Sally's GF3 thread

[cavemanrich]

Sally,,, Now that you mentioned Cranberries,, I have to start stocking up on a quantity for the coming year. Fresh cranberries are seasonal in stores, so now is the time to buy. I think our stock is totally depleted by this time of year.
My DW, makes a fruit punch desert drink. We have this often.
I just don't have a picture of it now,, but next time I will snap one.
Let me just give you the recipe off the top of my head.
Into a pot of water.. we use a big pot.
Cut up pieces of apples. 5 or 6 usually
Some grapes, (raisins work well also)
Handful or two of cranberries. (adds nice color besides flavor)
Strawberries if there are any around.
Any other fruit that is available
SUGAR,, A LARGE POT needs quite a bit. (to individual taste preference) I'm sure HONEY would work also
Bring to boil, and cook on small flame for a while. Want the fruit to be cooked, but not falling apart.
You may need to fine tune ingredients, and amount of sugar to your taste.
Just found a YouTube vid, that describes the process. He does it slightly different, but there is no wrong way.

 

[Sally PB]

I'm doing something new with planting my garlic.

When I made toum, I discovered a couple of cloves had garlic mites.

So before I planted any cloves, I sterilized them to kill the mites. There are a couple ways to do this, and I chose a soaking method. I soaked the cloves in isopropyl alcohol (70%) for 10 minutes. Other soaks suggested were cheap Vodka or hydrogen peroxide (3%), neither of which I have on hand.

I had also read that soaking them in a fertilizer solution gives them a boost to get their roots growing before the true winter cold makes everything shut down. I have some fish fertilizer (5-1-1), so I mixed 2 tablespoons in a gallon of water, and soaked the cloves in that for about 45 minutes.

Then I planted them and gave each spot a dribble of the fish fertilizer soaking water to use it up. (I'm not storing that stuff anywhere. Yup! Stinks like fish!)

I thought I had saved 60 cloves of my garlic (Music variety), but it turns out I had 80. I had also bought some Metechi, another purple stripe hardneck that has more bite when raw. I ended up with 27 cloves of that. The cloves weren't as big as mine, but were a decent size. And, if it's a strong as advertised, I don't need cloves that look like this:

(That's a tablespoon for reference.)

The garlic is planted, another garden chore marked off the list. We'll see what we get next summer.

 

[fuzzi]

Checking in, it's been a while.

 

[Sally PB]

Oh, wow, it has!

Here's the latest on the bathroom remodel. I was going to wait until I can post pictures, but that won't be till Monday. Here's a story about the sliding shower doors.

We ordered the "rainfall" pattern. About a $500 upgrade, but hubby was adamant that the outside have a pattern, and that was the pattern I liked the best, and he said yeah, he liked that one too. Installation on October 29th, and they'd arrive between 9 and 9:30.

The Thursday before, someone from Your Shower Door called me and said that they doors were in, but they did NOT have the pattern on them. So he said that they could install these doors, and then swap out to the correct ones about a week later, or just wait until the correct doors arrived.

I was pretty tired of the shower curtain work around, so we decided to get the plain ones in, and do the swap. Which will be next Monday; we had to coordinate schedules. We pay the balance when the correct doors are in.

YSD has been GREAT to work with through this entire project. The glass company is the one who messed up the order, and yeah, mistakes can happen, so I'm not upset. I was glad that they called as soon as they discovered the error, and had a couple of options to fix it.

I do have to say... the acoustics in the bathroom are very "bright" with all that glass! Maybe the texture of the pattern will change that a bit.

 

[pertnear09]

Oh, wow, it has!

Here's the latest on the bathroom remodel. I was going to wait until I can post pictures, but that won't be till Monday. Here's a story about the sliding shower doors.

We ordered the "rainfall" pattern. About a $500 upgrade, but hubby was adamant that the outside have a pattern, and that was the pattern I liked the best, and he said yeah, he liked that one too. Installation on October 29th, and they'd arrive between 9 and 9:30.

