Kitchen Counter Economics Rotating Header Image

gardening

Sometimes Hope and Dirt Can Use a Hand

Mar 20th, 2009
by htwollin.
Comments are off for this post

And, welcome back. The last time we took the soil temperature in the garden in my part of Upstate New York, it was 32.9 degrees F. on March 7th. Hope Is A Thing With Dirt

On Friday, March 20, it was, as you see above, 43.4 degrees. That’s with several 50-60 degree days behind us, but very chilly freezing nights. It is now way above freezing. And there is an onion shoot in the photo, too. Time to get out the seeds, right?

Mmmmmm, no. There ARE some seeds that you could put into the ground now and if you protected them a little bit, they’d come up, but as you see from the chart below, it would take them a very, very long time to do that. Even something like Beets or Lettuces, which are very hardy and would germinate at 41 degrees, would take 42 days and 49 days respectively to germinate. (more…)

Hope is a thing….with dirt

Mar 7th, 2009
by htwollin.
1 comment

Hope, my friends (as John McCain is wont to say) is NOT a thing with feathers. This picture at the top is hope. Actually, no; that picture is of my garden on March 7, in the afternoon and the air temperature is 50 degrees and it is raining in that drippy, cold, remorseless way that we get up here in Upstate New York when it should be snowing instead..only it isn’t.

On the other hand, though, it IS hope because Aunt Toby took the soil temperature of that place, in the rain (oh, the things I do for you guys…you’ll never know…), using my trusty…extra Taylor meat thermometer with the metal probe thingy (because our Agway didn’t carry soil thermometers at the time and we somehow ended up with two meat thermometers, one of which got sent to the ‘seeds box’ to be turned into a soil thermometer). And the soil temperature in that place was 32.9 degrees F. Just slightly over the freezing mark. And why do I say this is a picture of hope? (more…)

Cheap and Good: Cabbage and its cousins

Feb 16th, 2009
by htwollin.
Comments are off for this post


Aunt Toby loves her a mess of cabbage. All cabbages, actually, anything from the brasssica family will do, including the humble (in alphabetical order) arugula, bok choy, broccoli, broccoli sprouts (Raapi or sometimes called broccoli raab), Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, Chinese cabbages, Swiss chard, collards, kale, kohlrabi, mustard greens, radishes, rutabaga, turnips, turnip greens and watercress.

Despite what I’ve heard, there is absolutely nothing to dislike about any member of the family. If you find one (cough, kale, cough) a bit strongly flavored for you, you can always try it cooked a different way or move on to another, ahem, less pungent member of the family. It’s like being at one of those holiday celebrations where one of the uncles drinks too much and tells family secrets – just move into the kitchen and drink some punch and avoid the whole deal. (more…)

Get Growing!

Jan 23rd, 2009
by htwollin.
4 comments

Beans In my part of the world, right now, there is snow and ice everywhere and frozen soil, but we can dream of a garden. And for those folks who have been doing their homework and have gotten their seeds, it’s time to take out the calendar and start planning for actual planting in the ground, so that you can figure out when you are going to plant your seeds.

In my area, our official last frost is supposed to be toward the end of May, so most people are out putting in their gardens on Memorial Day Weekend. For things like tomato, pepper and eggplant plants, that’s a pretty good rule of thumb. If your soil has warmed up earlier, you can certainly put in things like lettuces, spinach and other greens, anything from the cabbage family(broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Chinese cabbage, etc.), though you might want to provide them with some protection, like using row covering material.

But, let’s get down to where the plant meets the soil, so to speak: how much are you going to put in, anyway? (more…)

Tomorrow’s Garden: Today! Part 2

Dec 25th, 2008
by htwollin.
Comments are off for this post

sprouts OK. We are NOT in the kitchen today. This is for those folks who read, way back in October, about starting a garden and perhaps went to their land fill or composting facility and picked up some compost and put out the cardboard and now have …frozen piles of compost out in the yard that has snow all over it. It’s hard to get romantic looking at that stuff – but trust me, in the spring, you will be happy you did the work.

