self sufficient life

Winter composting

Most gardeners know that good compost is an invaluable addition to their garden soil and the avid gardeners I know all have a compost pile to make their own compost. Few, however, continue their composting during the winter months because they think the cold weather will grind all activity in the compost bin to a halt.

Yes, the composting process is a lot slower in winter, but the process doesn’t stop completely. Even if the temperatures drop well below freezing this winter, a little work and planning now will give your composting a head start once spring arrives.

Harvest your compost, so you have plenty of room in your bin for the winter composting. Since you will be mostly adding greens to your bin throughout winter, you’ll need some browns to keep the bin in balance, this is where all the leaves you raked up come in handy.

With a steady supply of fresh kitchen scraps, your compost pile should be able to keep itself fairly warm and do it’s thing. Some insulation around the bin can help to keep the temperatures up and speed up the composting process a little. While the best place for your compost bin in the summer is under some big trees, or any other shaded place to prevent the compost from drying out, in winter you’ll want to place it in a sunny spot, so the sun can warm up your compost pile.

What if you don’t want to move your compost pile or add insulation? Keep on adding your kitchen scraps to the bin and balance with dry leaves. When your compost pile completely freezes this winter, don’t worry, it’s a good thing! The freezing and thawing will damage the fibers in your soon-to-be compost making the breakdown easier once spring arrives.

Do you compost during winter?

What to do with all that basil

Do you grow basil on your kitchen sill too? Those little pots of basil that you can buy in most supermarkets are great if you only need a few leaves in a salad or for decoration, but if you let them grow, they can give you a lifetime supply of basil.

Once the basil plants grow big enough, they will start flowering and the flowers will produce seeds. You can see the seeds when the plant drops its flowers. Each flower usually produces four seeds, with a few dozen flowers on each stem, you can easily harvest a hundred seeds from a single stem.

After planting seeds that I harvested from a plant last year, I have also tried to propagate the plants by taking cuttings. The cuttings where a great success and I soon had more basil than we could eat in salads. As the plants where already flowering, I had to use the leaves before drying the seeds. I decided to make some pesto and it was good!

Here’s how I made the pesto:

Ingredients:

• a few hands full of chopped basil leaves.
• A clove of garlic
• A handful of cashew nuts
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• A little lemon juice
• Some pepper and salt

Pound the garlic, cashew nuts and basil in a pestle and mortar or use a food processor. Real pesto is made with pine nuts, but cashew nuts are a lot cheaper alternative often used in the pesto you can buy in a glass jar from the supermarket. Add a little olive oil until you have a consistency you like and add pepper, salt and lemon juice to taste.

The pesto can be kept in the fridge for a few days or you can freeze it. I use this pesto to make sandwiches, just smear a nice thick layer of pesto onto a slice of bread and top with turkey or chicken breast and tomato slices.

If you want to use the pesto with pasta, you can add a few handfuls of grated parmesan cheese, just stir it into the pesto. When storing the pesto in the freezer you should omit the cheese as it doesn’t freeze to well. Just add the cheese after thawing the pesto for use. Enjoy!

Worms in supply chain management

Summer was ending when we got the key to our new home and greenhouses. Heating the greenhouse this winter is really not an option because it will be too costly. Still, we didn’t want to wait until spring, so we quickly did some vegetable planting, hoping for a small harvest before winter really kicks in.

As we where running out of good soil for the planting I decided to try something different. We had some Styrofoam fish boxes laying around which looked like a perfect size planting container to grow some cucumbers in. The worms in the worm bin had not produced enough vermicompost yet, but I figured: why not let the worms continue their work while the plants are already growing?

So, I filled up the fish boxes 2 thirds of the way with a mixture of halfway done garden compost and the contents of my worm bin, including the worms. The boxes where toped of with some good soil. While the plants grow the worms should create a steady supply of worm castings.

Not knowing if this would work, I was pleasantly surprised by the growth rate of the cucumber plants. Now, six weeks later, the plants have grown nicely and are starting to develop fruits. This method of growing cuts out the work of having to harvest the vermicompost and the plants seem to like the steady supply of fresh nutrients.

I just found out that Compost Guy is doing the same, he calls it “Garbage Gardening”. I think if you want to sell your produce, a better term for this method of gardening should be used, as “Garbage Gardening” will probably not market very well.

Cast Iron Cookware

Being the cook in the house, I really love my Teflon coated frying pans and wok. Low- or no-oil cooking just seems so much healthier. I had heard about how damaged non-stick coatings in cookware can be bad for your health and that even high grade coatings will only last a few years when used for you daily cooking.

