Category Archives: Resources

DC State Fair – Even You Can Enter the Fermented Vegetable Contest

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Our fridge: filled with delicious things in glass jars

 

Our own DC State Fair celebrates the growers, the makers, the brewers, the bakers and the fermenters.

Fermenting vegetables?

It’s not just for the Germans, Koreans and bachelors who never clean their fridge.

You can do it – do it this weekend.

You don’t have to grow your own veggies to ferment, just bebop yourself down to your farmers market, buy some stuff to ferment and get to it.

It does take a little planning. Get details below, but you will need non-iodized salt (such as sea or Kosher), an acceptable vessel (a clean glass jar with a lid or a crock) and some recipes call for non-chlorinated water.  You don’t need full-blown canning supplies. See how easy it really is:

  • Dr. Ben Kim: He wants you to buy stuff from him, so block those pop-ups, but his How to Make Kim Chi gives step-by-step pictures and cheer leading.

Once you’ve filled a few jars of fermented, locally grown, organic, hand-picked, biked-it-home epicurean treasure, you’re ready to register for the DC State Fair Fermented Vegetable Contest!  (Note: Your veggies do not need to be organic, local or transported by bike to be eligible to compete.  DC State Fair suggests reading over these researched recipes for fermenting success.  Only 50 entries can be accepted so get busy and register, $5 per entry.)

If your drunk roommate tosses your kimchi at 4:00 a.m. thinking it’s an appropriate time to clean the fridge, you should still join the 2012 DC State Fair fun Saturday, September 22nd, 2012.  As part of the Barracks Row Fall Festival along 8th Street SE on Capitol Hill, there will be a little something for everyone.

Even your hungover roommate.

Fall Gardening – Double Up and Catch Up

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Fall gardening.

Fall gardening frustrates me. We don’t have deer coming through our DC neighborhood but the squirrels pick up the slack for garden carnage. Fresh pots of soil read as “First Month Free” on a U-Store It for squirrels.

We also loose the midday sun behind the neighbor’s house way before first frost sets in, abruptly turning our full-sun back yard into a shade garden.

As a glutton for punishment, I’ll slide in under the wire this weekend with a scaled-back agenda of spinach, mesclun mix and radishes.

The fall gardening opportunity for some crops has passed, but check the following resources for your zone to feed that fall gardening bug:

  • Southern Exposure Seed Exchange: Growing Guides & Library (excellent info for everyone but planting dates are for the Southeast and mid-Atlantic)
  • Washington Gardener Magazine: The August Enews gardening checklist can’t be beat for the mid-Atlantic
  • Johnny’s Selected Seeds – Growing Guides (some of the tools are spreadsheets, but good info)
  • D. Landreth Seed Co – No “when to plant” look-ups, but sit and watch their home page as images of what you should be planting now rotate through and you’ll get excited for fall gardening.  Since 1784… Landreth has been around.

If you’re kind of done with gardening for a few months – you enjoy it but don’t really want to talk about what happened over the summer – don’t sweat it.  Fall harvest festivals abound with pick your own apples, pumpkins corn and ready-to-buy jams and pickles.

If you’re hard-core, you stopped reading this post at about the second line, you already have most of your fall seeds in the ground.

But do you have your bulbs ordered?

Event – The Jefferson Table and the Monticello Kitchen

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Living in Washington, DC, means you have friends working on incredible things.  Did you know the Smithsonian National Museum of of American History, Behring Center, has an Heirloom Garden?

Did you know Monticello’s Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants sent seeds there to grow for a heritage garden in collaboration with the National Museum of African American History and Culture?

Did you know you can participate in cooking demonstrations using those very plants grown from heritage seeds?

A friend involved in all this shared the great news with me.  If you live or work in DC (or will be here traveling), mark your calendar.  Note the cooking demonstration is at the USDA Farmers Market, details below.

The Jefferson Table and the Gillette Family Garden
Friday, June 8, 11:00am-1:30pm

Join culinary historian and African American Research Historian at Monticello, Leni Sorenson, Ph.D., as she leads several cooking demonstrations. Dr. Sorensen will base her teachings on several recipes from The Virginia Housewife, by Mary Randolph and the repertoire of Edith Fossett, an enslaved woman and the president’s cook at the White House and at Monticello upon Jefferson’s retirement. The vegetables used are among those planted in the Heritage Garden at the National Museum of American History including varietals of peas, greens, beets, cabbage and condiments.

