More Whole Wheat

One whole wheat switch that I have been resisting is pasta.  In the past whole wheat pasta has always been too bland and heavy for me.  Just not the right texture.  

Anyway, I had been resisting the change, but I recently bought some organic 100% whole wheat pasta that claimed to be light tasting.  It actually was much better than I remember the whole wheat pastas of the past being!  But just in case I was planning on trying to add flavor to the dish in other ways.  I also like to try to maximize my vegetable intake at most meals.

My husband does not like as many veggies as me, so I cooked the veggies separately and added them to the sauce at the end.  I put browned ground beef and sauteed mushrooms into all of the sauce.  Then I also added sauteed yellow squash, onion, and red pepper to my sauce.  I topped it off with some Parmesan cheese and some fresh organic basil from my herb garden, and it turned out to be a delicious dinner!

- Laura

How much!?

I went to my local natural food store this week.  I normally am not that careful about checking over my receipt (I know I should be).  But this week I happened to glance over it.  I bought one small butternut squash.  Here it is next to an average sized peach.

Now imagine my shock when I saw the price!  $9.49 for one small squash!?  I know that organic produce is a little bit more expensive than conventional, but this seemed a bit excessive. 

When I looked more closely I saw that the receipt said 4.77 lbs of butternut squash.  There is no way that is a four and three quarter pound squash!  So I took it back to the store and politely asked about it.  The woman working at customer service was very nice and apologetic.  She gave me a full refund for the squash, so basically I ended up with a free butternut squash. 

A happy ending.

- Laura

Kirkwood Market

I went to a local market in Kirkwood which is a suburb of St. Louis.  The market is open every day of the week, which I was impressed by.  The one in my area is only one day each week for a few hours.

When I got to the market I discovered that more vendors show up on some days than on others.  There were only three vendors the day that I went. 

I was kind of disappointed though because one of the vendors sold fruits and vegetables that they obviously had not grown locally.  Mango and kiwi in Missouri?  Prepackaged raspberries and mushrooms with commercial brand names on them?

However, they did have lots of locally grown tomatoes.  This was my favorite part.  You just cannot beat home grown tomatoes!

 The peaches had just come into season, and that is what I ended up buying.  I ate one each morning for breakfast.  They were delicious!  I was disappointed that I could not buy anything else because I did not think that I could safely transport them all the way home to the Chicago area.

- Laura

Roots

Felt-O-Rama is on a one week hiatus...  Come back next week for a great felt project!  

I learned something interesting a few months ago from one of my co-workers.  She also has only a balcony (I like to refer to it as my half a yard) to garden on, but she has a great green thumb.

One day as we were discussing our gardens she told me that if you cut a piece of a plant off and put it in water it will soon start to grow new roots.

I thought this was pretty cool, and I wanted to try it.

A few weeks ago I was checking on my bean plants which are planted in a container on my balcony.  One of them seemed slumped over from a particularly windy night.  I tried to pull the plant back into an upright position.  The plant snapped right off near the bottom of the stalk.  I really did not think that I had pulled it that hard!

So I remembered what my co-worker had told me, and I decided to give it a try.  I put the bean plant in a glass of water.  After a few days the plant started to slump over a little bit.  I was getting worried that this was not going to work.  However, a few days after that the plant had little roots growing out from the bottom, and the rest of the plant had perked back up!

I left it about a week more so that the roots could grow a little bit longer...

And then I replanted it in the container that it had originally come from.

- Laura

Felt-o-rama: Felt Food

My mom always told me I should start the day out right by eating breakfast.  

Meghan's son Henry recently turned two.  About two weeks after his birthday I finally completed his gift and mailed it to him.  Luckily, it fits right in to our felt-o-rama month.  I would link back to some blogs that I used for inspiration but there are just too many of them!  I looked at many different blogs and took my favorite ideas, and adapted some and made them my own.  

Henry has many different options for lunch: 

 

And for dinner I sure hope he likes Italian:  

Apparently the pizza is his favorite so far. . .  

The classic basketball, soccer ball, and bacon pizza is my favorite too! 

Gutter Garden Details

A few people have asked questions about the details of my gutter garden.  I will try to answer your questions here, and please let me know if you have any more. 

1.  Does it really grow enough lettuce?  Yes!  Right now the lettuce is not fully grown yet, but it is a 10 foot gutter, so I have one ten foot row of lettuce.  The plants are jut starting to get big enough to pick the lettuce, but I think that I planted them a little bit late.  The problem with the water displacing the dirt also put me back a little bit.  I have had enough lettuce for the occasional salad so far, but more importantly I use it a lot for lettuce in other recipes, or on a sandwich, in tacos etc...

2.  What did you buy and how much did it cost?  I purchased a 10 foot piece of gutter.  My balcony railing is about 12 feet long, so this worked perfectly for me.  If you need a shorter piece you can cut it smaller, and if you need a larger one there are connector pieces that you can buy.  I also needed to buy a total of two end caps to seal the gutter at each end, and three pieces for mounting the gutter.  These were both found next to the gutters.  I wish that I had thought to take pictures of the pieces before I assembled the gutter. . .  I had to choose between a metal or plastic gutter and accessories.  I went with the plastic because it was thicker and seemed like it might withstand the weight of the dirt better than the metal.  Then I picked out some wire to mount it with.  I chose wire because in my condo complex there are association rules that nothing can be screwed into the brick or railings.  With the wire I can take the gutter down leaving no damage to the railing at all.  There were many different weights of wire to choose from.  I chose one that is about the same thickness as a paperclip.  I found this in the section near hardware to mount pictures on your wall.  On the same shopping trip I also bought organic lettuce, cilantro, parsley, basil, and dill seeds along with a bag of organic potting soil.  For all of these items the total cost was about $35.  I also had to purchase the piece of siding that I used for an awning at a later time.  The siding is twelve feet long and it cost $13.95. 

