DIY Life

OK, there's no denying it any longer. Fall is officially around the corner as the leaves begin to transform and September turns into October...

So what to do with those massive cukes you've grown over the summer? No worries; it's time to pickle! We'll show you how (it's much easier than you think, and you don't even need a canner!), and you'll be eating fresh all winter long...

Because cucumbers don't last long in the refrigerator (one week tops!), it's important to pickle and/or freeze your cucumbers while they're still fresh. In other words, if you've been sitting on your cucumber for five days, it's time to pickle. If you plan to pickle cucumbers from your garden, feel free to pick smaller, one-inch cucumbers to pickle. As long as they're green and ripe, you can work with any size (as long as you can fit it into a jar!). Ready to get started?:

1. Choose your cucumber. If you're new at this, you can use any cucumber. However, next year, try to plant a few pickling cucumbers to freeze. They're much easier to work with and are often tastier! When choosing your cucumber, remember the best are dark green in color with lots of warts and no bloating. If your cucumber isn't ripe enough (or over-ripe!), the pickles will be tart and less crisp.
Note: The fresher the cucumber is, the crispier your pickle will be!

2. Wash. Wash your cucumbers in cold water and cut if desired.

3. Prepare your jars for canning. If your dishwasher has a sterilize cycle, run it through a few times. If not, simply wash with warm, soapy water (and be sure to remove all soap prior to canning!).

4. Choose your pickle mix. Whether you want dill, kosher, bread and butter or sweet, many grocers have a mix for everything. Depending on which seasoning you'd like, preparation will be different, but most involve bringing the seasoning to a boil and mixing in a few key ingredients.

5. Add your cucumbers and pickle mix in a mason or canning jar. Shake and let sit for eight hours, or freeze to enjoy them in two weeks or so.

That's it! Try making a few pickles with your children; it's a fun, easy recipe that will teach them plenty of patience when it's time to wait a full eight hours... ;)

Enjoy!

I've lived in my sleepy Midwest town all summer long and just realized the locals host a Farmer's Market each Wednesday. How exciting? I can't wait to tackle the aisles next week, especially now that I have these foolproof tips from Howcast!:

A few quick tips:

1) Walk around the entire market before buying anything. There's no sense in splurging for the $0.25 tomato when you can get six for a dollar from another vendor.

2) Never visit a farmer's market hungry! You wouldn't do it at the grocery, so don't do it at the market. Otherwise, you're likely to head home with bags of foods you'll never eat.

3) Try hitting the farmer's market late in the day. Vendors typically hate heading home with extra produce, so you're more likely to score a good deal on that pound of grapes. (Hint: If you want the best selection, visit the market early to avoid picked-over produce.)

Ready to tackle your local market? You'll be a produce connoisseur in no time...

No tilling? No digging? No weeding? No kidding! It's Lasagna Gardening: an easy, non-backbreaking way to create garden beds. Organic materials piled up in deep layers (just like a lasagna) create a super-fertile spot for growing just about anything -- without the hard work!

Patricia Lanza, author of the gardening classic Lasagna Gardening, was kind enough to chat with DIY Life about her celebrated no-dig method and her own beautiful garden. Read on!

1. How big is your current garden and what are you growing right now?

My current garden(s) encompass our lake property where we live and a sunny plot at my Aunt Violet's house. The house property has a lot of shade and part-shade. I grow low-growing and ground-hugging plants in a curved bed that borders the front walk, with bulbs, perennials, annuals and flowering woody shrubs in the remaining border gardens.

Michelle Obama hosted a "harvest party" in the White House's organic kitchen garden, June 17. With a troupe of local school children helping out, Mrs. Obama began picking summer crops produced by the world's most famous backyard veggie patch.

The kids attending the event were the very same ones who helped break ground for the garden back in March. After gathering lettuce and sugar snap peas, they accompanied the First Lady back to the White House kitchen. There, they prepared a healthful lunch incorporating some of their homegrown greens and berries.

Photos and a video clip of the harvest are posted online at the official White House Briefing Room blog. You'll notice that Michelle was her usual casually chic self, donning colorful slacks and a coordinating fitted cardigan. Hardly genuine harvesting attire.