Looking for information about good cookware, I found a lot of rather disturbing information about non-stick coatings. I wouldn’t just trash all my non-stick coated pans, but I have decided to not buy any new ones once our current ones have been used up. Now, since our new kitchen has an induction stove, all the aluminum pots and pans we have, had to be replaced by steel ones anyways, so now I’m cooking Teflon-free.

In my search for new cookware I came across a very nice deal on a 5 pieces set of Fissler pots. Cost shouldn’t really be an issue when buying cookware, with pots and pans you usually get what you pay for, so you should invest a little more and get something decent. My last set of pots have been used for daily cooking for about 7 years now and they are still like new. The only reason they had to be replaced is because they don’t work on the induction stove.

I still needed a good frying pan when I found out about how good cast iron pans are. When seasoned right, they have very good non-stick properties and can last several lifetimes. Old cast iron pans are usually better than new ones. They used to make two types of pans: plain cast iron (which has a kind of rough feel all over) and cast iron which has been machined inside, making it a lot smoother. They don’t do the machining anymore, but machined pans are so much better because of their smooth inside. Garage sales or flea markets are good places to find the old smooth pans. Don’t worry about how it looks, almost all old cast iron pans can be restored to look like new. Just be sure the pan you buy is not warped or cracked.

I remember my grandma used to cook with cast iron pans, so I went looking in her basement and found two old pans. They looked terrible, but where straight, had no cracks and where of the machined type! Restoration begins by removing the old seasoning. I put the pans in a bath of lye water and let them soak over night. The lye will eat away on the seasoning but not on the iron. The next day I gave it a good rub with a wire brush and the pans looked like new.

The seasoning of a cast iron pan is done by heating up some oil until it turns black and sticks to the pan surface. (Traditional Chinese woks get the same treatment before their first use.) My favorite seasoning is done with lard: rub the entire surface of the pan (inside and outside) with a thin layer of lard and set the pan in the oven or on the stovetop. Heat the pan on high for about 20 minutes, you should open up your kitchen window as this will produce a lot of smoke! Burned in fat should turn black and stick to the pan. One layer of seasoning is enough for the outside of the pan, I gave the inside 3 more layers. The inside of the pan should now have a shiny black finish.

When cooking in cast iron pans you should use a stainless steel spatula. Scraping the bottom of the pan with the spatula will make it a little smoother each time you use it. Don’t worry if things tend to stick at first, over time your pans non-stick properties will get better. Cleaning is done right after use with a dry paper towel. If that doesn’t clean it you can use a little water and a brush, just don’t ever use soap. After using water, let the pan dry on a hot stove and rub a little cooking oil all over the surface of the pan, both inside and outside. When treated right, I’m sure I can pass my grandmothers pans along to my own grandkids some day.

All that is left on my kitchens wish list is a decent wok and a Grease Keeper

We’re back!

Yes, I know, we wanted to live off-grid, but the property we bought is a little too far off. Now we have finally found an internet provider that can supply us with a decent internet connection, so we’re back online!

These past 2 months have been very eventful, but we are about settled now. The first 4000 liter fish tank has been set up inside the greenhouse. For now it houses goldfish. We’ll have to see how temperatures develop in the greenhouse throughout the winter. I will probably build a shed around the fish tank and connected grow bed and equip it with a grow light to be able to grow some veggies this winter.

Sorry, no pictures at the moment, as the USB cable for the camera is still in one of the unpacked moving boxes…

Free Fish Food

Daphnia (a.k.a. water fleas) can be bought at most aquarium shops, but what if you could get them for free? These tiny crustaceans are really easy to breed. In the summer months you can simply put a bucket filled with old aquarium water in a sunny place and they will have enough food to thrive and you will have a constant supply of free fish food.

I filled a 250 liter rainwater barrel with aquarium water and put some fish food in there every few days until I had a nice algae bloom.

I went to the aquarium store quite a few times, but each time they where out of life daphnia, I used too see them there every time, but now that I needed them they didn’t have any… typical…

Eventually I managed to buy a small bag. I put them in the green water and after only two weeks the water was crystal clear and swarming with daphnia. Every day I can scoop some out to feed my fish but the supply seems endless.

During winter the barrel froze over and I thought that the water fleas had probably all died, but to my surprise they continued breeding when spring arrived.

If you want to have live fish food during the winter as well, you can set up a culture vessel inside, but you will probably have to feed them.

