Tag: Homesteading

November Garden Tasks
Gardening · Urban Homesteading

November Garden Tasks

Sarah

Garden Tasks for Zones 7-8 In The PNW

November is a hard month to be productive in the gardens for me. In zones 7 and 8 in the Pacific Northwest, it’s getting dark and dreary many days of the week. It’s hard to be productive that first week as the sun rises so late. The chickens don’t want to come out either. It’s hard enough for me to even go outside some days.

November 4th, 2023 is the last day for the sun to set after 5 pm for a very long time. We still have 1 hour 28 minutes to lose before the Winter Solstice. On November 5th the sun will rise at 7 am’ish, but it will be dark before 5 pm. You can almost hear enthusiasm pulling out of our bodies. It whispers “go rest for the month”. But don’t believe it. It’s good to get outside, just plan for the hours when the wind pushes the rain away. An hour here and there will leave you feeling that much better. Especially if you get sun in your face. It will leave you happier and feeling more smooth.

Often by early November we have had some good fall rains where the earth gets well soaked. Even a first frost. Often not a deep one, but a warning of what is coming. And that frost is a reminder of your first chore:

Chores To Do:

  • Get your garlic planted as soon as you can, if you haven’t done it already. You need it in the ground NOW.
  • Check for broken branches and trees, and haul out.
  • Pull out any remaining annual plants that are now dead.
  • Weed beds.
  • Make sure to bring in delicate citrus trees if you haven’t. We keep ours in the greenhouse.
  • Do a fall fertilizing of blueberry bushes and trees, water well after, if you didn’t in October.
  • If building new beds for next year (the cooler weather makes it a nice time!) lay down a lot of cardboard to help smother weeds. Place rocks or bricks on top to weight down from winds.
  • Clean out your garden shed on a sunny day if you haven’t yet (If you have one).
  • Sharpen tools and clean them for winter storage if you haven’t yet.
  • Clean your greenhouse (if you have one), removing dead plants and giving it a good sweeping out.
  • Take any leftover soil mix (if you have any) and fill 4″ pots with it, to be ready for next spring. I store them in our greenhouse. This way the soil doesn’t get water logged outside.
  • Wash and dry empty pots, stack for fall storage, out-of-the-way, so fall storms don’t blow them away.
  • Water and turn your compost piles/bins.
  • Should you find any deals on berry or fruit trees, get them in the ground in the next few weeks before a heavy, deep frost occurs.
  • Avoid any desire to prune trees. Wait till it is winter! Trees and bushes are starting to go into being dormant, and need their rest. Let them lose their leaves.
  • Speaking of leaves, if you have a good crop falling consider picking them up to use on your garlic beds. Otherwise just leave the leaves to do their thing.
  • Take off hoses, and consider getting faucet bib covers on this month. Remove hose heads and tuck them away for the season.
  • Winterize your irrigation systems.

Links To Check Out:

Chickens:

  • Expect a lot less eggs many days (if you don’t add supplemental lighting, which I do not). Chickens need a rest as well. You may well have gone to no eggs at all, for the past few weeks, especially if your birds are over 2.
  • Clean their coops and runs, and start laying the wood chips a bit thicker for the coming cool weather.
  • We let our chickens out of their run when we are working so they can get time on dry ground (as in grassy areas). Often the fall rains lead to a mud pit in the coop. Sunny days help it, as does buying or chipping wood chips (the durable kind) to lay in walk areas in their runs to control mud.
  • Toss your chickens as many scraps from the dying back garden to get variety in their diets. Save your kitchen scraps as well for them. Far better for them to have it than the compost pile.
  • Let them out to till areas with their little feet.
  • Stock up a couple bags of feed to have on hand in case of bad weather, so you don’t run out if it snows.

~Sarah

An Affordable Potting Mix Tray For The Greenhouse
Gardening · Homesteading · Urban Homesteading

An Affordable Potting Mix Tray For The Greenhouse

Sarah

When we built our Sunglo Greenhouse it came with a built in potting soil tray that was held inside, in a spot on the benches. Handy, yes. Affordable? No. I mean, it was really nice and huge, but if one were to buy it outright…ouch. Anytime it’s a custom piece for a hobby, you know you will pay for it.

