March Projects

Homemade Garlic Salt!

I found a simple recipe to make my own garlic salt from what's left 

of my 2011 German Extra Hardy garlic.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Add 1 cup of coarse sea salt to a food processor and chop for 3 minutes.

Next, peal and chop about 7 or 8 cloves garlic.

Add garlic to salt in food processor and mix for about 1 minute.

Press mixture onto baking sheet using wax paper to flatten.

Bake for 2 to 3 hours until cake begins to turn yellowish brown.

Let cool for 1 hour.

Brake into pieces and add to food processor to chop as fine as possible.

I keep my garlic salt in a spaghetti glass jar.

Will keep for up to 1 year.

Please note: The first hour of baking will release intense garlic odor in and 

around the kitchen! My eyes teared-up as if I were chopping onions!

Things get better as the baking dries the fresh garlic & salt.

The 2012 garlic began to sprout early this season on March 23rd.

It's a welcome sight to see and to my surprise, it was up seven

days earlier than my rhubarb. The rhubarb's red sprouts were  first

spotted on March 30, 2012.

The greenhouse gets hot after 10 AM these days.
I'm talking 114 and higher as noon approaches.
It's too early in the season to open windows so I needed to 

add a simple (and cheap) venting system.

Rather than spending $300+ dollars on a greenhouse vent, I went the cheaper

route and bought a six inch, in-line duct fan ($30) and a self-closing vent cap ($10)

and painted the exterior portion with a nice hammered green spray paint ($4).

I removed the top-right section of the upper wall so I could us my Jigsaw

to cut a six inch round hole to accommodate the vent.

It's a sure sign of spring when I can get back out into the garage and

use my power tools!

Almost done. The wall was put back into place and secured. Now all

that's left to do is mount the vent with 4 exterior screws.

Perfect fit! Next thing to do was secure the in-line duct fan pipe to the vent pipe

using common 1/4 inch stove pipe fasteners. So now for the brains

of this whole venting operation...

This is the LUX WIN100 programmable heating & cooling thermostat ($34).

This a very cool gadget to use for my greenhouse venting purposes.

All I need to do is plug my vent fan into this thermostat and that's it!

Once the temperature inside hits 75 or 80 degrees, this will kick-on the vent system.

I moved the onions out into the greenhouse today. They like cold temperatures,
so they'rein for a treat - at least during the overnights.
I programmed the vent thermostat to come on at 75 degrees in the morning
 and 80 during the noon hours.

The seedlings in the front are one-of-a-kind Becket strain rhubarb. If you can
save seed from your rhubarb plants and get it to grow, you truly have a variety
unique to your area and growing/pollination conditions.
I will call these rhubarb plants "Becket's Best."
The plants in the background are African Marigolds ( the 3 foot tall kind) which
I saved seeds from last year's groundhog-ravaged crop...
A wonder I actually saved any at all!

:)