Failed potato box...again

I put my foot in the photo so you could tell the size.
Last year I tried potato boxes, but the plants all died.  (post here http://singlemompreparedness.blogspot.com/2011/07/my-failed-potato-experiment.html)
A helpful reader told me I needed to dry the grass before putting it on.  I still loved the idea of growing so many potatoes in a small space, so I tried again.  Drying the grass seemed to work.  The plants grew big & beautiful.  I added grass, until I had 4 foot tall boxes with big beautiful plants on the top.
October came, & I decided to dig out the grass & see what I had.
Very disappointing!  Out of the whole box, this is all I got!  And they were all at the soil level, none in the grass like was supposed to happen.  And they are probably smaller than if I'd just let the plant grow short & put the energy into the potatoes!
I've had many people tell me they've seen this work with tires.  And I've seen more than 1 gardening video tell me you can grow potatoes in straw or grass.  So I don't know why this didn't work.  Very sad!  There is one thing to be grateful for though!  That I didn't discover this when I was needing to feed my family for the winter with what I'd grown.  I can head to Kohlers today & buy 50 lbs of potatoes for $7.  So I'll do that this winter.  Guess next summer I'll have to try the old fashioned way!  Unless anyone has a brilliant suggestion?

Growing foods from leftovers

http://www.gardenswag.com/2011/12/5-foods-you-can-grow-from-kitchen-scraps/
Very interesting!
http://www.17apart.com/2012/02/growing-celery-indoors-never-buy-celery.html

Cheap weed killer?

link for cheap weed killer
I was excited about trying this...I spend a fortune on Round Up Every year.
I sprayed a lot of vinegar on a bunch of stuff in my yard; including some grass.  There was no rain or sprinklers on for days.  5 days later; nothing.  Maybe a bit of brown on a couple spots, but so faint I wasn't even sure.  So I guess I'm back to round up!  Has anyone else tried vinegar as a weed killer?

How to make your own rainbarrels

http://beachbrights.blogspot.com/2010/01/everybody-is-going-green.html
Wish I'd seen this before I spent $60 each on mine!!
Spring is a great time to get these in & started collecting water!

Fascinating Garden idea!!

http://backtoedenfilm.com/
I just spent almost 2 hours watching this film on gardening.  I am hugely interested!  If this works as he says (& looking at his garden, it sure seems to), it is not only very easy, but solves most of the things I've been worrying about in growing my own food in a collapse situation.  It takes very little work, needs very little water, keeps out weeds well, helps with bugs & supposedly makes the food taste much better!  As you watch you can't doubt his sincerity.  I liked his optimism, & even the title of "back to eden".  Of course I saw this & about how you don't need to till, about 2 hours after I got my garden tilled!  *sigh*
If you don't want to watch the whole video at first, try the FAQ page, that has short video clips.  The "how to" page I printed to refer to.  I am intrigued, and am for sure going to try this!  I will report how it goes, but you may want to try it yourself now.  This could be lifesaving information, especially in a drought.
I spent last Saturday getting the woodchips/compost & taking it in wheelbarrow loads back to my garden & flower beds.  I also tried his method of newspaper underneath if you had plants you wanted to kill (like the grass in my flower beds).   Can't tell if it's going to work so far, but it looks great!  I put it all over the dirt aread in the back; half has been sifted for rocks, tilled, & has sprinklers.  The other half doesn't.  I'm going to plant a few things in both spots & compare how it goes.  I'll update as the summer goes along!  Sure hope this works!
An even shorter source of this info can be found here:  gardening God's way.  It's a PDF file someone compiled based on the video.

Let the kids do the labor!

I know you're probably thinking, "I don't have time to do chickens, pick raspberries, dry fruit, can chicken, raise rabbits, etc".  That's what your kids are for!  And it's great for them too!  My son mows our lawn.  When we can chicken he puts the meat in the jars while I put the broth & lids (we can get 18 lbs in the canner in under 20 min).  He completely takes care of all our animals.  They're under his stewardship & he gets their food & water every day.  When we can or dry peaches he takes the peels off while I do other stuff.  He goes out & picks the raspberries & strawberries.  The work goes much faster than I could do by myself.  And imagine if I had more than 1 child!

