cheese day

So today I decided to try one of my cheese blocks that I waxed 5.5 weeks ago. It may be a little early as I have read they should age for at least 6 weeks in one place and 1 month in another place so I figured it was close enough.

 

They turned out very nice especially since I really broke every rule when I was making them (aluminium pot, direct heat, wrong times, etc). Talia says it is a win :)

Now I have to make a new batch. Don't know if I want to do cheddar again or maybe something else like Monterey Jack.

Surprise visit from the flower maker

So yesterday after working with my tomato plants in the morning I decided to start a whole new much of plants in a second tray. I have some corn and chives and chilli and tomatoes (yes more tomatoes) but that wasn't really the interesting part. The interesting part came when I was trying to find space on my plant shelf for the tray and noticed that one of the succulents had started to flower. I am going to try and take a picture of the flowers every day as they develop.

Yesterday when I found them :)

Close up from yesterday

This morning. 

And on top of that I noticed this morning that my mango tree that was damaged by the cold wind coming in from an open door had actually survived.

I also am seeing signs of spring from my indoor oak tree

~(' ')~

Tomatos R Us

So for a week or so now I have been concerned about the tomatoe (and chilli pepper) plants that I planted at the beginning of February. They have been growing nicely and many of them have started to out grow their egg carton pots. The problem I had was that I don't really like plastic even when it comes to pots and so I was hoping to find another solution that was cheap. I have seen the peat pots but they tend to be a little expensive.

Now a week ago I went over to my parents place for dinner and while I was there I saw that they had gotten a newspaper pot maker. Now this could be the perfect solution for what I was looking for but I really didn't want to spend 4 hours in transit going over there to pick it up so this morning I started to look for a way I could make the paper pots with stuff that I had at home.

My first idea was to use an empty water bottle that I have been using to water my plants. Along with the water bottle I got a plant pot that was slightly larger than the bottom of the bottle so I could squish the bottom of the paper pot down and help it stay secure. For paper I didn't have any newspaper (I guess one of the draw backs of having worms is that I never have newspaper around because it always go to make bedding) but I did spy a Richters Herb catalogue that I was finished with. The catalogue was almost the perfect size at 9.5" by 6.75" to give my 3" tall pots (slightly larger that I needed)

Now as you can see after squishing the end in the pot the paper didn't really  crimp the way I was hoping it would and it wouldn't keep its shape :(

On to plan 2: A David's Tea can. This can has been sitting by the front door waiting for Talia or I to remember to pick up some new tea and I thought that the lid would make the perfect crimp in the edge.

Unfortunately it proved to be too tight in that I almost ripped the pot when I was trying to take the lid off. Even once I did get it off the bottom of the paper pot wasn't shaped very well due to the fact that I was only crimping the edge of the pot and not the full bottom.

Idea 3: Probably the most low tech idea, I remembered that I had an old soup can that was about the right size and the best part was that the bottom of the can was shaped to fit snugly into the top of a similar can for easy stacking.

This worked out very nicely. The edge of the pot was nicely crimped and the bottom was flattened. It wasn't quite perfect because once the pot had be removed the bottom of the pot started to loosen up and separate but when I added a little soil to the bottom and stood the pot up is held its shape fine.

So now it was time to transplant my tomatoes, and not a day too soon as I found some tomato plants had actually managed to grown through the egg carton pots. Initially I was cutting the egg carton pots apart but I found that that was actually squishing the roots a bit and that if I just pulled at the carton it would rip apart easily (the wet part at least, the dry edge of the pot still had to be cut).

Rather than try and remove the plants from the egg carton pots I simply buried the egg carton right in the new pot.

I can get 4 rows of of 8 pots into the container that I have. The one pot that is kind of separate in the lower centrer is my one surviving chilli (one of the side effects of not having a good way to keep the plants moist when I started). The other plant to the right is my yellow bedstraw plant which is supposed to be a good source of vegetable rennet (and yellow dye). The 3x3 set of plastic pots are what remains of my herbs I planted. There are only 3 that sprouted, 2 big ones and one that is so small you cant even see it in the pic.


