Cold Hardiness

Tony and I are sitting around tonight watching Conan, listening to Irish punk (Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly), having fried rice for dinner (which I feel I have perfected my recipe and should post soon), and it occurred to me that I should figure out what the cold hardiness is for each of my plants seeing as we might have our first light frost this week. The predicted low Wednesday night is 31 for Red Oak and since we're a little higher altitude our temperatures sometimes run about 5 degrees cooler.

Here's the list:
Cauliflower: Cold/Frost Tolerant
Brussels Sprouts: Cold Hardy/Frost Tolerant
Kale: Cold Hardy
Romaine Lettuce: Cold Tolerant/Cold Hardy
Carrots: Cold Hardy/Frost Tolerant
Green Onions: Cold Tolerant/Cold Hardy
Garlic: Cold Tolerant
Spinach (seedlings): Cold Hardy
Swiss Chard: Cold/Frost Tolerant
Arugula: Cold Hardy
Tomatoes: Tender
Rosemary: Tolerant to approx. 30, although some leave out all winter in Zone 7 and it's fine
Sage: Hardy
Oregano: Varies
Basil (Sweet & Lemon): Tender
Mint: Hardy
Lavender: Varies/Hardy
Dill: Tender

Moss Rose: Tender
Red Bud: Hardy (experience)
Pecans: ...

It appears the only things I need to worry about are the tomatoes, basil and dill. Since it may only drop below freezing one night and probably only for a few hours, I can bring in the few that won't make it and everything else will be fine. Once the temperatures officially start dipping below freezing then I'll consider harvesting various herbs.

Gardening Notes

As I'm learning more about when to plant what, I'd like to have a central place to turn to for notes.

-Plant garlic on Columbus Day: http://www.organicgardening.com/tags/garlic

-Plant potatoes on Good Friday: http://www.organicgardening.com/tags/potato

-Plant tomatoes on Memorial Day: http://www.organicgardening.com/tags/tomato

The Heat Won't Give Up...

We live in the South, so as much as we long for cooler weather, the heat doesn't want to give up. The next few days we'll be in the mid to upper 90s, if not low 100s and that's not good news for my newly planted fall garden. The varieties I planted are heat tolerant, but not satan's armpit tolerant, so I used a bed sheet to create a tent over the bed. It seems to be working like a charm. I'm still having to keep an eye on the plants at each end because they aren't covered all the time, but they seem to be doing okay with some heavy watering.

In other news, Tony started drilling holes and setting pipes for the plumbing drainage system this weekend and realized he bought some of the wrong parts for the pipes so I'll be making a trip to Home Depot this week so we can work on that more this next weekend.

As for me and my personal projects, I'm looking into switching us to a diet that isn't so heavy with meat and dairy. I'm tired of battling sinus infections and I'm hoping that by eliminating the dairy from my diet it'll clear up the chronic infections. I also watched Forks Over Knives on Netflix and I'm amazed at how a plant heavy diet can reverse so many medical conditions. It's inspired me to figure out more ways to expand our garden beyond the 5-6 raised beds we have planned.

I have several knitting and crochet projects I'm working on, but the one I'm most excited about is the Palindrome Scarf. It may be hot outside and I'm forced to sip iced green tea but I'm daydreaming of winter and mugs of hot green tea. The local/little yarn shop in Fort Smith is closing and she has all her yarn on sale for 50% off. I picked up a couple skeins of a no-pill acrylic in Iron that is super soft. I'm in love with this yarn and so I decided I wanted to teach myself to knit cables with it. The "palindrome" comes from the scarf looking the same on both sides.

First Square Foot Garden Bed

I finally got the first bed built today!!! With the heat it's just been impossible to do anything. Today we have a cold front pushing through so it'll be the first week we haven't been over 100 in 11 weeks here in Oklahoma (Texas was over 100 a few weeks before Oklahoma).

It was still hot this morning, it got up to 89 with a heat index of 91 while we were building the bed, but there is a chance of rain this afternoon so we wanted to get it done so it could soak up some water before I plant this week.

I made some changes from my original plans that I posted earlier in the summer. First, because of cost we decided to go ahead and try 2x6x8 pine boards instead of cinder blocks as the frame. When/if the boards need replacing, then we'll use cinder blocks. Next, I used perlite instead of vermiculite. There are a few reasons for this. One, I couldn't find vermiculite in our area. Two, perlite is about half the price of vermiculite. Three, asbestos has been found in vermiculite and one company was shut down which may be why it's so difficult to find vermiculite and why the price has skyrocketed.