Actually, look at the picture above: I took that yesterday, Christmas Eve day in my garden here in Upstate New York. Those are brussels sprouts, frozen but still cookable and edible. On Dec. 24th!! So, if you get started with more garden stuff this week, you can, even in the coldest places (well, maybe not Alaska…) have something out in your garden that you can harvest a year from now and use to feed your family (ahem..disclaimer: you will have something out in your garden that you can harvest…except if the bunnies and deer get to it. RIP: the kale that was also standing in the snow last week, sniff). (more…)

Thin Thighs in Thirty Days™ OR, Tomorrow’s Garden: Today! Part 1

Oct 22nd, 2008
by htwollin.
1 comment

veg1OK, so you say you want a garden next spring. And you say you’ve tried to do it before and you just never got around to it…and this makes you feel worthless and unambitious and un-American?

Well, bucky, today’s first lesson is for you. (more…)

Urban Gardening, or, How to Survive When You Aren’t a Homeowner and Don’t Have a Lawn to Rip Up

Oct 11th, 2008
by htwollin.
Comments are off for this post

lightbulblokywoky in a thread asked: What I would like to know is what all of us lowly apartment and other rental unit dwellers who don’t have yards for gardens and no control over the kind of heating/cooling equipment etc are supposed to do. Info is all over the place for stuff for home OWNERS but there doesn’t seem to be much for those of us who don’t own a home.

First, as is said in The Hitchhikers Guide: Don’t Panic. Don’t feel that there is nothing you can do because you have a landlord or are occupying a unit that is 60 feet up over the asphalt. The trick in your situation is to think: not permanent — movable. Let’s look at people’s costs of living one at a time in terms of what we can do to lower those costs. (more…)

Getting Through the Next…Several Years?

Sep 28th, 2008
by htwollin.
Comments are off for this post

money Let’s get down to some real “kitchen table economics” here: If you work for one of the financial/banking giants, it’s possible you might lose your job in the coming days or months. If you work for a company that borrows money to expand, operate or just plain keep going…it’s possible you might lose your job in the coming days or months. If you work for a governmental entity(state or municipal)…ditto. You get the idea.

A lot of us are going to start feeling even more uncomfortable and insecure very soon, if we haven’t already done so. How to survive? For all the comparisons to The Great Depression, in my estimation, this is a whole new ballgame. Why? First and foremost: in 1929, people in the United States were not that far removed from subsistence living. Even people who lived in the largest urban areas still were doing many things for themselves, simply because the consumer economy behemoth did not exist the way it does today. The distance between farmers and other producers and consumers was not that far — consumers in New York City, for example, were buying their farm products from New Jersey and the counties in New York State within a couple of hours travel. No one was getting strawberries in January from California or Florida – that … did…not…exist. The whole economy of just going to a store and buying whatever you wanted/needed was much smaller than it is today; people many times had to make do, make over, or make their own.

My great aunties worked in the garment trade; one of them did put herself through secretarial school and graduated from the sewing machine to a typewriter at The American Tobacco Company. A real step up. Her sister sewed for a fancy ladies’ lingerie manufacturer her whole life. At home, they made their own clothing, were thrifty, and only indulged themselves on occasion. In the Depression, when their parents had to move out to Coney Island (because it was a lot cheaper than the Bronx), they all moved in together in a fifth floor walk up. They pulled together and reduced the entire family’s overhead. And they survived. The big book of the period was Five Acres and Independence (you can still get it from Amazon), aimed at people moving out of cities and surviving because they had a bit of land (actually, five acres is quite a chunk of property).

How are people going to survive the loss of major family income today — especially if they live someplace where either they don’t have a big yard or if they do, they might live where there are restrictive covenants (lawns of a certain size, planting of xx plants, no vegetable gardens where they can be seen, no hanging clothes on a clothesline outside and so on)? In a society where much of people’s image of themselves and their families revolves around financial resources rather than actual “do it for ourselves, thrift, etc.” skills, what are the possible outcomes for families who lose a big chunk of their income?

(originally published at Oxdown Gazette)

Blog Widget by LinkWithin
Newer Posts →

Bad Behavior has blocked 436 access attempts in the last 7 days.