinate; about half will have a usable ear; 52 weeks @ 1 ear apiece = 104 ears”, so planted 350 corn seeds*, as that was how the space available for the rows came out: 7 rows 50’ long. EVERY one of them came up, and EVERY one produced at least 1 ear; most had 2 usable ears, and some even had 3, plus “baby” ears for Oriental cooking. We had well over 700 ears of corn, so ate what we could; froze & canned what we couldn’t; and gave away feed sacks and shopping bags full to everyone who showed up from work for a BBQ & “pick your own” party we threw. Chickens and the pig got their share, too.
That same year we had about 75 tomato plants, about 15 of a trusted variety, and the other 60 divided into 10 groups of 6 each of varieties I wanted to ‘test’ to see which would produce best for us in a new area & climate, as we had moved the year before from southern California. They ALL did! Mrs. AR picked 3 or 4 wheelbarrow loads of green ones while I was at work, because a hard frost was predicted for that night. We had tomatoes running out of our ears; the guest bedroom was full of green ones wrapped in newspaper, which ripened all the way to the end of December.
* There’s MY example of Johnny’s “Pessimist by policy, optimist by temperament.” Remember: You can’t unpleasantly surprise a true pessimist; OTOH optimists are rarely pleasantly surprised. Same circumstances and surprise; different expectations.
You may be interested in Ruth Stout’s gardening books. I think she invented no till gardening in the 1940s because she was not a young woman when she started gardening and didn’t want to wrestle tillers, tractors or mules. The books are fun to read and probably helpful to any soil situation.
You are not nuts for pipe smoking. Tobacco is first cousin to tomato, so you will probably see hornworms and stuff that eat tomato. I have also seed healthy apid colonies on tobacco. The plants are happiest in full sun and 30” apart. Be prepared to sucker them.
Generally slicers have thicker skins and picklers have thin skins. The european types are exception to the rule.
I have never seen aphids on my tobacco.
While tobacco does well in full sun, this year, I had extended my tobacco growing area into an area that is shaded 1/2 the day. Those plants did great, and the tobacco was much milder.
30 inches is about right for this burley.
I do top my tobacco (except those for seed) and harvest as leaves become ripe instead of harvesting the entire plant like commercial growers do. I didn't have any problem with suckers with this particular strain.
/johnny
Now that everyone else has chimed in, I’ll tell you what I do. I usually start too many seeds so that I can choose only the ones with the healthiest looking stalks to plant. That usually turns out to be the tallest of the group. I recently bought 7 varieties of heirloom mater seeds for this year. Each packet has 50-60(est) seed in each. I will start about 5 or 6 of each variety. That should give me 35-40 seedlings to choose from. I’ll probably use 3 of each, leaving me some room to plant a few store bought seedlings that we did last year that worked out good.
In years past I started 275 seeds, mostly maters, but some peppers, squish, cukes. Not going to that extreme any more, thats just TOO many for me. We really had great success last years with seedlings bought at a garden center near the NASA place on the south side of Houston. They were a different brand than the usual Bonnie brand that is sold at the seed store and at Lowes.
YMMV, of course
I am going to grow some of your trombone squash this time and let it follow an arched trellis. Oh, would you tell me again who you bought those seeds from?
As you can see,everybody does it a little different. I stick to 24” spaces between plants, and may have a patch full of mater plants this year. I have found a young man that will work odd jobs for $$$, so that opens up possibilities not available before.
Thanks for that suggestion.
Nepeta, I know a lot about a lot of things,...but spices isn't one of them. If I don't know about something, I say it right up front as that is the only way for me to learn whatever it is I don't know. I know some things about planting and plants now, but knew nothing before I got on this board and then started researching on my own.
Just before I got on this board, and you have to remember I think as a prepper always, I knew I needed spices if the SHTF. I read some on the web about spices, and I have fresh bottles of the following but I have NO plants. I now know I need to plant the basil and lemon basil FREE seeds a seed company sent me, and buy the rest already as plants at Lowes. There may be a few others I should plant as seeds but I don't know what those are if there are some.