3.  How did you hang the gutter and the awning?  Pictures will help here.  The first thing that I did was drill a hole about every six inches along each side of the bottom of the gutter to provide adequate drainage.  Then I had my sister help me hold the gutter on the outside of the railing while we attached the gutter to the railing with wire in three different places.  Below you can see the wire in the middle of the picture. 

Below are close ups of three different angles.  I hope they help.  There was a hole at the top of the gutter hanging piece meant for a screw (I think) so we threaded the wire through the hole and then up and around the top of the railing to hold the gutter up.  Then we went around the side of the railing so that it could not slide back and forth or swing outwards. 

We also drilled this hole seen on the bottom of the L shaped piece holding up the gutter and fed the wire through so that the gutter would be held securely to the railing in two different places.  This is just to add security and stability.  Once we had all three of the L pieces secured to the railing the gutter seemed very secure.  We filled it with dirt and then planted the seeds and watered them. 

Now for the awning. . .

Here is a picture of my balcony so that you can see the brick pillars  that sit in each corner.  I wrapped the same wire that I used to hang the gutter around the pillar.  I wrapped two pieces of wire around each pillar and put one a row of bricks higher than the other.  

I threaded the higher wire through the corner of the siding closest to me, and then twisted it as tightly as I could to keep it secure.  I used a pliers to really pull it tight. 

Then I threaded the lower wire through the outside corner of the siding so that it would hang lower than the inside side.  This way when the water drips onto the siding it all rolls off out over the edge of my balcony.  

 

Here you can see the edge of the balcony above me and how the water drips onto the awning and then right out over the edge of the gutter so that the lettuce stays safe from the rough water drops.  The gutter does still get some water on it though, which is good so that I do not have to water it too often using non rain water. 

4.  Do the neighbors below you get mad because the water drips onto their balcony?  No, if you look closely at the picture above you can see that the awning hangs out past the bottom of the balcony above.  All of the balconies are lined up. so that means that the water actually drips out past the balcony below me and straight down to the ground.  They actually probably got more wetness from the rain before I had the gutter there because the stuff dripping from the balcony above me would then continue on off the edge of my balcony and to the one below me. 

- Laura

Growing Vertically

Though I have a bit more than half a yard out back, a lot of the space is in full shade.  To make the best of what space we have, we decided to grow our potatoes in a container that grows along with them.

We took four long stakes for the corner pieces and a bunch of cedar boards for the sides.  As the potatoes grow up we pile the dirt up around the stems and then they grow some more and we add another cedar plank.

Here is the potato planter a few weeks after planting.  You can see that we had to quickly add two more boards!

This one is after the fourth board was added.  Henry loves to help pile on more dirt to the potatoes.  It's a great toddler crop!

One thing that I am really excited about is that since we used small screws to put this together, we can simply unscrew one of the bottom boards and begin harvesting potatoes from the ground up.  We don't have to wait until they are all brown and dying back before dumping out a container.  

This particular planter is growing on the north side of our deck next to where we grow moss, actually.  It's getting about 6 hours of morning sun and growing like crazy in a space that we never really used before.

-Meghan

Gutter Garden

I live in a condo with a small balcony.  For the past two summers I have tried different methods of growing tomatoes on my balcony.  There is just nothing like homegrown tomatoes!  After having no success I finally accepted the reality that my balcony faces north so it does not get enough sunlight for tomatoes.  So this summer I tried to find some items that might fare better in less sunlight.  I chose yellow squash, green beans, and lettuce.  I am also growing a variety of herbs inside on my windowsill.  I will tell you more about those in a later post.  Today I will focus on the lettuce.  How to grow lettuce in a very small space?  My sister sent me the link to this great solution from apartment therapy.  It seemed like the perfect solution for me.  A garden planted in a gutter! 

I bought all of the materials, drilled some holes in the bottom for drainage, and then hung the gutter on the outside of my balcony's railing (for maximum sun exposure).  I filled it with potting soil and planted a mix of different organic lettuce seeds.  In about  a week I started to see small sprouts. 

Then disaster struck!  When it rained the water collected on the edge of the balcony above ours and came down in large drops on the side of the gutter.  All the dirt was splashing out of the gutter and all over my railing. 

Here you can see the empty areas on the left hand side. 

So I went back to the hardware store and looked for something that I could use as an awning to block the raindrops without blocking the sun.  I came home with a piece of aluminum siding.  I strung wire around the brick columns on each side of the balcony to suspend the piece of siding.  Here you can see the gutter at the bottom and the awning running along the top. 

And amazingly it worked!  I had to fill in the empty spots and replant a few seeds, but then the lettuce started to grow. . .

And grow. . .

And grow. . .

This weekend I was able to pick my first batch of lettuce. 

I added some almonds, feta cheese, dried cranberries, and balsamic vinaigrette and had a delicious salad for lunch. 

-Laura