And many greenhouses, especially lower cost ones, do not come with a potting soil tray. Or a place for it to be in.

Having a dedicated bin to mix up your potting soil is to me a necessity in homesteading and gardening. One it keeps messes down, but it also allows you to mix up custom blends. This frees you from what too many gardeners do: They buy 1 or 2 cubic foot bags of premixed soil, cut it open and dig out of it as needed. It ends sitting on the floor, leaking, and making a mess. It’s also not at the height you need, and who wants to stoop over? Especially when it is mid-season and you are potting up tomato and pepper plants into bigger pots.

What one sees as an “option” to me isn’t a bonus. If you look on Amazon and in places selling greenhouse accessories, you will see “table top trays” but they have an open front, so you will end up wasting soil constantly.

I however have a simple, under $8, option. And you can find it quickly at your local Home Depot (and many other hardware stores of course).

It’s a Medium Mixing Tub, found in the concrete aisle.

These sturdy tubs can handle 2 cubic feet of mix. With sloped sides so soil doesn’t go everywhere. You can lay a pot tray across it, for easy filling and somewhere to fit the filled pots on.

I have an outdoor table, one of the metal camping ones, that sits outside, next to the greenhouse, where I can work on pots. I have been using it for 5 years and it’s still going. I do it outside to keep all the space in the greenhouse for plants. Take plants out, bring back in. And I am not working in a 100° or hotter greenhouse in May. Under the table I can store my bags of ingredients I use to make soil in the good weather, so I can whip up more soil as needed.

These trays will also sit on a heavy duty shelving in your greenhouse. (Make sure any shelving you have can support the weight, soil isn’t lightweight.)

It’s a cheap, durable solution for your growing.

~Sarah

It’s Time To Plant Garlic
Gardening · Homesteading · Urban Homesteading

It’s Time To Plant Garlic

Sarah

Yesterday I pushed myself to get work done on the homestead. It can be hard to get focused in October and November. It’s bleak out, a little chilly and often rainy here in the PNW. But I get a feeling when it is time. Time to plant garlic that is.

Call me crazy, but I will ignore it as a chore and then suddenly, I just know it is time. Maybe I have been doing it so long, or it is a smell in the air.

The weather is about to shift, with arctic born air coming into Washington. So don’t mock me on the smell part. The air is different this week.

Nonetheless, I got the message loudly yesterday and got my best farm helper, the youngest, and we got to work.

This fall we are tearing down and rebuilding the majority of our growing areas, so I was frustrated on where would I plant garlic, since it must be in the ground soon.

So I sat down in the garden and just thought about it. It came to me that I should rip everything out and use the swimming pool beds to do garlic in. So we weeded 7 of the pools. The stuff in them was done for the season, and I just needed the push to finish it all. We have 10 pools in the area. One has strawberries in it, the other has self seeded green onions coming up, and the largest bed I just pulled South American potatoes out of…and if one knows potatoes, once planted there, you will have potatoes for life.

We also planted garlic in a random raised bed that sits by itself. It was the base of a chicken coop for a couple of years, till it was falling in. We grew bush green beans in it this year. It works well with just a low fence around it, which will keep feet out of it. Overall nothing but humans want to eat garlic I have found. The deer ignore it. The rabbits don’t want it.

Garlic will grow quite well in raised beds. If in colder areas you will want to smother with hay or leaves to help insulate during the cold months. This we will do after the big maple trees drop leaves. That is just starting however.

The fence on the lone raised bed will also keep the leaves in, and not blow away in the winds in December.

Last month we had separated all of our garlic:

It was fully cured, and ready to go. Much easier this way than having to break up bulbs as we worked. See this post for how we accidentally cured our garlic this year.

It only took 2 hours to weed and plant where we could. I felt better knowing I had my garlic in the ground, even if it wasn’t all of it. There is a high chance this coming week we will have the first frost of the year. And this is what garlic thrives on.

~Sarah

Pantry Staples: Scalloped Potato Mix
Homesteading · Prepping · Recipes · Urban Homesteading

Pantry Staples: Scalloped Potato Mix

Sarah

Back in 2020, and earlier, I used to pick up scalloped and Au Gratin potato mixes as part of our long-term food storage. They were quite affordable (often 10 for $10 back in the day) and lasted a long time. The boxes didn’t make much, but at that price I could pull a meal together with 3 boxes in a 9″x13″ pan. Prices though now? It seems they hover around $3 a box where we live. That being said it’s even in stock. It’s not a good choice for prepper storage anymore. And honestly…it’s so salty and full of questionable ingredients, that even cost wise, making it yourself is so much better.

