Hoop House Fail

To say that the weather this "Winter" has been odd would be a gross understatement. Yesterday it was almost 70 degrees, then a front moved in and it dropped down into the 30's. It was also freaky windy. Given how degraded the plastic on my hoop house is becoming, I was a little worried about how it would handle the abuse. This morning when I was feeding the chickens, I walked over to inspect it and this is what I found:

I've had to patch up the hoop house numerous times, but they have all been tears that were 18" or smaller. I'm not quite sure what the best way to fix this gaping hole is going to be. I suppose that will be a job for tomorrow morning. I need to patch it quickly because I have a bunch of seedlings on my kitchen counter that are going to make their way out there before too long. Once Spring is in full effect, the plastic is going to come off, and eventually the frame will serve as a giant green bean trellis. For now, though, I need to seal it up.

Incubatin'

Last week one of our hens, Scratchy, died. I knew something was up with her the day before, when she hadn't come bounding out of the coop as I opened the door. Rather, she quietly hung out in the chicken run drinking water and occasionally pecking at the food. This was the first I'd noticed anything being amiss with her, and by the next day she was dead. That same day, the kids noticed that one of the white chickens we had raised from the batch of chicks this past Spring had hidden a few eggs in the leaves under our wood rack. In light of Scratchy's passing, they asked if we could try to hatch a new baby chick. Having looked into the matter previously, I was a bit dubious about our prospects for two reasons:

1. Incubating eggs is surprisingly tricky, and seemed best done by either a store bought incubator or a live chicken.

2. Brown Spot, our rooster, is so hen pecked - both by actual hens and our well intentioned children - that I doubt he has actually gotten his groove on enough fertilize many eggs.

Nevertheless, it seemed like a fun project to do with the kids on a day off school. We built the incubator completely out of materials that were laying around the house. The only thing we had to purchase was a 25 watt light bulb. Everything was put together, and in went the 3 eggs. We counted out the 21 days it should take for them to grow, and as luck would have it, the prospective hatch day is the boys' 8th birthday. Will anything come of this? I hope so, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Hot Sauce

Spicy food occupies a special place in my palette. Chili, Indian food, chicken wings, pizza. eggs, you name it - the hotter the better. Next to tomatoes, I have more varieties of hot peppers than any other plant. I'm always looking for different things to do with them. I found a recipe in Mother Earth News for a Tabasco brand-style hot sauce. Personally, Tabasco isn't my favorite type of hot sauce, but the recipe sounded interesting. It called for fermenting the peppers in brine for 4-5 weeks. I chopped a bunch of jalapeno, tobago, and pablano peppers, mixed in some salt and water, and let them sit. After 4 weeks, I mixed in a little white wine vinegar and let it sit for another week. In the end, this is what it looked like.

I tasted the liquid. I was spicy and very salty. The recipe was rather ambiguous about the amount of salt to add, and apparently I added a bit much. Undeterred, I strained the mixture through a cloth to separate out the pepper bits and seeds. I then used a makeshift sieve to get all of the seeds out of the pulp.

I heated the pulp, and mixed in some tomato paste, honey, brown sugar, coriander, and ginger. As per usual, I was making this up on the fly. I was hoping for something sweet, spicy, and vaguely exotic. It came out pretty good. Thin enough to mix into soup, but thick enough to put on a sandwich. I liked it enough to call it a success.

The liquid was a different story. It was so overwhelmingly salty that I wasn't sure what to do with it. I heated it up to boiling, added butter and sugar in an effort to balance the flavor out some. Ummm... I suppose it worked. The sauce was less salty, but calling it good might be a bit of an overstatement. I kept it, but I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with it. I the future, I'm going to use far less salt in the brine. Here's the final product:

This is a link to the original recipe at Mother Earth News. The article promises to help you save money. To be honest, I'm not sure how much hot sauce you need to consume in order to save an appreciable amount of money by making your own. At any rate, give it a try and enjoy!

Hausgemacht Halloween

Ever since I've been a little kid, Halloween has been my favorite time of the year. I've always liked spooky stuff, and I'm sure the fact that my birthday is 3 days before it has a lot to do this too. Making my costume for trick or treating is something I've enjoyed about the season, and since we've had kids, I've looked forward to making theirs. Store bought costumes are a major pet peeve of mine. My wife always points out, as I'm trying to finish things at the last minute, that it would be much easier to simply go buy costumes. She's right, it would be easier. It would also be easier to eat lunchmeat sandwiches and chips for Thanksgiving instead of turkey and mashed potatoes. Somehow that seems to miss the spirit of the holiday, though. Likewise, buying some cheap, piece of shit costume that will look exactly like everyone else who bought that same outfit misses the spirit of Halloween. Anyway...the kids are really big Pokemon fans, so they decided to be a Poke-family: Pichu, Pikachu, and Raichu. I dressed up like a Pokeball (the little baseball looking thing that Pokemons live inside of). None of the adults knew what I was, but the kids all got it.I made the costumes from a combination of things I found at the Goodwill and some extra fabric I bought. All together, I spent about $26 for the materials to make 4 costumes. $6.50 a piece for costumes that will serve as play clothes for a long time to come, not to shabby. The kids all had a great time.

Hoop House Progress

The framed out hoop house.