What is the difference between perlite and vermiculite? There are many, and while similar products, perlite allows for better drainage while vermiculite tends to absorb water. I'm not worried about the perlite not holding water. If anything, because of the heavy clay below, I'd prefer perlite that drains so the soil doesn't become soupy. We are going to set up a laundry to landscape greywater system, so retaining moisture won't be an issue.

Here's the before shot.

 

Tony built the first box and we raked up the area underneath to remove any weeds and big rocks.

 

Then Tony built a second box and secured them together. 

Next I layered old cardboard underneath to block weeds, while Tony screwed in another board to help keep the box from bowing.

 

Then we layered and mixed peat moss, perlite and cow manure until the box was full.

Frugal Thrifty Green

A friend and I have started a joint blog that I thought I'd mention here. Frugal Thrifty Green is a place where we are going to share inexpensive recipes, money saving ideas, ways of doing things cheaper in a more environmentally sustainable manner, etc.

The co-author, Amanda, is a friend that I've known since 2006 when we met after trading a book at PaperBackSwap.com. It's a coincidence that Tony and I ended up moving an hour from where she lives. She's been such a blessing helping us out by letting us come over to do laundry, get water, and just being a great friend that helps keep me sane during all the chaos of living in a new place. Plus she knows a lot of great places to eat and shop.

It's awesome to have someone with the same values yet different perspectives so we can bounce ideas off each other and think of new ways to do things. I'm really excited to see where things go.

Tomato Pie

Tonight I made the Tomato Pie recipe from SimplyRecipes.com. It was my first time to make pie crust and it was all so delicious! I do want to make some notes for myself about the recipe though and see how it comes out next time.

I'm not a fan of mayo. Sometimes it lends itself well to a recipe, but this time I felt it made the dish too rich. Next time I'll either use just enough mayo to bind the cheese together or skip it all together.

I'll take the advice from the original recipe of caramelizing the onions first.

I may also try baking the crust for a few minutes first.

Tony (my husband) thinks adding chicken or ground turkey to the dish would also be tasty.

Photos from the process:

Layers from bottom up: crust, diced red onion, diced tomato, fresh basil, salt and pepper.

With cheese mixture using the grill as an oven:

Done!

Can it get any hotter?

This week we've been hitting record highs for the area and I've experienced the hottest temps that I can remember in my lifetime. It was 117 when I was running errands in Fort Smith on Tuesday and our lowest high has been 108. This has been our roughest week yet. The inside of the house has been getting up to 97 and 99 because the two little window units we have are designed for small rooms, not 640 sq ft of mostly open space. We have been receiving very light rain in the evenings with wind that cool things down to the 90s and 80s and we've only had one almost unbearable night so far. It's that humidity though that is making the days so difficult.

Our female Great Pyrenees, Kira, is old (she'll be 10 in October) and hasn't always had the best health and has an incredibly weak bladder, so I'm having to take her out to pee every 30 minutes and keep a close eye on her with the heat. I have a hard time handling heat myself, so I'm instantly sick to my stomach every time I take her out and I've had some horrible migraines the past couple of weeks, although they seem to be tolerable on the days I get to stay home and not be out in the heat for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

We have most of the wall insulation up, however we don't have a ceiling up yet so that is a big contributor to the hot temps inside, plus it's going to be hard no matter what when it's over 105 outside. It's sad that 105 sounds tolerable and 100 sounds down right cold these days.

My garden this summer has been in containers. I'm shocked that almost everything is still alive. I've lost my dill, cilantro, one tomato plant and a moss rose, but I still have two tomato plants (not that they are really producing, I've gotten 5 fruit off them but they weren't even edible), two basil (one sweet and one lemon), sage, a moss rose, a pecan seedling, a handful of redbud seedlings (they are really struggling though), and 4 pumpkin seedlings (I just started them 2-3 weeks ago just to see if they can produce by our first frost).We're on the southeast side of the mountain, so we start getting shade around 6pm and I think that is what has saved my plants.

It's been too hot to start the square foot garden beds, and seeing how money is tight since we're still recovering from moving, we've decided to build the beds with pine and when the time comes to replace them we'll use either cedar or cinder blocks.

We bought the toilet last weekend!!! We haven't installed it yet. We still have plumbing to run, holes to drill, and water to haul so we can use it, but we have it!

In all we might not be getting much accomplished lately and just struggling to get our day to day things done, but we're hanging in there. I'm just grateful that we do have electricity and a/c units that I can crash in front of on the couch during the day and get caught up on several baby blankets I have to make. There are so many people out there who aren't as blessed as we are, I really am thankful for what we have.