Here are the ingredients currently in use in a box of Betty Crocker Scalloped Potatoes:

Potatoes*, Enriched Flour (wheat flour, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), Maltodextrin, Corn Starch, Salt, Potassium Phosphate. Contains 0.5% or less of: Vegetable Oil (canola, soybean, and/or sunflower oil), Onion*, Spice, Celery*, Monoglycerides, Whey, Cheddar Cheese* (cultured milk, salt, enzymes), Lactic Acid, Calcium Lactate, Nonfat Milk*, Chicken Broth*, Silicon Dioxide (anticaking agent), Color (annatto & turmeric extract), Sodium Phosphate, Natural Flavor, Blue Cheese* (cultured milk, salt, enzymes), Buttermilk, Coconut Oil, Pea Protein Isolate, Rice Flour. Freshness Preserved by Sodium Bisulfite. *DRIED

Let’s just stop here and ponder….when did they start putting pea protein isolate into the mix? If you have a peanut allergy, pea protein can be a trigger. Be careful.

And chicken broth? Sure not vegetarian friendly if you care. You wouldn’t think this would have chicken broth in it….but also if you make this yourself, you can control the sodium. Boxed mixes are usually very salty.

Homemade scalloped potato recipes are often cheese free, where as Au Gratin potatoes do have cheese, but the dry mixes do cheese for both, because…cheese sells.

The Idahoan brand has a better ingredient list, but not fabulous either. I hate xantham gum, and yes, it contains it.

Betty Crocker brand contains bioengineered ingredients (most likely it is corn and soy).

I knew we had a couple #10 can of dehydrated potatoes on hand, and I went down to get one. I found I could make 3 batches of dry mix with the can, with a cup or so of potatoes left over. They can be added to soups and such easily.

I paid $9,99 a can when I bought them earlier this year. They are in the $16 range right now, so watch the price, as it can go up and down.

The can is just over 1 pound, and equals 3 pounds fresh potatoes. Dehydrated potatoes do contain sodium bisulfite, which preserves them. The only way to get around that is to dehydrate thinly sliced and cooked potatoes.

The recipe uses around 7.5 ounces of dried potatoes, which means 1 batch of the mix is basically equal to the “family” size boxes you can sometimes find that are just shy of 8 ounces in weight. And those cost a lot more than the standard $3 box does. The potatoes and mix of ours came in at exactly 8 ounces dry weight.

The mix is easy to mix up and put into quart mason jars, to seal up for future meals. Use a canning funnel to do it. First, mix the dry ingredients well, place in jar, then add in potatoes, gently rapping the jar to settle them into it. If you want long-term storage, use a Food Vac sealer to pull the air out and keep in your pantry.

Scalloped Potato Mix

Ingredients:

  • ½ cup dry milk
  • 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
  • 2 Tbsp cornstarch
  • 1 Tbsp dried chives
  • 1 tsp onion powder
  • ½ tsp sea salt
  • 1/8 tsp ground black pepper
  • 3 cups dehydrated potato slices

For cooking:

  • 3 Tbsp unsalted butter
  • 2¾ cups boiled water

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°. Lightly oil an 8″x8″ baking dish or a 2-quart dish.

Add the potatoes to the dish, then sprinkle the dry ingredients over it.

Slice the butter into pieces, and top with.

Pour the boiling water over and stir until the dry ingredients are fully dissolved.

Bake for 45 minutes.

Take out, let rest for 5 minutes and serve.

Notes:

Many scallop potatoes have cheese, which you should add when you do the water. I used parmesan cheese, a half cup worth, and stirred it in. Most cheeses would work fine. Yes, you could add dried cheese to the mix, but cheese has a shorter storage life than everything else and does have moisture, which you don’t want the potatoes absorbing, which they will.

To make it a more filling meal, add in a can (12 to 14 ounces) of drained chicken breast and a can of drained chopped green beans.

See above for long-term storage.

~Sarah