Football has finally wound down, and I'm trying to get some work done before Winter rolls around. I got the last of the frame work done on the hoop house last Saturday. The door and ventilation window have yet to be constructed. I'm hoping to get plastic put on in the next couple of days (once it stops raining). The various things that I planted in there some weeks ago are up and growing. I'm harvesting lettuce and radishes now, and the chard, peas, carrots, beets, and turnips are coming in nicely. I recently planted some spinach, but I'm not sure if it will germinate as the temperatures drop. Once the plastic is on, I also plan on transplanting the Tobago and Black Hungarian Wax pepper plants into large pots to over winter in the hoop house. I'll be interested to see how they do next spring.

The door frame at the end of the hoop.

I salvaged this giant piece of 6mil plastic from my school when there was roof work being done this summer.

The 3 beds about 1 month ago as I was starting to plant them.

The hoop house bed this past weekend.

Swimming against the current

Last year, I made exactly 0 posts during the month of September, and barely managed to get one in during October. Let me be clear about something: I HATE coaching football. The few enjoyable aspects about it are vastly outweighed by the massive time commitment that it involves. Yes, there are worse ways for a person to make some money, but I really wish that I didn't have to do it. But enough bitching...

I suppose the fact that is the second entry during September means that I am doing marginally better than last year, sort of. The garden is almost completely done with for the season. I tore out all of the tomatoes because they were in the way of the hoop house. Most everything else has been sorely neglected because I've spent most all my spare time working on the hoop house. The corn is brown, and I need to see if I will actually be able to get any seed from it. The okra is almost done. The potato harvest was abysmal. I need to dig up my sweet potatoes to see if there are any tubers under all those vines. The only plants that are still plugging away are the peppers. They have apparently forgiven me for this past Spring's massacre, and I've had better pepper production this year that I have for a long time. Here is a plate with a little bit of everything that I've grown. The one exception would be my Tobago Seasoning peppers. They are supposed to have the smokey quality of a habenero without the blinding heat. St.Louis is a bit farther north than Caribbean Island that they are native to, and I'm hoping that they will have enough time to mature before it gets too cold.

I'm about half way finished planting the beds in the hoop house. Ideally, this would have been done 2-3 weeks ago. I would have finished yesterday, but I had to go shoot scout video of a football game for the varsity team. Grrr... Today it has been raining almost non-stop, so I really can't do much in that regard. Thus far I have lettuce, radishes, carrots, corn salad, green onions, and beets. I still want to plant chard, some chinese cabbage, spinach, and peas. Hopefully it will be dry enough to do that in a day or so. I may have to resort to planting at night, after the kids are in bed (I've done this before). Oh well. Whatever happens, happens. In any case, the hoop house will be read to go come late Winter/early Spring to kick start next season. Woo hoo!

A productive weekend

The high temperature for this past Thursday, Friday, and Saturday all reached triple digits and set local records. A cold front came in Saturday evening, and dropped temps by nearly 30 degrees. The weather yesterday and today was gorgeous, sunny and mid-70's. The nice weather and holiday gave me a chance to get outside and bang away on the hoop house. I now have all but the back wall framed in. It's pretty cool to see it so close to finished. The next step is to prepare the beds and start planting. September 21st is less than 3 weeks away, and I need to get cracking. The rest of the garden looks like shit, and is likely going to get a serious haircut in the near future.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find 4 little pullet eggs in the coop on Thursday, and I've since found 2 more. If Scratchy and Carmella don't start laying eggs soon, I'm seriously thinking about lining them up when Brown Spot bites it here in a few weeks. Having 4 layers ought to be sufficient, and if not, I suppose I could always buy a couple more chickens that, you know, lay eggs. Just a thought.

Hooping it up!

Today is my last day of Summer break, so I'm banging away trying to get the last of my major summer projects done. I've got the 4 hoops up for the greenhouse. Seeing it come together is really cool. I'll do a full post once I get it all framed out.

DIY Soil Block maker

Ever since I read Eliot Coleman's "New Organic Grower", I've been interested in the concept of using soil blocks to start my seeds. Soil blocks are exactly what they sound like. Instead of filling plastic seed trays with potting mix, you mix up a variety of things, and then use a glorified Play-Doh tool to make little square blocks out of the soil. These blockers will usually press a little divot in the top of the block to place your seed in. They're not terribly expensive, and you can buy them online at a few different places. One of the main advantages that they have over seed trays is that the seedlings roots will naturally prune them self at the edge of the block, rather than circling the inside of the tray and becoming potbound. This makes potting on easier and reduces root shock when you transplant to the garden. Sounds good so far. Besides, if it's good enough for Eliot Coleman and the Dervaes family, it's worth a shot...right?

The cost of a block maker that produces 2" cubes ranges from $35 to $100+. My German heritage didn't take long to kick in and say "That's highway robbery, surely you can make one yourself for next to nothing". So I cobbled together so random things that were laying around my classroom.

The lid fit snugly inside the plastic jar. I drilled a hole in the middle of both of them.

I put the bolt through the holes.

I fastened the lid to the bolt in between two nuts and a washer.

I can now pull the handle back, fill the jar with soil, and push it out. The nut on the bottom creates a divot for the seed. The commercial block makers can make 2, 4, or 6 square blocks at a time. This contraption knocks out 1 round block a shot. We'll see if they are worth the trouble.