My no-dig vegetable garden is still in its infancy. I have a big ole pile of grass clippings mixed with kitchen compost, as per the instructions of veggie guru Patricia Lanza in her wonderful book, Lasagne Gardening.

Problem: This decaying pile is located in my front yard. A real visual treat for my neighbors, I'm sure. Honestly, it looks like I got halfway to the curb with a ton of garden waste then simply gave up and dumped it all on the lawn.

As a considerate citizen, I want to tidy things up with a low retaining wall. Trawling the Internet in search of easy-to-follow instructions, I cried "Hallelujah!" when I stumbled upon popular blogger Pioneer Woman's post, "Build Your Own Raised Flower/Vegetable Bed."

I dare you to find an American household without any carrots in the fridge. Granted, most will probably be the scrubbed-clean, prepackaged, more expensive baby carrots. If you'd like to save money (and waste less food!), read on.

First of all, buying whole carrots -- or, better yet, growing them -- is cheaper than buying baby carrots. A good thing, right? Well, if you learn how to peel them just so, you'll be able to save more of the carrot... and more money.

According to eHow, if you peel away from you with a sharp-bladed peeler, you'll peel off less carrot. Additionally, if you peel the top until no green is showing, then peel the tip as well -- no chopping -- you'll end up with more of the carrot.

It seems like a simple way to be frugal while respecting the Earth's resources.

Summer vacation keeps rolling along. How long until your kids go back to school? Are they spending too much time lounging on the couch? Here are a bunch of summer projects to trick your kids away from their air-conditioned sanctuary and out into the great outdoors of, er, your backyard.

Okay, okay. So the backyard is not the great outdoors. True. But the main thing is to get the kiddos out in the fresh air, learning about nature, and learning about the noble pursuit of maintaining a garden.

Getting their hands dirty
1. Ask them to help with the weeding. Pay them a small amount of pocket money for their time.

This is the first year we've used a CSA, and every Tuesday we get a delivery of fresh-from-the-farm vegetables. Last week, however, our delivery came the night before we left on a camping trip.

Since I wasn't sure all those goodies were going to last until we got home, I decided to freeze what I could. That's when I had a "why-didn't-I-think-of-that" moment.

After doing an internet search to find out if my green onions and garlic scapes could be frozen (they can, though they should only be used for cooking, not raw, afterwards), I discovered Biggie at Lunch in a Box. She recommends freezing green onions and chopped herbs in plastic bottles, so that they are simple to pour out and measure when adding them to a recipe. Brilliant! Why didn't I think of that?

So let's see... we've got the green movement, the organic initiative, and hemp-wearing vegan naturalists. What could be next? I guess it had to happen; we now have guerrilla gardeners out there, doing their thing in the dead of the night under the cover of darkness.

Exactly what is a guerrilla gardener?

They're also called "pirate farmers" and they plant produce and flowers on land they don't own. Since this is technically trespassing, they have planting parties at night when they're less likely to get caught. These operations are called "troop digs", unless of course it's a solo renegade farmer. Then it's "seed bombing." Sounds like fun doesn't it?

Are you ready to start digging?

Groups are already acknowledged and active in Berlin, London, San Fransisco, and Miami. Who knows how many are still undercover? Why not start your own midnight garden club? If you do, I hope you're in my area; I'd love to wake up in the morning with a lawn full of free organic produce!

It never fails: as soon as I get to a critical part in preparing the evening's meal, my three-year-old needs me. It doesn't matter if the quinoa is boiling over or if the roasting veggies are burned to a crisp; if Owen's fire hat is missing, it needs to be found pronto.

So what do we do in my house to minimize these moments? I don't juggle the potatoes or toss shrimp tails into my chef's hat, but if I have enough energy to be mildly creative, here's what works for us:

• Let Owen concoct. I give him a bowl and let him use water, flour, and other ingredients to mix his own concoction. And if his super heroes decide to go swimming in it? So what! It is all in good fun.
• Make pizza. If we are having pizza for dinner, Owen helps roll the dough, put on the sauce and sprinkle on the toppings. You can't have pizza every night, but it is sure to get your kids to want to help in the kitchen.
  

