Yep, Another IDC Update! What A Surprise!

This past week:

Planted:  Transplanted banana pepper sprouts.  These guys hadn’t gotten any bigger in weeks, but they didn’t die.  It might be too late for them to produce fruit this season, but I planted them anyway.  I planted the whole “tray” the seedlings were in, since I’ve had almost zero success with my transplanting this year, especially with seedlings that are still small.  I dug a hole the size and shape of the plastic tray, then flipped the whole sheet of soil, seedlings and all, into the garden.  Then watered thoroughly, of course.  We’ll see if this is any more successful than the breaking apart each seedling method.  I now understand why doing many seedling per tray isn’t a good idea, and next year I’ll be using individual little pots instead.  One friend who does a gangbusters garden told me that she doesn’t even use the really little divided pots, because transplanting into a medium size pot and then transplanting again into the garden was just too hard on the plants.  So she starts her tomatoes, peppers, whatever in 3″ pots, which are big enough they can stay there until they go straight into the ground.  I’m taking notes for next year.

Harvested:  Apricots, peas

Preserved:  Nothing

Managed:  Mulched the potato bed?  Does that count?

Stored:  Nothing new.

Prepped:  Another firewooding trip with R.  I took home a half cord of top quality lodgepole.

Reduced waste:  The only thing I can think of above and beyond the ongoing composting is that I used yard-trimmed alfalfa to mulch the potato bed.  I spent some time gathering more cut thistles for the next trip to Kate’s, but didn’t deliver any more yet.

Advocated for local food economy:  Wore my Locavore Farms T-Shirt to my job at the library, and it got commented on by someone who didn’t know about the full extent of their farm!  They say their you-pick option will start up in early August, so I’m hot to spread the word about them as much as possible before then.  I also bought some stuff (jam, relish, onions, cabbage, zucchini bread) at this week’s farmer’s market.  Didn’t set up a table or sell anything, as R and I were heading out for the woodcutting day.

Cooked Something New:  Hard-boiled eggs in a solar oven!  Wasn’t sure it would work, but it did!  I just set two eggs in a small dish, no water.  I left them WAY too long (hours!) and they did get a bit overdone, just as eggs would if they were boiled way too long, but they were still tasty!  Next time I’ll pay attention to the time and see how long it takes to get soft-boiled and how long for hard-boiled.

Learned a New Skill:  Nothing I can think of, though R and I did have some challenging conversations this week that required me to interact with him in a different way than I used to.  There’s something about getting frustrated that makes it really hard to explain to someone WHY you’re frustrated, at least in a way that they can hear you and not shut down in self-defense.  We had some interactions where I tried some new approaches to expressing my concerns.  I’m usually a pretty clear-headed communicator, and it was really hard to realize that I had no idea the right way to say things so that he would understand what I was expressing.  I don’t think I actually learned a new skill, but perhaps opened a path that might eventually lead that way.