The Thursday before, someone from Your Shower Door called me and said that they doors were in, but they did NOT have the pattern on them. So he said that they could install these doors, and then swap out to the correct ones about a week later, or just wait until the correct doors arrived.

I was pretty tired of the shower curtain work around, so we decided to get the plain ones in, and do the swap. Which will be next Monday; we had to coordinate schedules. We pay the balance when the correct doors are in.

YSD has been GREAT to work with through this entire project. The glass company is the one who messed up the order, and yeah, mistakes can happen, so I'm not upset. I was glad that they called as soon as they discovered the error, and had a couple of options to fix it.

I do have to say... the acoustics in the bathroom are very "bright" with all that glass! Maybe the texture of the pattern will change that a bit.

I'm glad it's all coming together for y'all.

 

[Sally PB]

Pictures!

This is our old (gross, disgusting) tub.

Yeah. Gross and disgusting.

New shower.

Janky work around for a shower curtain.

The curtain rod was set low enough that we could set a couple of bricks on the curtain, on the lip of the shower pan, to hold the curtain in place. To get into the shower, fold the curtain inward, carefully so you don't knock over the bricks.

New shower door, with the correct pattern.

These were ordered from and installed by a company called Your Shower Door. HIGHLY recommend them!

The "rainfall" pattern and the protective coating were $667 worth of upgrade. Total cost was $2257. Frankly, I was expecting it to be closer to $3K.

 

[Sally PB]

I'm not sure if I've posted about my "bean project" here.

I planted a half row of beans (Dragon Tongue, which has been my best producer, ever) in mid-July. The June planting didn't do well, but it was because the plants themselves didn't do well. Maybe because they were planted in what had been an onion bed the year before? (Legumes and alliums don't like each other.) Maybe because voles were chomping on the roots?

Anyway, mid-July was still enough time to get some beans harvested, since they only need about 65 days. I planted them near the potato bed, and they grew, produced, and I got several pickings. I wanted to save the seed.

Well, that takes a lot longer than 65 days, and frost comes around the first week or two of October here. And sometimes in September. I covered the plants with two layers of bed sheets when they said we could get frost. The plants were fine.

I did that any time they said the lows could be 42 or lower. "They" are referring to Grand Rapids, a big city, with lots of concrete, asphalt, buildings. Those are big heat sinks. I don't have them out here by me, and the beans are in the "downhill" (aka, sandy soil) garden, and it can be MUCH colder there than up here at the house. I would guess 8-10 degrees at times.

When I plant beans, I put a few tomato cages down the row to support the plants as they grow. This works out well when draping sheets over them. I use clothes pins to close the sheets around the ends of the row, and to clip them to the tomato cages, in case of wind.

The beans have survived a hard freeze with this treatment. The leaves are mostly yellow, and some at the top have fallen off. I don't know if that's because they touched the sheets and got nipped, or if the putting on/taking off of the sheets has knocked them off.

Anyway, the bean pods themselves are still moist and fleshy. I don't know if they beans inside are still ripening, or if they'd ripen off the vine. I need to cover the plants for at least the next 3 nights (we've been in a warm spell), and I'll reevaluate then.

 

[cavemanrich]

Sally, Yes I know you posted this elsewhere,

I wonder if softneck would grow well here? One way to find out... but not this year. I have 120 cloves planted, and I think that is enough.

Consider getting one bulb, however many cloves there are, and test plant

 

[Sally PB]

Good idea. I will have to look for some. Probably not online; most garlic for sale is quantities of more than one bulb. I wonder if the stuff in the store is treated so that it doesn't sprout...? I wouldn't know what type it was either. Hmmmm...

 

[cavemanrich]

Good idea. I will have to look for some. Probably not online; most garlic for sale is quantities of more than one bulb. I wonder if the stuff in the store is treated so that it doesn't sprout...? I wouldn't know what type it was either. Hmmmm...

Garlic is garlic. I didn't know there was a BAD one.
I also don't know difference between Hard, or soft. I just use what I purchase at the store. That was my idea.... Get what you can find at the store. Remember,,,, its an experiment.