Kid's Gardening Workshop Comin' Up!

Jihyun Ryou's "Save Food from the Fridge" Project!

 

Shaping Traditional Oral Knowledge

Storing root vegetables vertically keeps them fresher longer. The glass funnel is used to add water to keep the sand moist.

I just found this great video on ways to store your fresh produce without using the big electricity-sucking coffin called 'The Fridge'. Take a minute to take a look- it makes perfect sense! Your fruits and veggies don't grow in refrigerator conditions, so how could they need the refrigerator to keep them fresh?
Jihyun Ryou kindly shares traditional knowledge (you know, the stuff your grandparents told your parents, but your parents thoroughly ignored) about food storage.

Try this and enjoy fresher-tasting foodstuffs without the huge electric bill!

The ethylene gas produced by apples makes other fruits ripen, but keeps potatoes from sprouting. Storing apples separately from other produce prevents your other fruits and veggies from over-ripening as quickly!

Fruit vegetables like zucchini, eggplant,  peppers and cucumbers can be stored outside the fridge, placed above a tray of water! A few grains of rice can be added to spices to absorb water so they don't get all clumpy.

Nope, your eggs don't need refrigeration, either...think about it. Chickens don't live in a fridge! A fresh egg will sink to the bottom of the water in the glass, remaining horizontal, but a stank egg will float.

 You can find the original post here: Jihyun Ryou on Mocoloco

Grow Your Own...

Harvest of Randoms

This garden is definitely my handiwork. I took a long look at it from the kitchen window and, from here, it just looks like a neglected corner of a slightly unkempt backyard.So haphazard! I love it! Left to their own devices, the squash vines have steadily marched their way through the tomatoes, Cuban Oregano, and random beans 'n peas and are trying like hell to climb over the little white garden boundary...I wonder where they're off to!

The Swiss Chard I bought on a whim from the local Home Depot (just to see how it would fare) is doing fantastically. Planted it in a sunny corner of the garden/yard (yarden?) and we've been clipping leaves daily for the last month or so....tender and delicious!


A few weeks ago I planted some random dried beans I found languishing in the bottom of the refrigerator - just to see if they might come alive. Yeah, they did. And they're quite happy, it seems. Like so:

I wonder if they will actually produce edibles! If I had thought they would take off, I would have planted them at the back  of the garden, but I didn't expect them to do anything, so they're smack in front of everything else and I've had to design a bamboo-pole jungle gym of sorts to guide them out of the way. Planning will be involved in my next garden, I assure you.

What else? I counted 62 unripe tomatoes in the TomatoWonderland quarter of the garden! That's a good amount of tomatoes, I should think! Seven varieties! And 15 eggplant buds!

 Not bad for a single bush! Can't wait to git 'em!