~(' ')~

A pressing need for a cheese press

So today I went and started making my cheese press. Step 1: get 2 cutting boards. I got my boards from the dollar store for $7 each.

The plans I am using for making my cheese press come from fiascofarm.com/dairy/cheesepress.html but I am modifying it to make is a little smaller. My boards are only 32 cm instead of 41

So after a nice long lunch I decided that I wanted to completely make my cheese press and surprise Talia when she got home. Now I find myself n the elevator heading over to the Home Depot to get the remaining pieces.

With my mini in hand and the shopping cart it toe I have been making good time. Thankfully the bus arrived just as I did. I think I will go to the depot on the subway instead of taking the bus. It's probably not the closest one but it is the most reliable.

A small note on the mobile version of the blogger app... They really need to fix the add image ability. I have not been able to figure out how to insert pictures anywhere but at the end of my posts and that kind of sucks when you are trying to talk about something in the fourth image at the bottom :( as it stands now I think I'm going to have to reedit this entry to make sure the pictures are in the right place.

So when I arrived I found out that the only size that Home Depot has in the 3/4 inch dowel is 48 inches. The instructions specify 16 inches which means I would need to get 2 and end up with 32 inches extra so I have decided to go with 12 inch pieces instead.

Well that was an uneventful trip but it did get me the dowel, washers and screws I needed in order to make the press. Rather than try and cut the dowel by hand I decided to let the people there cut it for me which was a very pleasant experience. Had a nice chat with a lady that did the cutting. As always she mistook my age thinking I was in undergrad but at least that's better than high school. The pieces were cut just a little under 12 inches (because of the blade thickness) so hopefully that will do nicely. We will see. Now I'm on the subway heading home to start actual construction. The only piece I may be missing now is a pie plate to act as the funnel n the bottom. I think we have some from when Talia makes pies but if not then I will go to the metro, get a pie and then Talia and I can eat a tasty treat :)

So now I have everything that I need. The reminder of the items only cost$19.71

So that came to a sad and halting end. Unfortunately the drill that I have is not powerful enough to be used with with these drill bits. After two attempts of trying to drill through the cutting board and getting jammed both times I think I'm gonna have to go over to my parents to get through. :(

So I managed to get through the board with one whole :)

But then I scrapped my board when I was putting the second hole into the board and I split it in half. Needless to say I am a little bummed out. That cost me $8

Permaculture in pots

So ever since the permaculture seminar a couple weeks ago I have been curious about any way in which I could apply it to my container garden at home. My biggest problem at home is keeping the soil wet enough. Often I find that I water my plants and within 2 days the pot is bone dry. It's even worse with small pots and herbs.

After reading many pages of my organic gardening book I thought that maybe I could use mulch of some sort in order to help keep the moisture in the pot. Unfortunately the problem with that is that I don't have access to mulch of any sort and even my worm compost will dry up and lose most of its nutrients when I use it. Some mulch replacements that have been mentioned are dry dead leaves, it's a little late to collect those and even is I did I wouldn't have a good place to store them until the spring when I need them most, and shredded paper, which while easy to collect and store is hard to keep on the plants and doesn't look particularly good (especially in indoor pots... Tried it, didn't like it).

So this brings me back to permaculture and the seminar a couple of weeks ago. One of the things that was mentioned was that leaving the ground covered with a natural ground cover works really well at protecting the soil... So here is my question to people, can I add a low lying ground cover to my pots to help retain water? I think that is should be possible my only concern is that the ground over will compete for the resources already kind of scare in the pot. I also want to make sure that the roots of the ground cover don't grow in too deep or they may start crowding out my plants roots. I think the ideal ground cover would be some kind of grass that I could cut back thereby adding material to mulch with a root system that doesn't extend more than say 2cm? Anyone know of a type of grass like that? Oh one more thing to consider is that Talia is allergic to a lot of grasses and weeks so it has to be Talia friendly.