This program is free and open to the public and will be repeated, Friday, September 21. Please call 202/633-0070 for more information. It is made possible through the collaboration of Monticello, Smithsonian Gardens, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farmer’s Market, 12th St. SW and Independence Av., SW. This program is in conjunction with the exhibition Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty on view through October 14, 2012.

Friday, June 8, 11:00am-1:30pm
U.S Department of Agriculture Farmer’s Market
12th St. SW and Independence Av., SW (directions)
Washington, DC
Metro Orange/Blue Lines Smithsonian

Gardenspotting – Native Plants at the Howard County Conservancy

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Native plants are your allies.  Invasives are the enemy.

My Twitter feed lit up recently with native and invasive plant posts.  The morning of our little trip up to the Howard County Conservancy with Neal (the husband), the fantastic Mid-Atlantic Invasive and their Native Look-alikes guide came my way.  It’s 68 pages of pdf joy with snappy graphics and stunning resolution – it looks great on my iPhone.  (It does not load well on my glitchy computer, but check it out for yourself).

I proclaim no expert knowledge of our local (DC, Maryland and Virginia) native plants.  But, I grew up in Florida watching all manor of natural setting get razed and replanted with subdivisions, strip malls, sod, exotic plants and colored mulch.  The hammock I grew up in and knew like the back of my hand with its passion fruit and wild berries is slowly disappearing, one 12-acre plot at a time.

Never tired of native plant gardens, whether around DC or afar, the Honors Garden native plants and native plant cultivars pulled me in for some gardenspotting.  The short photoset reveals my shallow Maryland native plant knowledge.  Once home, I compared my photos with online resources and only included plants who matched their markers.  I snapped many more but I lined up the wrong name for the frame.

So, instead of this post being wildly informative, let it inspire you to explore the Howard County Conservancy farmstead, woodland hikes, meadowland hikes and native plant Honors Garden.  For those living beyond DC and Baltimore, seek native species gardens and conservancies near you.  Nothing beats seeing plants in person.

Even if you have no interest in growing native species in your garden, familiar knowledge helps you decide perhaps to leave a patch of natives growing as you find them around your house.  Knowing invasives makes impulse buys at the garden center smarter for your garden and surrounding habitats.

A Few Maryland and Virginia Native Plant Resources:

- The University of Maryland Extension Native Plants brochure is wonderfully detailed and provides written descriptions but does not include specific plant images.

- Maryland Native Plant Society maintains a Native Plant Sources page, including upcoming plant sales.

- Virginia Native Plant Society lists upcoming native plant sales and swaps, more detailed plant information resides within the regional chapter pages (pull down menu under the “Chapters” tab).

A National Resource:

- Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas at Austin, you can view recommended species by state or province and search by light requirements, soil moisture, bloom time, bloom color, height and more.

DIY for Earth Day – More Pot Repair with Gorilla Glue

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Earth Day celebrates what you can do daily to help the environment.  Repairing items instead of throwing them away runs deep in our family.

You don’t always need tools to make repairs.  I have an arsenal of adhesives around the house and at our DC record store, Som Records, but I’ve found Gorilla Glue works particularly well for repairing terra cotta (clay) pots.

I posted about pot repair a month ago but this is so easy (and replacing pots adds up), here’s yet more incentive to repair your own.

This is a two-for-one.  We found a large pot left for trash on the curb with a big crack down its center.  The pot was still in one piece but would break if filled with soil.  This is where Super Glue just won’t work.  Super Glue (or Krazy Glue, etc) won’t fill gaps between two pieces but Gorilla Glue expands as it dries, making it perfect for this job.

The medium-sized pot is ours.  I left it out over winter and it cracked from the few freezes we had.  It’s cracked down the side and the bottom is completely separated.

The previous post gives detailed notes on using Gorilla Glue, but the captions here should guide your way.

Note:  I am a known over-gluer.  I overkill it with the glue just to make super sure it all holds.  You don’t have to use this much glue, the bottle directions warn to use sparingly.

Disclaimer:  I am not affiliated with Gorilla Glue, but we do share some love on twitter and follow each other.

