Redd Hudson

When my daughter about 5 she would "garden"  and collect earth worms. She called them snakes. She would put them in her pockets along with rocks and other items. Made laundry day exciting.

One day as I was heading down to the barn, she announced excitedly that she caught a snake and did I want to see it. I told her I would look at it later, when I got done in the barn.

As I came up from the barn she jumped off the swing set and ran up, "Mom, do you want to see my snake?" I said sure. She plunged her hand into her pocket and pulled out a poor dead garter snake.  I said "Oh, I think the snake is dead." She looked at it carefully and said it was only sleeping. I told her to make a bed for it in the garden and to not catch any more snakes...

After that only rocks and other interesting bits of things where found in her pockets on laundry day.  

So, to find garter snakes, send curious 5 year olds out to the garden to look for worms.

Update:  The weather is threatening SNOW!!!

I am secretly excited, don't tell the neighbors.

I planted peas 2 weeks ago,  according to my garden planing guide. Maybe they will come up, maybe not. I spread some compost mulch to keep them snuggly warm.

But SNOW, the poor man's fertilizer, is going to help reduce bug pressure this spring.

So excited. ❄️

P. S. The dog is refusing to go out until she can't hold it anymore and the chickens are laying frozen eggs.

Still excited.

I live in zone 8a. Last fall...about 6 weeks ago (LOL)  I cut the dead veggies and herb plants to the ground. I left the roots to hold the soil.

Last May I created a Bio reactor, which I am very excited to open up and spread on my beds. A bio reactor is a fancy term for very lazy composting with wood chips and leaf debris..

It's time to plant peas here.

I live in a hot climate area so I bed prep as I plant. This seems to cut down on hideous creatures digging up not-quite rotted compost.

You probably already know about this guy. I think what he is doing is great.

Chad Pregracke.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/337-chad-pregracke-americas-hardest-working-garbage-man/id1087110764?i=1000623785021

He might be worth contacting.

I wonder if a stool cushion would fit the seat top.

Hello Everyone!

I wanted to share what my brilliant neighbor is doing between her garden beds. She has some raised beds, but hers, like mine have kind of, well melted...ok rotted to the point of nonexistence. We have mounds of soil in memory of where the beds were.

HOWEVER, she planted white clover between these alleged beds. Any bed encroachers are summarily feed to the chickens. This seems to keep the grass and weeds, ahem, I mean wrongly located, alternate vegetation down.

So I bought seeds.

I am excited.

Clover is much nicer under bare feet than woodchips/pine straw/remains of chopped magnolia leaf.

I LOVE IT ALL!!!

Long live the Clack.

If I had a bag of golf tees I would glue them to a small beach ball or kick ball to explain bacteria and botchlolsum to my canning class students.

But I am kind of a nerd...

And apparently a nerd who can't spell.

Botulism not... Botcho whatever...

Happy Almost Spring, Everyone!

Canning pasta is not a good idea. As many of those posting here have said. When canning always use a tested recipe.

It comes down to science.

Each food item – product – has a specific density. That density is what allows or does not allow heat to penetrate to the center of the jar.  This heat is needed to destroy the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. When you pressure can, you are raising the internal temperature of the jar to 240°F which is the temperature needed to destroy botulism. The jar heats from the outside in, in a convection style - the heat circulates inward. If a food is too dense, the heat cannot reach the center of the product. This is why we can process chunks of pumpkin, but not puree. The water/heat can circulate around the chucks, but cannot completely penetrate to the center of a puree.

Interestingly, and frightening, is how botulism protects itself against high heat. It forms a hard shell around the bacterium when heated.

The boiling point of water – 212 F is not enough though, it is the use of pressure to raise the water temperature to 240F and the amount of time required at this raised temperature that cause the bacterium to ‘explode’ and die. Making your jars safe.

Further, at this high temperature, delicate pasta would become mush. Which, as my hero Alton Brown says "is not good eats".

for those of you who live in very hot locations, (as I do) you might consider Steam Canning. Like a bath canner you should only can high acid foods and nothing that requires more that 45 minute of processing (all the water boils off).

There are a lot of resources available for canning. Someone posted the USDA site. This site:

https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_home.html#gsc.tab=0

has a book, by chapters you can download and print.

there is also the USDA "your choice soup" recipe. But if you are just starting out, maybe skip this until you have some experience,  not that you couldn't do it, it's that the "why" you make some of the choices is assumed.

https://www.healthycanning.com/usdas-your-choice-soup-recipe

The Healthy canning site is also a good site. It provides science based, proven recipes.

Science based means the recipes have been tested and it has been proven that the food product reaches the correct internal temperature (based on the process method) to be considered shelf stable. The methods recommended for chopping, weighing and measuring the food go in to the testing process. Which is it is recommended that you process chopped squash, but not pureed. The density of the food prevents the heat from getting to the center of the jar. The heat process at play here is convection, the jar heats from the outside in (thank you, captain obvious, LOL).

With canning,  the time the food goes into the canner, the processing time (and if pressure canning the "wait" time), along with the time the jars need to sit (12 - 24 hours) are all factored into the producing of a safe product.

Ball, Kerr and Golden Harvest jars and products are all produced by the Newall company, which is owned by Rubbermaid.

Ball produces the Ball Blue Book every few years and it is recommended that you purchase the new one when it comes out. This isn't just because it is a money-maker (yes, it is), but also because the science is changing. Until about a year ago it was recommended that you simmer your lids. The reason was to soften the rubber gasket material (not just sterilize the lid). The new lids do not have that requirement (everybody say YEAH) because the gasket material has changed.

Also, the older books have recipes and method now proven to be less safe. I just composted a Ball Blue book from 1973 which showed open kettle methods for jams and jelly which recommended inverting the jars instead of processing.


Other resources:

https://extension.oregonstate.edu/topic/food/preservation/resources (they have an app for OLDER smart phones (Iphone and android)

https://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheet/canning-foods-at-home/