You can tell here I am flaying around trying to get this info. in my brain. I've gone from 0 knowledge to where I am now.
Before I list the bottles of spices I have, here is a story to illustrate how bad I was about plants (I added the dog story in because it happened.):
My husband's company sent us to Hawaii for two weeks. While there early on, I found out if you take your dog there, it stays in quarantine for six months and you feed it every day or it dies because they just lock it up and that's it. As a result, there aren't many dogs on the Hawaiian islands so the dogs that are there are mainly pitiful, sickly animals due to inbreeding. Well, that ticked me off, so I bought a material made fake, beautiful white dog and put it on our outside table so everyone would think we had a dog - it did look real. Maids got upset and hotel management came by to look. They couldn't do anything to me since it was a fake dog.
It caused some problems at the airport when we were leaving. Heads turned around and management types were skulking around. We took it in the restaurant there and the bar and that upset people in both places. I didn't care - poor dogs don't stand a chance on those islands and besides, that is a state in these United States and I have free, silent speech by carrying a fake dog if I want.
When we landed at Los Angeles Airport, no one said anything about my fake dog. I was in the customs line and I noticed right behind me was “George Jefferson” of “The Jefferson's Moving on Up” TV series. I was carrying my fake white dog and turned around and said, “The Hawaiians didn't appreciate my fake dog.” He laughed his head off.
I had one more thing to bring home and this plant was approved to take to the states so I didn't get in trouble about that, either. It was a Plumeria flower plant, more of them in Hawaii than any other plant and is the one they use to make leis to hang around your neck.
So, we are home and the Plumeria is on the large back porch we had. My husband could grow anything but I couldn't. We were both on the porch and I told him my Plumeria looked like it was dying and he said I should talk to it. So, I went where it was and shouted, “You straighten up or I am jerking you out of that pot!” My husband said that was not what I should have said.
He always said living with me was never dull.
Okay, here are the fresh herbs I have in bottles - I bought them earlier this year from Swanson on line and they are all organic:
Paprika ground
Basil leaves
Oregano flakes
Ginger ground
Parsley leaves
Turmeric ground (didn't remember I got that one)
Garlic powder
Cayenne Pepper ground
Managed to read the expire/use by/whatever date of one on the bottom and it is sometime in 2015.
SO, THESE IN THE BOTTLES WOULD NOT BE AS GOOD AS LIVE PLANTS - RIGHT? ARE THERE SOME YOU WOULD PLANT THE SEEDS RATHER THAN BUY THE PLANTS (besides Basil)?
/johnny
/johnny
Bountiful Gardens - this link takes you straight to them. I’d say buy them now as last year when I found out about them, they were sold out.
http://www.bountifulgardens.org/prodinfo.asp?number=VSQ-5469#.Ur9ow8KA3IW
I absolutely, positively, crown you the master bread maker.
Except for those boxes of bread stuff you don't have to knead, just mix and put it in the pan to rise, and bake, I'm making tortillas if power goes out for a period of time. And, don't start telling me how to make tortillas because I'm not using masa harina and I don't care. I'll use regular corneal with a bit of flour plus make flour ones. Somewhere around here, I have from Mexico, a genuine, iron tortilla press.
I just copied what you wrote about how much to plant. I’ll read that carefully. Thanks.
I just pulled the handcrafted hot-dog buns out of the oven. They came out pretty.
There's a reason I had a 4.0 in baking. ;)
/johnny
I don't know if putting the tobacco on the deck in grow bags will keep the hornworms off them - where do hornworms come from? The freaking things have to come from somewhere.
WHAT ARE SUCKERS? Unless they are the extra small limbs that start growing between the trunk and a regular limb, I don't know what you two are talking about. Is that also a bug thing?
/johnny
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