Closer Look – The Univent on the Cold Frame

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I installed a Univent automatic vent opener on the cold frame to take all the guesswork out of when to open and close it for temperature regulation.

It costs around $50 and it works.  I love it.

It takes no electricity to operate, it works by means of a gas-filled cylinder and piston.  The gas expands or contracts as the temperature rises or falls and it moves the piston to open or close a vent (or cold frame lid).

It is very simple to use, just make sure to lightly lubricate the piston rod and moving parts (including your lid hinges).

I’ve noticed a bunch of search engine hits the last few days searching for “installing univent on cold frame.”  This could be because the instructions that come with the Univent are terrible.  With a dozen languages and an incredibly bad illustration set, the Univent instructions deserve their own Trophy of Fail.

I hope these photos help.  You can pull them up on your mobile device while installing your Univent as motivation while you struggle with the worst instructions you’ll see all season.

Post Publishing Note:

I am not affiliated with Univent nor do I receive items from Univent.  I simply chose a Univent opener for my cold frame after searching online.

This is a bonus post to a 6-part series -

DIY – The Beginnings of a Cold Frame (Part 1 of __ )
DIY – The Ends of a Cold Frame (Part 2 of __ )
DIY – The Assembly of a Coldframe (Part 3 of __ )
DIY – Painting the Cold Frame (Part 4 of __ )
DIY – Window Hacker (5 of __ )
DIY – Cold Frame – Fixing the Flaws (Part 6 of 6!)

DIY – Pot Repair with Gorilla Glue

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Broken clay pot?  Don’t trash it!

One of your late-fall garden chores is to dutifully empty your clay pots of annuals and store them in a dry place.  Why?  So your clay pot won’t get wet from rain/sleet/snow then freeze and crack.

I have yet got it together enough to do this.  Each spring I find a few pots that I scavenged/bought sitting there with a dead stalk, stale potting soil and a huge crack rendering it useless.

I might as well leave money in my pants then donate them to thrift – lazy money down the drain.

Are you seeing broken clay pots on the curb, set out as trash, broken cleanly into two or three pieces?  Another lazy soul left their pots out over winter.

Are all the pieces there?  Pick them up and take them home.

A bottle of glue only costs a few bucks.  Gluing a pot only takes a few minutes.  Salvaging a pot feels so handy.

So, whether you broke your own pot or scavenged someone else’s broken pot, let me introduce you to Gorilla Glue.

The instructions kept me from using it for years, saying to wet the surface first then clamp the glued items together for a period of time.  Super Glue is so fast and simple, why bother with Gorilla Glue?

For starters, Super Glue (or Krazy Glue, etc) does not do well on surfaces as porous as clay pots.  You have to apply quite a bit so it won’t disappear into the clay.

Next, even with the improved caps, Super Glue never seems to last long in the tube once you open it.  They solved this by selling little single-serve tubes of it in multi-packs, but now you’re buying and wasting a lot of packaging to salvage a pot.  Fixing a decent sized pot always takes, for me at least, more than one of those little single-shot tubes.

Finally, Crazy Glue is so thin and runny, if you don’t perfectly match up your pot pieces in seconds, there won’t be enough surface contact between the two pieces before the glue dries to hold it all together.  Thus, you spent time, effort and glue on a failed repair job.

(Oh, and who hasn’t glued their fingers together while repairing with Super Glue.  Lame.)

Gorilla Glue’s awesomeness comes from its expansion while it dries.  This makes it very effective on porous clay pots.  You don‘t have to align your broken pieces up with exact precision.  And, the fact that it does not dry instantly is in your favor, you can actually take a moment to align your pieces as well as possible without all the glue drying in seconds.  If do you end up with a tiny little gap, as long as it’s filled with Gorilla Glue, your repair job will still hold.

Regardless of your favorite glue or repair method, read the instructions on the glue bottle.  Following them means you’re more likely to have that pot back in rotation for spring.

Disclaimer:  I am not associated with Gorilla Glue, Super Glue or Krazy Glue.  I do not receive free stuff from them.  My endorsement is based solely on a short lifetime of repairing broken things.

DIY: HOW TO REPAIR A BROKEN CLAY POT WITH GORILLA GLUE

1.  Gather the pot pieces, bush off dirt if applicable.  Try to assemble the pot before even getting the glue out.  If you don’t have all the pieces, you should reconsider this project.  Or improvise.