Think you're handy with a knife? Fiercely competitive? Sounds like you'd fit right in with this crowd of entrants in the Salon of Culinary Art, an annual fruit and vegetable carving competition held in New York. It's sort of like the Olympics...but with lots of produce and sharp cutting implements. And less exposure of gleaming, muscular flesh.

Saxton Freymann's books, especially Play with your Food, helped popularize this hobby/art-form. Freymann is known particularly for his fetching broccoli poodles and Brussels sprouts pigs. That's the kind of cutesie stuff that even I could probably master.

Leaders in the field, however, don't play around with such whimsies. Check out this New York Times slideshow to view the most intricately carved entries in this year's competition. Golden beet butterflies and rearing taro root stallions, anyone?

Gardening by moonlight? No, it's not those times when night has long since fallen and you're planting your flat of pink impatiens by flashlight because you promised yourself you'd get it done today. (Yes, that was me a couple weeks ago.) Moonlight planting is actually the science of planting at very specific times according to the moon's phases.

Moonlight planting, its practitioners say, maximizes growth with a minimum of water waste. Here's how moonlight is thought to affects plants: Just as the tides change with the phases of the moon, so do the water levels inside plants and in the surface of the soil itself. If you plant when those water levels are at their highest, plants may grow faster and stronger.

So how do you know what to plant and when? Easy. Consult a moonlight planting schedule, such as this handy 2008 veggie planting table provided by The Old Farmer's Almanac.

Skeptical? Want to read more? UK newspaper, the Observer, reported on a 2007 moonlight planting experiment being carried out at eco-friendly Nymans Garden in West Sussex.

Mother's Day invariably means an avalanche of mundane gift ideas for mom. If your mom is into gardening big-time, why not get something she can use and/or enjoy year-round--unlike, say, that $60 bunch of flowers or (yawn) potted herb garden you were about to order. Read on for ten gifts that real gardening moms would love to receive this Mother's Day!

Oh and by the way: all of the following gift ideas are available on the Web, which is cool because it means you don't have to schlep to the mall or your local blue- or orange-hued home and garden superstore. The down side: prices do not include tax or shipping. But, hey, if you can avoid a trip to the mall on Saturday it's worth it, right?

1. Japanese hand shears, $25-$48
Renowned for their beauty and durability are these Japanese hand tools. The secret? They are constructed from carbon steel (as opposed to stainless steel). Elegant rolled steel handles give them an unusual and distinctive appearance. In order to prevent rusting, these tools must always be dried after use and oiled occasionally. Aficionados swear it's worth the effort.

My daughter loves strawberries. She opens up the refrigerator when I am busy and proceeds to eat them straight out of the container. I shudder to think what pesticides are going into her precious tummy because she chomped away before I could wash the berries.

Produce wash can be very expensive, especially if your family eats a lot of fruit and veggies. You can take the pain out of buying commercial produce wash by making your own organic fruit and veggie wash. All you need is a spray bottle, one tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice, 2 tablespoons vinegar, and 1 cup water. Put the ingredients in the spray bottle and shake well. Spritz on your produce, and rinse well.

The dollar store has inexpensive spray bottles, perfect for your new organic produce wash. If you happen to have an eager toddler like mine, who just happens to have an independent streak a mile wide, you can spray your produce as soon as you get it home, and no longer worry about what nasty pesticides might be ingested into their tender tummies.

[via:Curbly]

A new juice bar just opened in our neighborhood. They serve any blend of fruit and veggie juice that you could imagine. They use fresh, organic ingredients, and present the drink in a trendy, branded cup.

For this, you'll pay $5.50. Seriously, for blended carrots, I just can't.

Vegetable juices are popular on health detox and other cleanses, but they taste great too, and can be a healthy part of an everyday diet.

To make this carrot juice, you don't need a juicing machine; any food processor or blender will do just fine. You'll find more information after the break.