Runamuck Ranch

Cosmos From Seed

The Frugal Mystery Garden

No it isn't Fall yet - although it looks like it with what I picked from the garden today.  More specifically what I picked from the mystery garden.  Each season I designate one square of my garden to be the mystery garden.  My current mystery garden produced two tomato plants, pumpkins, odd little decorative pumpkin gourds, butternut squash, potatoes, cucumbers, one chili pepper plant, zucchini (which I ripped out), and corn.  The best part about my mystery garden is that I planted none of it. 

Here is the secret.  Shh! Don't tell the complicated garden you have to do it a certain way folks.

• Dig a bed about 6 inches deep and use the soil you remove to make a border around the edge.  4 feet by 4 feet would be a good starting point.  Mine are mostly 6 feet by 6 feet.  Don't get too technical you just want room for things to grow.
  

• Put a large container like an empty ice cream bucket on your kitchen counter.  If you don't have an empty plastic ice cream bucket go to the grocery store and get one, eat the ice cream without guilt as you will soon be eating vegetables and you just finished digging a bed.
• Every time you cook or eat a meal put non meat scraps into the bucket.  Veggie peels, seeds, cooked veggies, bread, egg shells, coffee grounds, tea bags, rinds, small pieces of paper etc.  You now have a compost bucket.  Put lid on bucket.
• Every time your bucket is full empty it into your mystery garden.  If it suits you, smash and dig your garden with a shovel every so often.
• If you already have a garden, you can throw stuff from it into your mystery garden. Do not throw weeds or grass clippings in your mystery garden!  The seeds and grass starts will ruin your mystery garden and make you miserable.  I also throw flower heads and plants into mine.  It makes a nice garden to have some flowers mixed in with the veggies.
  
• After a month or so of throwing your compost into your garden, begin watering it.  You want to keep it moist at all times.  Keep adding compost until your plants are too big and the compost it interfering with them.  Then you can begin a new mystery garden.
  

Here is a picture of my current mystery garden square.  I just threw all my squash plants I tore out into it.  There is actually a cantaloupe plant that has come up and so it will be soon time to find a new compost spot.  Most likely in the old onion bed.

 

Garden Abundance

The Farmer was complaining that his favorite blog author has not been posting much.  He also observed that a guy could get really fat hanging around our house lately.  Could it be that I have been harvesting, canning, and baking with a vengeance lately? 

Here is a couple of pictures of my mature summer garden.

Here is the first load of morning produce

The second load...

The third load...

To answer a question about dehydrating onions in the comments.  They can be dehydrated and just stored in an air tight container without a food saver vacuum pack.  I just vacuum pack mine because it does make food last longer and it is actually really fun to use the food saver.  Garlic can also be done the same way as onions except that the cloves need to be peeled first.  After dried the garlic can be left in chunks or put in the food processor to make garlic powder.  Of course onions and garlic can be canned but I never have because I am not sure I would use them in my cooking.  The directions are in most good canning books.

In A Pickle

The cucumbers are abundant.  The Farmer loves cold dill pickles and so I have been canning fresh pack dill pickles like crazy. 

Two books I rely on heavily for accurate canning information are

Complete Guide to Home Canning, Preserving and Freezing
and the
Ball Blue Book of Preserving

After pricing dill pickles at the store for $4.20 a jar  these superior pickles seem worth doing.  Besides, I know what is in them and that they were grown and prepared cleanly, safely, and of course with love.

 
A couple of dill pickle tips.  If you like your pickles less sweet the amount of sugar can be safely reduced. And, if the cucumbers are a bit long, use quart jars and if they are shorter use pints.  In the Ball Blue Book the processing time was the same for both.

Dehydrating Green Onions

I love to use dehydrated onion flakes on roast and also in recipes either when I don't have a fresh onion or I am just being lazy.  They are quite pricey however.  This year I am dehydrating my green onions from the garden.  First I clean them and chop them into big chunks. On to the food dehydrator they go.

They dehydrate for 10 to 12 hours.  Then they are crumbled up, put in mason jars and vacuum packed with the food saver.  I use the used canning jar lids for sealing dehydrated foods which is safe and frugal.  Never use used lids for actual canning as it is unsafe.  The dehydrated onions can also be run through the food processor to make onion powder.

Sustainable Backyard Agriculture - Even for Renters

Another coupe of great videos that challenges us to think outside of the gardening box.

How Much Food Can I Grow Around My House?

An Experiment in Back Yard Sustainability

A Gardener's Feast

Here is last evening's picking.  There are also green beans hiding under this mess.
First I started preparing the green beans by snipping off the  ends, cutting them in half, and boiling them for about 6 minutes just to make them a bit tender.  I then put them in a baking dish and added Lawry's Season Salt, Garlic Powder, a pat of butter, and a tiny bit of water to keep them from drying out.  I popped these in the oven for about 10 minutes.

Next, I boiled the corn - but not too much.  

I also had zuchinni, green onion, and yellow squash in the frying pan with a splash of olive oil and garlic powder on high heat.  This carmelizes the onions and puts just a little burn on the squash while keeping it a bit al dente.  When it was finished cooking I sprinkled a bit of grated parmesan on top.  This is my family's favorite way to eat summer squash.

I also had some natural fed 4-H produced bacon in the oven on a foil lined cookie sheet baking at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes.  This is the easiest and tastiest way to cook bacon - especially for a large family.

 Finally, here is the finished meal.

 The Caboodle approves of this meal - especially the corn. 

This meal was home grown.

Suburban Gardening

Here is a great little video from The Wall Street Journal on suburban farming.  Now this is a idea that makes sense.

 

Suburban Farming, An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Strawberry Girl

Our family may seem loving but we are really a ruthless and cutthroat group - at least when it comes to fresh strawberries.  My garden has one strawberry plant which produces enough for one person - in a family of five strawberry eaters this is a problem.

TT, Boo, and I have taken to sneaking, stealing and outmanuvering each other to get to the strawberries first, and then shamelessly gulp them down on the spot without any guilt or remorse for our lack of sharing.  Now, my baby, Cabboodle is participating in this piracy.

First, she looks to make sure  that no one is watching.

Catahoolie please keep a look out.

Yum!!

Wheat Experiment Part 1

This is the wheat field in front of my house.  It is about ready to harvest.

The variety is Desert Durum Kronos.  For years I have bought wheat from Montana to mill in my grain mill and make homemade flour to use in bread - and everything else.  Since this is the first time we have grown wheat in a number of years, I wanted to see if our variety of wheat would produce a good bread flour. 

Since it will be harvested very soon we hand cut and threshed enough wheat to make and experimental loaf of bread.  At least I know it is fresh wheat.

Here is my harvest team cutting and separating the wheat from the chaff. As usual Caboodle is supervising.

This is very stickery and miserable work by hand.  I can see on a very literal level why the Bible refers so much to wheat and bread.  Making a loaf of bread was a really big undertaking at that time. 

The Farmer came to our rescue and  used an air compressor to clean the wheat.  This can also be done by pouring the wheat from one container to another in front of a fan.

The wheat is now ready to be  milled and  we shall  see if our experiment is going to work.  Stay tuned for Part 2......