March Birchbox

I love my birthday month Birchbox I just received.  So far I have been really happy about the wide variety of high quality products they have sent me.  I have gotten everything from body scrub to headbands.  Most of the samples I can't even use up all of it in one month.  It has definitely been worth it for me, especially since I am not the type to spend a lot of money on my beauty products.

Here is what I received for this month's $10 subscription:

• MAKE eyeshadow in Great Lakes (blueish-green) $18 value
• MAKE face primer and broad spectrum SPF 30 $30 value
• Oscar Blandi hair lift mousse $23 value
• Whish shaving cream in blueberry $20 value
• Madewell for Birchbox floral emery board $5 value

If you want to earn extra points (and send a few extra points my way if you sign up) use this link.  Thanks, you will LOVE Birchbox!

How to Harden off Heirloom Tomato Seedlings

I started the last of my warm weather seedlings just yesterday (eggplants, pepperoncinis and Rutgers and Beefsteak tomatoes).  Is it bad that I get sad when I'm all finished with my transplant seedlings and only have my direct sow seeds left?

So far I have had excellent germination rates, I use all heirloom seed from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and I have not been disappointed yet.  Last year I had great success with heirloom tomatoes.  This year I am trying some new varieties.

We have a whole 36 pot seed tray just for tomato plants:

6 Chadwick cherry

6 Gypsy

12 Amish paste

12 Arkansas Traveler

Hardening Off Tomato Seedlings

Here is the method I use.  With a nod to the medical community, I will use our mantra for starting a patient on a new medication as an allusion to exposing sensitive seedlings to sunlight:

START LOW AND GO SLOW!

• Day 1:  I wait until late afternoon when the sun is gentler and I set them in a sunny spot on our deck that is protected from wind.  I leave them outside for about an hour and a half.  No signs of distress, so I continue on gradually increasing exposure.
• Day 2:  At lunch I set the plants outside again around 1 o'clock.  At 5 o'clock they are still looking pretty perky but I go ahead and bring them inside.
• Day 3:  Saturday is sunny and beautiful so I set the seedings outside from 9 to around 2 during the harshest sun of the day.
• Day 4:  Sunday it rained all day...HARD.  No fun in the sun today guys, back under the grow light you go.
• Day 5:  Back on schedule.  They should be able to handle full sun all day long without any problems.  I take them outside in the mornings, water them in the morning if they need it and bring them inside every evening so they do not get too cold.

Just as with medicines in the body, too much of a good thing can be, well, too much.  Now all I have to do is wait for the soil to warm and I can plant these little guys out in the garden.  Don't they just look beautiful?  And even those little seedlings SMELL like tomato plants.

Can. Not. Wait.

Double Your Dollar with Green Onions and Garlic Scapes

If you haven't gotten your spring garlic and onion sets in the ground yet, good news, you still have time!  And by using my method, you can get more bang for your buck.

Here is what you will need:

• Loose rich soil, preferably a raised bed or container.  Compact soil limits bulb growth.
• Compost to amend your soil with and provide plenty of fertilizer.
• Onions and garlic.  You choose your family's favorite varieties.  I planted about 50 white onions, 50 red onions, 50 Vidalia onions and about 30 garlic cloves. 

Yes, just as I suspected,

the chickens have been here and have dug up some of my bulbs. 

Its okay, I will forgive them, I think I planted more than enough!

Getting Bulbs:

You should be able to find these at any nursery, farm service store and some hardware stores.  I even saw that our Wal-Mart had some the other day, I doubt they would have the variety that a nursery or other store would, but they will eat just the same.  

A Red Onion Set

Planting Bulbs:

The most important thing for great garlic and onion production is rich, loose soil. 

If the soil is too compact, the bulbs will not have any room to grow. 

These bulbs have fairly shallow roots and most sources say to plant them four inches apart, BUT I will let you in on my SUPER SECRET method for DOUBLING my harvest:

PLANT bulbs 2 INCHES APART, 

then HARVEST just the GREEN SHOOTS

 from EVERY OTHER bulb

and

use them as FRESH 

GREEN ONIONS and GARLIC SCAPES!!!

Ok, maybe that wasn't such a secret, but it is an awesome way to always have green onions and garlic scapes on hand, practically all summer long. 

Just think no more, "Oh crud, I forgot to buy green onions for the fresh salsa"

Just run outside with your scissors and harvest away!

Onions and garlic are so easy to care for; if you have some extra dirt, you can grow them with very little effort.  Just keep them moderately watered, they can take some drought and keep them in a weeded area.  They would be great to incorporate into a raised flower bed, herb garden or a large container with other deeper rooted plants.

You will be ready to harvest the full grown bulbs mid summer when the greens that you see above the ground turn brown and start to fall over.

 

Garlic beginning to sprout, just look at those tastey scapes!

Duck Gumbo

 

If you have tons of duck meat in your freezer this recipe is a must!  It is so hearty and filling that one bowl will feed the biggest appetite.

Here is how it is done.