Sure, you have to train them to help.  At first it might seem easier to do it yourself than hassle them into it.  But now my son is just used to helping as part of his daily routine.  (ok, he still complains sometimes about mowing the lawn, but he does it).  And he's only 8 years old.  Kids can usually do a lot more than we think.  He's been doing all the mowing since 7.  He started taking the peels off the peaches & tops off strawberries at 4.  Don't waste these great helpers you already have!  It's in their best interest too.  And they can take such pride in the peaches they helped can, fruit they helped dry, & "their" animals!

Raspberry Blondies

Some recipes look so pretty, but don't taste that great.  This is one of those recipes that tastes way better than they look.  We put 1 1/2 cup raspberries, instead of the listed 1 cup, & we're glad we did.  We ate half the pan before they were even cool!  And this is another recipe I can make entirely out of my food storage when my raspberries are ready in the summer.

1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup any nuts (optional)
1 cup fresh raspberries

Preheat oven to 350.  Line 8" square baking pan with foil, leaving 1" overhang on all sides.  Combine flour, baking powder & salt.  Melt butter in a medium saucepan over low heat.  Stir in brown sugar until moistened. Let cool slightly.  Off heat, whisk in egg & vanilla.  Stir in flour mixture until just combined.  Stir in nuts.  Scrape batter into baking pan, smoothing top.  Scatter berries over batter.  Bake until blondies are set in center, about 30 min.  Cool completely in pan on wire rack.  Grasping foil on sides, life out blondies & place on cutting board.

How to get free produce

I used to spend so much money on produce, my son loves it & I want him to eat healthy.  But yikes!  A little thing of raspberries costs so much!  I finally got smart & planted my own.  I got free raspberry shoots from a neighbor, & I've let them take over 1 side of the house.  The only maintenance I do on them is cut out the dead canes in the fall.  Pretty dang easy!  They've been growing for a few years now, & we get a cereal bowl full of raspberries a day!  We've made raspberry lemonade ice cream, raspberry blondie browies, jam, frozen raspberries, & eaten a ton every day.  All free!  My sprinklers were watering over there anyway!
I've done the same thing with strawberries.  I got free shoots, & let them fill in all of my flower beds in front.  My spring tulips come up right through the strawberries.  They keep out the weeds, look, pretty, & they provide me with a HUGE bowl full every day for 2-3 weeks in June.  They get finished just about the time the raspberries start.  I don't do any maintenance on the strawberries either, except pull up a few of the older plants every fall so new ones can grow in.  Super easy!  We dry a lot of our strawberries for eating on hikes & on cereal (see my post on drying them in the solar oven).
I've just planted a blueberry bush & am hoping to someday have tons of those too!
I can't believe how much money we save.  And having these healthy treats in abundance is such a luxury!
And it's going to be fabulous to have if we're ever living off our food storage.

They take time to grow enough to have a lot though.  So go look at your yard & see where you can throw in something you'd love to eat!  Or get one of those inside strawberry planters.  You'll be glad you did!

My failed potato experiment

I was very excited when I read this website about growing 100 lbs of potatoes in 4 square feet.

http://www.irisheyesgardenseeds.com/growers1.php

I built to boxes & got started. Potatoes are cheap, filling, easy to cook in the solar oven. We especially like ours with Alpine Spice. http://www.alpinetouch.com/shop.html Super yummy!

I tried it first last spring. I had large, beautiful potato plants, & had added 2 layers of boards. I was using grass clipping & was excited. One by one they went from healthy plants, to completely dead in a few hours. The stalks came off just below the grass clippings & were slimy & smelly. I thought I'd gotten some sort of disease. I asked experts & no one knew what happened.

So I tried it again in a different spot this spring. The same thing happened again. They weren't quite as slimy & smelly, & I did get them to 3 levels, but again my beautiful potato plants died. I was so discouraged! I couldn't think of a cheaper way to get lots of potatoes to store for the winter! And I'm not sure what to try different.

