Gardener of the Year

Remember that little plan we had to gradually increase our edible garden space, year by year? Baby steps prevent failure. Well, last year's one bed heard about the babies and had a few. There are now six.

It was actually a sprinkler problem that did us in; we just decided to devote a whole sprinkler zone (otherwise known as half our back lawn) to the endeavor. So, since I had all this space, I decided I must grow from seed, because I couldn't fill up nearly 200sf of garden space with $eedling$. And since I was buying seeds, I naturally bought 29 varieties, or $75 worth. On top of all the work - and money - of actually putting these beds in, filling them, hooking up an irrigation system, killing the grass around them all, and covering it with gravel.

Huh. Wonder why that didn't all work.

As you can see above, we're getting there.

What's not working:

• The grass isn't all dead, nor all covered with weed block. Obviously the gravel isn't yet there. We didn't even get to re-waterproofing last year's bed.
  
• What is there is extra soil parts we still haven't moved out of the way (but it holds the weed block down nicely, and makes an excellent doggie obstacle course).
• Um, gardens don't typically have this much visible dirt in July. I've got at least 2.5 beds worth of space that's not filled at all.
  
• Square foot gardening is kind of dumb when you don't fill up all the space. There are five tomato plants shoved into the back half of that far middle bed, and they're going to be a bitch to harvest.
  
• Notice the bolting arugula in the far left back corner. Pretty though.
  
• Those corn stalks on the right are actually ornamental, which I didn't notice until I brought them home. Also, it appears to be dying.
• My turnips were eaten by rolly polleys, then the remaining bits rotted in the garage.
  
• There's a hose draped over that giant bag of peat moss because we have no irrigation.
  
• Everything you see here was grown from seedlings, unless you can make out the carrots behind the corn, or the potatoes in the ground behind that.
  

Phew, so is there anything that is working?

• Five beds built & filled
• Pretty much everything I planted from seedlings is doing beautifully. That's a cantaloupe at front left. Expect many recipes. The entire back left bed is lettuces & arugula, and it's awesome.
  
• I did manage to get radishes, turnips, potatoes, and carrots to grow from seed. It's nothing I'm going to sell at the farmer's market, but I MADE FOOD.
  
• There was plenty of laziness and outright unexplained failure involved in the seed starting, but I do feel like I learned some things I can use to improve next time. I still have plenty of seeds from my buy that are still good, and it's time to start things again for cool season crops.

And just this last Saturday, we had our most local meal yet, cooked on the grill and enjoyed al fresco on the back patio. Herb-roasted homegrown potatoes, salad (romaine, buttercrunch, marvel of four seasons, arugula, carrots and cucumber, all homegrown, with homemade vinaigrette), and Marin Sun Farms chicken, served with homebrewed British Bitter.

In true Not Laura Ingalls style, the cucumber tasted like ass and had to be picked out of the salad and fed to the dogs.

Proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy

In our never ending quest to spend less money, Not Michael Landon and I decided we could cut the alcohol budget. Not by drinking less, of course. By homebrewing.

I was raised a beer snob. I did the college thing of course, but at this point in my life I'm too old for Bud Light. I'll take water instead. But if there's a problem with good beer, it's that it's not cheap. Small batches, craftsmanship, and increasing grain prices can add up to a six pack for $9+. I've seen estimates that basically say if you drink the mass-produced big 3, skip it, but if you're into good beer, homebrewing will save money. I'll get into dollars later, but we've found this to be the case.

One of the (many) great things about homebrewing is it's naturally easy and uncomplicated. It's about drinking beer for pete's sake, it's not going to be rocket science. Brewing supply shops sell kits of equipment to get you started, as well as kits of ingredients with instructions. The simplest recipes are literally "boil a can of hopped, sugary goo for an hour".

On brewing day, we set up our turkey deep fryer, fill the pot with water, and steep some grain tea on the stove. Once we're boiling, pop in the grain tea and malt extract, and add hops at various points according to recipe. Boil for an hour, then cool down as quickly as possible. Siphon into the glass fermenter, add yeast, and leave it in the tub for a week or two.

On bottling day, we spend about a half hour washing and sanitizing bottles, then boil the bottling sugar, decant into bottles, and cap. Everything ages for another few weeks, and then we're ready to drink.

We buy mainly organic, quality ingredients, from a local co-op. We've tried a few more mainstream kits and found a difference in clarity, sediment and evenly tasty flavor. A kit of ingredients, adding yeast and bottle caps, will run $40-$66 with most around $42-$47. This is for a batch of 5 gal, from which we usually net just over 48 bottles. Math math, yada yada, that's $5.56/6pk or $11.12/12 pk. This usually beats even the best sale prices on decent 12 packs.

So... drinking. What are we drinking already?! We've tried a dark lager (lagers are trickier, and this was our first batch, so that shows just how easy the whole thing is), strong scotch ale, ESB, porter, British bitter, and we just bottled a red ale. I can't say there's one I wouldn't do again, and they've all changed slightly over the 2 cases, but if I had to pick a favorite, I'd probably go with the dark lager. Flavorful, malty, just enough hops.

If you're interested in learning more, check out http://www.breworganic.com/index.htm. There's tons of good info, and you can even buy all their products and equipment online. We're lucky to have them local to us, but considering beer is mostly water, even ordering online has a smaller carbon footprint that buying ready-made beer, unless it's very local.

Happy Brewing!