Square Foot Gardening

Our kids are never playing in the sandbox because of the bugs and spiders that get in there, so today we got the sand out to try something new. Since the contents of our compost bin wasn’t ready to use yet, we went into the forest to get some good compost. We filled the sandbox with it and used some rope to partition the square meter box into 9 square feet patches.

Each square has been planted with a different crop. We have planted: four heads of lettuce, one tomato plant, one cucumber plant, four cloves of garlic, some rosemary, thyme, a sunflower and two patches with some different flowers.

The size of one square meter is perfect for our 8 year old daughter to walk around and be able to reach every part of her garden. This system was taken from the book All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew and it supposedly lets you grow about twice as much in half the space compared to traditional gardening, while only requiring about 20% of the work.

Free food production in your backyard

Summer is really starting now! The last couple of days we’ve had 23 – 25C temperatures and the forecast for the next week is the same. While our friends from down-under are getting ready for winter, we can start growing all sorts of yummy things in the garden.

I thought I’ll use the long weekend to set up a little half barrel aquaponics system. I still had one of those blue barrels laying around, so I went ahead and cut it in half to create two grow beds. After filling the grow beds with washed gravel and filling them with water the troubles started: I was using a loop siphon to do the ebb and flow in the barrel, but the loop just didn’t work like it should. When filling the barrel, the siphon should kick in at a set level and empty the barrel again, giving the plant roots access to oxygen rich air. After the barrel has been emptied the siphon should break and the barrel should slowly fill up with water again.

My siphon either wouldn’t kick in correctly, leaving the barrel flooded, or it wouldn’t break, leaving the barrel empty at all times. Some more tweaking is necessary for my barrelponics to work. Since I don’t have to go to work today, I’ll have all day to try to get this working.

Small scale aquaponics setup

The nice thing about aquaponics is that it is very scalable and can be set up almost anywhere. If you want to try out aquaponics you can set up a small system to grow herbs in your home. All you need is a small fish tank and a container that can be used as a grow bed. The fish in the tank will fertilize the water with their excrements and the growing plants use these nutrients to grow while cleaning the water.

In a small setup you can locate the grow bed above the fish tank. The grow bed can be filled with lightweight expanded clay aggregate or gravel. A water pump on a timer will fill the grow bed with water and small holes in the bottom of the grow bed let the water flow back into the aquarium. The holes have to be sized to let less water pass through them than the pump delivers to the grow bed. This way the grow bed will fill up while the pump is running. Once the pump shuts off, the grow bed will empty out into the aquarium.

A system like this is called flood and drain and makes the plants grow nicely. In the flood stage the plant can take up water and nutrients and in the drain stage the plants roots have access to oxygen. You can place your setup by a window or, if you don’t have a suitable spot that receives enough light, you can add some lights.

(sketchup model by: Dave)

Heat and power, power and heat

In Europe, Canada and the US, the power companies are required to buy back any excess energy you create. The rates, at which they buy back the energy, depends on a few things and the rules are different in each country and state. You can get detailed information on this subject from your utility company.

Solar energy, for instance, will be paid at a higher rate than power generated with a diesel generator because it is obviously much cleaner energy. In Europe you will also get a better rate if you burn vegetable oil instead of diesel, but you will have to show proof of the origin of your oil, so waste vegetable oil collected from restaurants will not get you the higher rate, although the collected oil will be cheaper than buying new vegetable oil, possibly still making it an interesting alternative on the bottom line.

The amount of energy you can sell back also differs from each power company to the next. While some will buy back as much as you can generate, others will only buy back as much power as you buy from them, effectively leaving your power meter at the zero mark.

Since we are currently looking for a new house, I don’t know which power company we will be dealing with. Assuming, for now, that I can only sell back the amount of electricity that I use, generating our own power will not bring in any money. After working out the fuel usage for the generator and assuming that I have to buy vegetable oil to run the generator, plus the generators initial purchase price and ongoing maintenance, the bottom line is that the power from the utility company will cost about the same or maybe even a little less.

However, the electricity is not the only thing I will be generating. A big part of the energy will be lost as heat. Lost if you don’t catch it, that is! Running the engines cooling water through a heat exchanger in the central heating system will have a positive effect on the total fuel consumption of the central heating.

The whole thing can also be turned around: so, instead of running an engine to cover your power needs and use the excess heat to complement your central heating system, you could also have the engine running to generate the heat to warm your water and house, while running a generator head along side to create electricity while you are heating. Sure, ultimately we are talking about the same system, that generates heat and power, but the sizing of each system would be different.

How our system will be sizes isn’t decided yet. We will first have to find a suitable house. Depending on the age and condition of the central heating system, we will then go one way or the other.