What you need:

• 2 lbs. duck meat
• 2 cups okra
• 1 cup sliced carrots
• 1 chopped onion
• 1 pint of tomatoes or rotel tomatoes
• 1 can baby shrimp
• 1 package of Boudains
• vegetable oil
• flour
• salt and pepper
• cayenne pepper
• Worchestershire sauce

1. In a large skillet, brown the duck meat in olive oil.  Cook SLOWLY and only season with salt and pepper.  Cook til no longer bloody, but it should still be pink in the center.  
2. While this is cooking, grab a large stew pot, fill it about half full of water and start boiling one chopped onion, 1 cup of sliced carrots, and 2 cups of sliced okra. 
3. This should take about as long as the duck needs to cook. 
4. Then decrease the heat, add cooked duck meat, one can diced tomatoes or rotel for more spice, a small can of baby shrimp and one package of cut up Boudains.  Add your seasoning here, we like Worchestershire sauce, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper. 
5. While this is simmering, start on the roux. 
6. Heat 1/2 cup of vegetable oil to medium heat. Once your oil is hot slowly stir in 1/4 cup of flour.  Keep stirring and added small amounts of flour until you reach a "gravy like" consistency.  After about 10 minutes you should have brown, dry looking roux.  Be careful not to burn it. 
7. Now you can add it to the stew.  Let it simmer covered for another 20 minutes. Then lower heat and you are ready to eat.

Serve over rice or straight from the bowl with a couple saltine crackers.

*Note if you don't have duck meat in your freezer, this recipe could easily be modified by using Polish sausage instead.

Ranch Dressing

We ran out of Ranch dressing last week and it is still on our grocery list...which doesn't help me very much considering I needed it for a recipe this week!  So I did a quick online search, pulled a few things out of the spice cabinet and whipped up this homemade Ranch dressing.  

I used a pint sized mason jar and modified the original recipe to fit our taste and here is how what I came up with. 

The Recipe:

1/2 cup milk

2/3 cup of mayo (I used real, but low fat would probably work too)

4 tbsp dried parsley

2 tsp dried dill

2 tsp onion powder

2 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp dried basil

1 tsp pepper 

1/2-1 tsp garlic salt depending on taste

The original recipe says this should last 3-5 days in the fridge, we will see.

To save time you could mix up the dry ingredients and store them in a ziplock bag or another mason jar.  Then you would just add two tablespoons of the "Ranch mix" to the wet ingredients when you needed to mix up a batch. 

I was pleasantly surprised with the results and I will definitely be mixing up some Ranch mix for future use!

 

 

How to Build a Potato Tower

Make fencing into round columns, cut PVC pipe to height of column, and drill holes every six inches into pipe all the way around the pipe.  Put a plastic bag over one end of the pipe and secure it with a rubber band. This is to keep the water in the pipe so it will flow outward through the holes.

Line the bottom and sides with straw. Then add compost, at least 6 inches worth.  Now add seed potatoes.  Cover with more compost and 6 more inches of straw. 

Once the plants have grown out about 8 inches, then gently cover the stems with another 6 inches of straw.  The tubers should form off of the stems so you can keep adding more straw until you reach the top. 

I spent $3.48 on the seed potatoes so hopefully I will at least get a return on my initial investment.  Here's to hoping for a good harvest!

Adding to Our Flock Through Incubation

 A friend gave us a still air egg incubator last year because I wanted to try to hatch out some chicks this spring.  Surprisingly it was much easier than I thought it would be!

This is the way I did it:

• I gather the eggs from each day while they were still warm.  In pencil, I marked an X and an O on opposite sides of the egg and I noted the date it was laid. 
• Then I placed it in the incubator.  I had set up the incubator on my bathroom countertop because it suggested a "humid" and centrally heated location was best for optimizing incubator hatch rates.  Our incubator also had a shallow well that we had to keep filled with water to keep the inside humid, but some incubators are different. 
• I turn the eggs one to three times per day to ensure the chicks would develop properly. 
• I continued adding eggs until I had about a dozen in the incubator. After about 10 days, we went in a night and shone a bright flashlight under the eggs.  If there was a "dark spot" where we could tell blood vessels were forming we put it back.  This meant it was in fact a fertilized, growing embryo.  We pitched the unfertilized ones.
• Then after another week, we looked again with a light.  Those fertilized eggs had become completely opaque so that the only light from the flashlight we could see was through the chicks "air hole" at the large end of the egg. 
• At this point, we stopped turning the eggs allowing the chicks to be able to orient themselves in preparation for hatching. 
• Then we started LISTENING!  Day 21 is when they are supposed to hatch but I have found that it is a bit more variable than fixed.  The first sign of life should be the chicks weak peeps coming from the shell.  Once this starts, your chick should start "pipping" out the shell with its beak in about 24 hours.  If it takes longer than this I would consider gently helping break out a piece for it, but I have not had this happen yet. 
• With about an hour of "pipping" the chick will start "unzipping" itself by pecking the sides of the shell out until it can free itself. 
• Once the chick is out you should let it dry itself in the incubator for another 8 hours or so. 
• Then take it out and place it under your warm grow light in the brooder with fresh food and water. 

Now you just keep them warm and fed and water and in a clean cage and they should grow like little weeds!