2.  Determine if your pot will hold itself together better if you assemble it upright or upside down.  Whichever is more stable will be how you assemble it as you glue it.

2.  Gather your materials:  water, Gorilla Glue, cheap dental floss, latex gloves or household cleaning gloves, newspapers to protect your work surface from stray glue.

3.  Read the glue’s instructions.

4.  Per Step 3, lightly dampen one of the two surfaces as you prepare to assemble them.

5.  Apply glue to the dry surface evenly and without over applying.  (I negate this below in Step 7.)

6.  Assemble your pot, gluing as you go.

7.  Throw caution to the wind and apply yet more glue along your repair seams.  Take care not to glue your pot to your work surface.  Later discovering your successful repair job is firmly affixed to your table will negate any positive feelings of accomplishment.  (My work surface is not protected by newspapers because it is already ratty.)

8.  You don’t have to apply the extra glue, but I like the overkill.  If you are concerned about appearance, focus on applying the glue along the crack on the inner-pot side.

9.  Use cheap dental floss to delicately tie it all together.  You can use multiple pieces spaced apart if needed.  Dental floss is magical since it’s so strong yet so thin – it pulls free of the dried (or nearly dried) glue easier than any other common string.

10.  After an hour or two, gently remove the dental floss.  Do not move your pot until it sits overnight.

11.  If you applied the Step 7 overkill glue, your pot will have fancy glue marks.  If you find this horrifying, then skip Step 7 or simply turn the fugly side to the back when you use your awesome reclaimed pot.  You to not need the extra glue, Gorilla glue expands to fill the gaps and forms a very strong bond.

The Gorilla Glue holds great over time – a pot I reclaimed a year ago shows the glue yellowed in the sun but holds strong.

Still a Super Glue fan?  My old Super Glued pots work fine, they were just a headache to repair.

Cutworms – I am Winning

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SATURDAY:  I pleaded for help on twitter.

Something had cut down multiple basil seedlings.  Kathy Jentz with Washington Gardener suggested cutworms might be to blame.

In the evening hours between my original post and Kathy’s reply, another two basil seedlings were sliced down.

SUNDAY:  I found a cornmeal/molasses/Bt powder cocktail online that would work with the cold frame and went to town.

TUESDAY:  Today, two days after scattering the elixir, the basil STANDS!!!

My original tiny basil sprouts have three new tiny buddies and none have been cut down since sprinkling the cutworm kryptonite.

Winning.

Cutworms – DIY Fix for those Evil Seedling Slayers

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I’ve read about it, the grave discovery one day when you go to water your seedlings. Cut, at the base, as though tiny lumberjacks came with a tiny razor blade saw and went on a drunken spree, seedling to seedling through the night.

“Timmmber!“

Our basil fell prey to their weekend bender.

I called to twitter with pictures for help. I naively thought cutworms only targeted tomato plants.

Washington Gardener suggested cutworms and, indeed, their pallet for destruction goes far beyond tomatoes.

Sewn in egg crates and too small to place protective yogurt cup rings around, I found a cutworm solution that would work for the cold frame and I got to work.

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How I made my own cutworm no-man’s-land:

Ingredients

1. Cornmeal

2. Molasses

3. Bt powder (Bt powder is so handy against a slew of pests, it’s good to have on hand.)

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1. Start with an amount of cornmeal sufficient to sprinkle your seed pots with enough extra to treat the open ground within your cold frame.

2. Add Bt powder loosely based on the product’s instructions. I added about a tablespoon to about two cups cornmeal. Mix.

3. Add molasses. I completely guessed on the quantity. I didn’t want so much that it would be one sticky mass, I wanted to still be able to sprinkle the finished mixture. I added about a tablespoon. Mix with fork until evenly distributed.

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4. Sprinkle over seed pots and use the remaining mix to sprinkle over the exposed floor/ground of your cold frame. Cut worms travel the ground at night so head them off at the pass.

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Since my Bt powder comes in a squeezable applicator bottle, I carefully puffed a little into the cold frame with hopes it will settle out to finely coat everything and ward off any additional evil spirits cutworms. A little overkill satisfied my vengeful urge.