My brother is trying the same thing with dirt in the layers instead of grass. We're wondering if the grass starts to rot & the potatoes were too tall to resist it, so rotted too. But I don't really know. If my brother's dirt method works I'll try that; although finding enough dirt to fill the boxes is tricky. I've also wondered about mixing dirt & grass, to make it more stable but require less dirt. His plants aren't nearly as tall as mine was, & have gone to blossom now. I'll post in the end how it works for him. I'd really love to find a solution, because taking less space to grow lots of potatoes could be a lifesaver!

Free wasp traps!

We get wasps in our backyard, but those wasp traps start adding up! I hate spending $50 or more of our scant money to trap wasps. I was excited to find something free that really works!

Take your mostly empty jar of jam or jelly. Don't wash it, just fill it about 2/3 with water. The sweet jam will attract the wasps, & drown them. Voila'!

This doesn't work quite as well in the spring. Apparently wasps are more attracted to savory things in the spring, & sweet later in the summer. But it seems like late summer is when the wasps start getting bad outside.

Corn on the Cob in Solar Oven

It's fresh corn on the cob season! My brother tried cooking some in his SOS solar oven this weekend. He just put the corn in there right in the husks. It worked great! He had it in there for about 6 hours. It was cooked probably long before that, but it didn't burn. It just kept it nice & ready. The texture was different than boiling it, but in a good way. We were surprised at how much we liked it. And it was so easy!

The husks did look all weird when we took them out. Faded & discolored. But the corn itself was yummy!

Fabulous Frozen Corn!

I have a guilty admission to make...I'm not really that big a fan of vegetables. I'll eat some salad, fresh corn on the cob...and that's about it. So when I tell you that when I was making this, I COULD NOT STOP EATING IT; you'll understand how amazing that is. Usually frozen corn is ok, but this is soooo good. When we ate it during the winter, it felt like summer had come again.

Shuck Corn.

Cut corn off the cobs. An electric knife works great. Turn a smaller but tall bowl over at the bottom of a large bowl or roasting pan. Rest the corn on the small bowl and cut so that all of the corn falls into the larger bowl. Make sure not to cut too close to the cob.

Put into a pot:
16 cups corn
3 cups water
4 T. sugar (optional)
2 t. salt
½ cup butter (optional)

Mix together, bring to a boil and boil just until the corn becomes translucent (5 minutes.)

Cool and put in freezer bags (juice and all.)

Freeze.

dehydrating strawberries in solar oven

I have a lot of strawberries in my patch & I love drying them. My son eats them like candy & they're completely healthy! I hate the sound of my dehydrator going all day though, & wonder what to do if there were no electricity. So I tried some in my solar oven.

One concern was you need heat to circulate around. And darker things work better in a solar oven. I found some black metal letter holders at Dollar Tree. They are black mesh, just the thing! I used them right side up, but I think they'd be even better upside down, so there's more air underneath. I propped them up on another pan so they were nearer the lid of the oven. I propped the lid open so that the moisture could escape (this is the one solar cooking you don't want the moisture to stay in). I just used a glue bottle to prop it open. The other concern I had was the strawberries sticking. On my dehydrator I use those mesh plastic sheets, so they pop off easy. I found some white plastic sheeting (also at Dollar Tree), but it was white, so I didn't know how it would work. I decided to try both ways.

After about 4 hours, the ones on just the black were done. And they didn't stick! The ones on the white worked as well, but they took a bit longer. In the future I'll probably just use the black mesh.

I'm way excited I found a rack for only $1. Since the strawberries grow in my yard, & I didn't even use electricity, this is a totally free food storage item!

Another thing I recently discovered was a strawberry slicer. I was dubious...most kitchen gadgets don't really work. But this thing is awesome! It is going to save me hours on my drying strawberry time! Rather than slicing each berry by hand I can put 2-5 (if they're smaller ones) in at a time & have them perfectly slice for drying. Some of the best money I've ever spent!