Rainy Mushy Day

     It was very rainy and mushy all day today.  Nice temperature, but couldn't go outside.  Erin and I decided to do a few indoor things.  Our friend Heather mentioned a book to us called Make the Bread, buy the butter, it's basically a book about a lady who specs out the cost of homemade grocery items vs store bought, even including your time.  Erin has been using a crazy amount of yogurt lately with various recipes and such, plus Piper would eat it at every meal if we let her, so we decided to make our own.  It takes a half gallon of milk, organic of course, and a quarter cup of store bought yogurt.  You almost boil the milk, cool it, add the yogurt (starter) and let it sit on the counter overnight.  Yeah gross huh.....but low and behold, this morning, we had a half gallon of yogurt ready for the fridge.  It's runny, like the organic stuff in the store, not that fake yoplait or dannon stuff.  We did take some and let it "strain" through cheese cloth to get a more "Greek" style.  In the end we had over a quart of runny baking/eating /runny yogurt, and almost a quart or Greek style, plus at least 2 cups of yogurt whey, which will be used in my next bread recipe.  Half a gallon of organic milk is 10 cents more expensive than a quart of organic yogurt.  We win..  I'd post pics, but it really wasn't all that interesting, and even thought the whey has a cool greenish tint to it, the color doesn't translate in the pictures.  So here's a picture of me twisting our Rooster's neck, well not really, but sometimes we wish I would.

He's OK...honestly....

Our Growlight shelves.

Soil cubes...those in the middle are cucumbers

We started our seeds about a week and a half ago.  Planted lots of tomato plants, pepper plants, a few soy beans, some sunflowers, carrots (yes even though they generally are a direct sow), some cucumbers, broccoli, and cauliflower.  Probably some other things but can't remember off the top my head.  I started the tomatoes and peppers in little solo cups so they'd have plenty of room to grow and "pot up" around the stems to encourage more roots.  Everything else got started in things that were available, from empty sugar containers, egg cartons to water bottles.  I even used the container the grow lights came in.  I also made this nifty little soil cube maker.  It's really an old paperclip holder, you know the ones with the magnet hole on top.  I drilled a hole in the bottom and used an old sign piece that fit into it.  Now you pack it with damp starter soil and press it like a cookie press.  It pushes this neat little cube of soil out that you use to put your seed in..  Somehow plants will "self prune" their roots when they sense there is no dirt, so instead of circling the pot bottom and getting root bound, they focus more on the plant.  They work ok, but you have to be careful watering.  The cubes go straight into the ground when it's warm enough.  Going back to my friend Emilio's advice, I've really started trying to reuse/repurpose things.  Obviously the soil cubes don't cost anything but the starter soil.  This year I also used old lettuce containers, sugar containers and like I said earlier, the boxes the grow lights came in.  They were all clear plastic that was sturdy enough to hold the dirt and make like a mini greenhouse around the seedling.

Broccoli started in salad/lettuce containers

These were the grow light boxes, soybeans and sunflowers
they fit perfect in a window sill.

These are old sugar containers with corn seedling in it.  Corn
normally is direct sow, but it's still too cold, so I figured I'd give
seedling a shot, when we plant these in a few weeks, we'll direct
sow the next batch, so the harvest will extend

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

If you cut a water bottle in half, it makes a dandy green house,
once the plant doesn't need the top, remove it.

This is inside our grow light shelf.  It's just a couple tube lights above the plants.  I lined the inside of the shelves with white paper and plastic to keep the light in and moisture.  If you look in the back on the bottom left shelf, you'll see our carrot seedlings in the toilet paper tubes.  Generally, carrots are direct sow, they really hate being disturbed by transplanting.  But I figured if they started in the tubes, then when I moved them and planted the tubes, they wouldn't "feel" the transplant shock to the roots, since the roots wouldn't be disturbed, plus it would give at least 6 inches of perfect growing soil to be in with no chance of weeds or rocks to interfere.  So when we plant these guys in the ground, we'll start another batch, direct sow, to extend the harvest.  I'm also tinkering with using some PVC and plastic sheeting to make a hoop house over one of our garden beds, this would let me transplant this stuff into the ground sooner and leave the fall  vegetables in longer before the winter comes.  We'll see.  More to follow.....