Be warned: Give a few practice squeezes before using a squeeze applicator bottle on your plants. It’s capable of powder-bombing your target. I usually invert it once then turn it upright and give a light tap to clear the orifice of excess powder.

And now I wait.

Hopefully those tiny lumberjacks won’t care for our cold frame any more.

Azalea Smoothie – DIY Fertilizer

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I announced to our two-year-old that we were going to make a smoothie for our azaleas.

She lit up then immediately looked doubtful, squinting her eyes at me slightly waiting for the punchline.  I could see her gears turning and imaged her trying to figure out how the bushes would hold the cup and drink through the straw, handless and mouthless.

I explained we would pour it on the ground around them and they would drink it through their roots.  Relieved, she lit up again, explaining back to me what I had just said.

Our poor azaleas.

They were planted four or five years ago by Apt #3 – her boyfriend was working for a landscaper that summer and these were brought home as rescues.  They just plod along with little more attention than watering but the neglect shows this spring as neighborhood bushes bloom and ours barely push buds out.  Our azaleas’ foliage looks decent (it’s not sparse) but the slight yellow tinge could mean the soil isn’t acidic enough.

Or it could mean a million other things.

Common homemade fertilizers are basic but magically cheap.  Recipes vary and people do this or that with kitchen scraps and spent tea bags.  I add a little fish emulsion to whatever home brew I make because, like Frank’s Hot Sauce, I put that sh*t on everything.  (Technically, I suppose it’s no longer DIY fertilizer if I add the store-bought fish emulsion but the stuff is so lovely for the plants.)

I went for gold and combined a few recipes.  I figure (a) those azaleas haven’t been fed in at least two years and (b) this mix is pretty mild for in-ground acid-loving plants.  Plus, rain is coming.

The Azalea Smoothie

- Two banana peels

- One dozen egg shells

- One cup spent espresso grounds

- 1 Tbs white vinegar

- 1 Tbs Epsom salts

- 3 Tbs fish emulsion (per the container instructions for flowering shrubs)

Blend in the blender with enough water to let it mix freely and blend until the egg shells are fine.  Pour into a gallon jug, top with water and shake.  Pull back your mulch and water the azaleas with it, shaking the jug often to distribute the egg shells.

The eggshells and coffee grounds might cancel each other out, but the egg shells break down slower and I’ll be out there with more coffee grounds in a week.

B, the toddler, found this entire process incredibly exciting (she watched the entire smoothie-making and then helped rake back the mulch and leaves with her little cultivator).  She talked about how we “Made smoothies for the azaleas!” the rest of the day.  That alone was worth gunking up my dish sponge with sand-fine egg bits that won’t rinse out.

DIY Reclaimed Oasis – A Trip to Community Forklift

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After considering starting seeds indoors this year, and looking at the amount of space we don’t have in our apartment for the quantity of seeds I’d like to start, a cold frame might be the way to go.

Here in DC we have the amazing Community Forklift — a huge warehouse full of salvaged and surplus building materials.  Ever wonder where you can get a used door, 10-year-old window sash, an old radiator or pretty much any length of perfectly good salvaged lumber?  This is your dream spot.

It’s a dream spot to all levels of DIYers, artists, contractors and gardeners.

And I got just about everything I need to build our cold frame, plus extra wood for other projects, for $21.  More on that in a few days when I actually build it.

Pictures are worth more than anything I could write about visiting Community Forklift, we’ll be back soon.  Click on the pics below for a larger view.

BREAKING News – New Plant Hardiness Zone Map

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Today, January 25, 2012, USDA Unveils New Plant Hardiness Zone Map.

From the press release:

“For the first time, the new map offers a Geographic Information System (GIS)-based interactive format and is specifically designed to be Internet-friendly. The map website also incorporates a “find your zone by ZIP code” function.”

“Compared to the 1990 version, zone boundaries in this edition of the map have shifted in many areas. The new map is generally one 5-degree Fahrenheit half-zone warmer than the previous map throughout much of the United States. This is mostly a result of using temperature data from a longer and more recent time period; the new map uses data measured at weather stations during the 30-year period 1976-2005. In contrast, the 1990 map was based on temperature data from only a 13-year period of 1974-1986.”

This is exciting!  Previous map was terrible to look at online if you live where a few zones come together.

You can find the new map here.