The Versatile Pistachio

When I think of pistachios, I think of one of my husband's favorite snack foods, and good thing too! Pistachios contain health properties promoting the health of heart, eyes and blood sugar. Healthy and he likes them! That's a bonus snack!

But that's just the nut. What about the shells?

They have their own set of uses. According to ehow.com, they can be used to block the bottom hole of flower pots, used as mulch for acid-loving plants like roses (ours are going to be so happy this year!), or added to your compost.

I was thinking of trying another use as well, and that is to aerate my homemade planting soil for my gardening projects. I know, eventually, they will decompose, but that would take a year or two. Until then, in the absence of perlite, I'm going to try them to avoid soil compaction.

We have a baggie to add shells to, then we will begin the smashing process. When that happens, I'll bring you along. Should be fun!

When Vegetables Sprout

Ever reached for a potato only to notice 1/2 in long sprouts protruding out of it?

Or how about those green sprouts that sometimes are coming out of our garlic cloves?

Do we still use them for food?... or throw them away?

Don't waste them, plant them!

My planting spree of this nature began with the garlic. When I bought it, it was at a good price, and I try to incorporate it in most of my savory dishes, not just for flavor, but for its wonderful health properties. So I bought 5 heads.

I didn't use them up as quickly as I thought I would, so towards the end of those 5 heads, some cloves were beginning some healthy looking green sprouts. Since it just so happened I had a small garden plot already growing sugar snaps, radishes and collard greens, Nut and I just poked some holes in the dirt of the same plot, and we planted our sprouting garlic cloves. We probably won't be harvesting them for garlic this year, but they will still grow shoots. Snip a shoot or two and chop for use in salads or dressing. They have a garlicky, green onion taste. Really good!

It was the same idea with some potatoes. Our neighbors gifted us with some yukon gold potatoes. By the time I got around to use them, many of them were seriously sprouting. Some of the potatoes were only sprouting on one end of the potato, so I cut off the end that was sprouting one inch from the sprout. I used the non-sprouting portion for dinner, and kept the sprouting end for planting. I did with this with the whole bag. Some were sprouting so well, that I just decided to plant the whole potato.

As luck would have it, we had just watched a video this morning where a lady was putting in her own potato garden. We learned that our potato starts needed to be planted 12 inches apart, so that's what we did.

We picked a spot in the back of our trailer site close to the fence, out of the way of where Tuckie likes to run and chase his stick. Nut did the digging and we planted our 12 plants. I can't wait. I have fond memories as a child, harvesting the new potatoes, watching them pop out of the ground from the coaxing of a determined pitchfork.

Please note: If you want to try this and you've never grown potatoes before, just remember that though the potatoes are safe to eat, the greens of the plant are poisonous. If you have pets that like to chew on plants, you may want to consider fencing your potato patch to keep your favorite critters out.

Oven Without a Temp

It's one of those moments.

It usually happens when you least expect it.

There was Nut, standing at the oven, dazed with disbelief, holding in his hand, the knob of our oven temperature control.

Now what do we do?

Well, my friends, I don't watch cooking shows for nothing. The way of baking is now:

Sight, Smell, Feel

We've gone through a few burned dishes as we've honed our baking senses, but I think we are getting the hang of it.

As far as the new method of controlling our oven, we've just added another use to the already wonderful multi-tasker called the pliers.

Garden Update

First indoor

Our babies have grown!
Since pics speak louder than words some days, have a peek!

Next is the beefsteak tomato starts.
Trust me, they're little but they are there.



And now, the very happy indeed, jellybean tomatoes.



And here is the sweet corn so far. Little, but I think they're gathering strength.
Good things take time!

Outdoor garden

Review, in the two mini garden plots outside in our trailer site, we have planted:

• spinach, a cold weather variety
• collard greens
• snow peas
• globe radishes

Truth is, I knew I was jumping the gun planting this early. My experiment centered around planting cool weather seeds, even though the nights are still below freezing...but the days are in the 70's. I keep thinking there must be a balance in there somewhere. So far, though, there are no leaves peeking yet. I still have hope.

Indoors through the Garden Door

The other part of my gardening project is starting a wee indoor garden. What I will show you today is only the start. The beginning of this project is also a practice in repurposing as well. As a photo speaks a thousand words, let's look at the first photo.


For the seed pots, I am using cut bath tissue rolls. The dirt inside, what was in the back of our site. Containers that all this went into, are as follows:

• tofu container
• mushroom container
• container from frozen food

They are all waterproof and in great condition. Plenty of use in these guys. All this is sitting on our cookie sheet which, which, I should be able to be use... um... later.

I have planted jelly bean tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes and sweet corn. They have thus far, had no fertilizer, just water once a day and sitting on a cozy little table by a space heater.

Initially I thought soaking the seeds would be a good idea, since the seeds I was starting with were a year old at least. The next morning, I awoke to the tomato seeds almost completely disinegrated. The corn was ok, but I needed new tomato seeds, since I used the whole of my seed packets in this experiement. Well, now we know that.

Now it has been about four days. Just yesterday, a chance glance on my little tray of hopefulness, I noticed sprouts that were not there for their morning watering...at least I didn't see them. We have new babies!!! I'm so excited!! They are now spending their days outside on our picnic table, taking in their first rays of sunshine.


I'm very excited. $2.00 funded this season's crop of two kinds of tomatoes, and a crop of sweet corn. Very DPS!!

Radishes and Peas

Got my eyeballs on another area in back of our site, not far from our first cold weather gardening experiment. In the photo you will notice, the middle of this spot is bamboo. This will be perfect for the sugar snap peas to climb up. In front of that area, I found a seed packet of red globe radishes that sound wonderful. I can't wait for them to grow. I'm planting a bit heavy for a reason. When thinning out the plants, radish sprouts would be a lovely addition to that night's salad. yum!


Okay, radishes and peas planted. To prevent another litter box incident, we did the following:


I read about this in Mother Earth News. The article was about a couple that used really heavy fencing to keep their cattle out of their garden. We thought this chicken cage wire would be enough to deter our local fuzzy butts. This will work fine until the little baby leave start to peek through.

More Getting Dirty

The start to my garden party had an interesting beginning. We got our little winter greens garden planted, then discovered it was a fabulous litter box for the neighborhood kitties.

It's all good though, I love our visits from our furry friends. We just need to come to an understanding, or Tuckie is on the job! Meanwhile, this area has been re-raked, reseeded, and Nut fashioned a very functional fence out of some supplies we had on our site. So far, all is well.