My Purple Viking potatoes got scab! They taste great anyway. Something new to read up on for the winter months.

I get the bug every year. Around the time school is getting ready to start I have a deep desire to clean and decorate the home.

It’s not unknown you know. Autumn Cleaning

Some years I’m better at it than others. This year I seem to want to decorate.  Our master bedroom needs some love badly so I’m taking my time about it but making changes in a few things. No paint but bed and maybe a tiny bit of new furniture.  I also need to purge and organize the home office to make space for all that goes on there. How many paint sets, crayons, workbooks, scrap paper, construction paper, chalk pieces, pens, tapes, scissors and glue does a five year old need anyway? And she knows if I’ve gotten rid of something.

But enough about me. Here are a couple of tools and sites I’ve been visiting as of late…

Haven of Home. I’m just having an all around good read here. Roxanne’s blog is a delight to read and she makes no apologies for enjoying the 50′s. Although this is from her spring cleaning series circa 2009 I like it for any time of year. She starts with decluttering her home room by room and then cleaning and then decorating.  (The link I’m sending you to is for the Spring Cleaning series.)

Spring Cleaning Year Round. These are just so cute. If you’re having trouble keeping on top of your chores consider picking up one of these darling chore boxes. Decorated so cute how could you help but keep on track? You will want to display this in a prime spot where you can smile at it’s sunny disposition each day. If you do end up ordering can you tell her Q&Q sent you? Thanks!

We had such a great crop of potatoes last year that we knew for sure we would have a great one this year.

Well….

Yes and No.

We planted two varieties again. The Purple Viking and last year’s winner German Butterball. All derived from Seedsavers.org (love em).

So it’s now mid-August and even though we’ll be harvesting all of them at the end of the month (like we did last year) we pulled a few today for dinner.

Waahhhh! The Purple Viking have scab. We pulled 4 of them and 2 had it really bad and two were not so bad. The German Butterball were lovely as usual.

Purple Viking Potato with Scab

I like to think of myself as a new vegetable gardener. I did have a veggie garden eons ago while I was still in college (go figure I told you I was domestic) but we lived in an area that must have been toxic because there were no bugs and we didn’t really know what we (my mom and I) were doing but we got a good harvest. I only did it one year and I ordered plants from those places you see in the inserts in your Sunday newspaper.

So like I was saying I’m new at this. I didn’t read about all the things that can go wrong with potatoes. I found one article about how to grow them in pots and went for it. I’m reading about it now.

That being said I now have started my list on growing succesful potatoes so next year we hopefully won’t have this problem.

Gardening is not perfect. A learning experience all the way.

Okay so here are today’s gardening links…

Seed Savers Potatoes (out of stock until later)

Dissertation to Dirt (I just liked this blog on gardening. Cute couple. And yes the link is about potatoes)

WSU’s page about purple potatoes (don’t be mad UW)

Saving of Seed Potatoes how to

And old post on a veggie garden

How do you wash your dishes?

There is some debate whether to use dish cloths or sponges to wash dishes. I’m of the dish cloth camp myself. Probably due to my love of vintage homemaking stuff.

I also have a fondness for ordering my household tasks by the days of the week. Some time ago I picked up some dish clothes with the days of the week on them. I’m not necessarily completely happy with them but I have yet to find the perfect days of the week dish cloths (you etsy crafts people hint, hint).

I also wanted to pick up some dish cloths with the days of the week on them. I found one pair but didn’t like the look of the cloth itself.

You see I was in need of some new dish cloths. My previous set had disintegrated rather rapidly I thought. I browsed the internet looking for that perftec dish cloth. What I did find was some information stating that linen dish cloths are the best. They apparently last a long time in addition to doing a fabulous job on the dishes. So I went to see if I could find some. They sell the fairly cheap overseas in England but the shipping made a purchase like that prohibitive. I found them here in the states too but the shipping again made the cost rather high. I like seven by the way.

So my crafty aunt came to the rescue and knit me a lovely (in my favorite) linen dish cloth using a pattern from her copy of Knitter’s Stash

The cloth is pretty to look at and has a good texture to it for washing dishes. Many dish cloths feel like slipper somethign or other but not this dish cloth. I’ve asked her to knit me a few more.

Wanna see?

Linen Dish Cloth

Linen Dish Cloth on Dish Cloth Rack

Reusable Felt Duster Before Washing

About two weeks ago I got this big lovely package in the mail from Right at Home. Inside were cleaning supplies in a nice big white cleaning caddy. I was in love!

One of the items included was a Pledge brand duster. You know like the Swiffer ones. I went right to work using it to tidy up my badly neglected blinds. It works really well for this and even better if you spray it first with Pledge or something.

So I happily used my Pledge sprayed duster to clean up the blinds but then it was all icky and I knew I needed to get a refill. As I was in the slow process (I looked for them if I happened to be in the store) of searching for refills I looked online to find out if any experimenting soul had tried rewashing these. Instead I landed on etsy where people were selling handmade felt or knit reusable Pledge/Swiffer refills. The thought intrigued me and I was just about to whip out my credit card (I’m quick to pay for a cleaning product) when I noticed that a lot of the ones I liked were all made out of felt.

Well still having a ton of felt from my daughter’s birthday presents (she says her house needs stairs, and a chimney) I thought it would befit me to see if I couldn’t use the badly neglected sewing machine in our home and do some of this myself.

So I did! You can see the picture up top there before I tossed it in the wash to beat up some. The instructions were via Sew Much Ado (thank you to her great instructions).

The only thing is now my daughter has claimed the duster as her own and I don’t get to use it much.

I don’t have any pics…yet but I have little green tomatoes all over our many plants. Again this year some are unlabeled (the ones my husband gleaned from our starts). My husband wants to see what will happen when some tomatoes are left to their own devices so we will see.

We have Brandywine (some rogue lonely dying plant that I picked up at a store), Green Sausage, some cherry tomatoe variety I have to go read the pack again. And my favorites, Black from Tula, Amish Paste (these grew well last year) and Gold Medal.

More to come…

A few ladybugs on my carrots

First of all you need to READ the packaging on everything you buy!

That’s a note to self.

And one that would have served us well several days ago.

The story…

My mother who said she was falling into a depressed state over all the damage unknown bugs were doing to her collards (if you have any tips PLEASE leave a comment) asked my husband if he could pretty please pick up a few ladybugs and preying mantis on his way home.

This is the first year she has attempted to grow collards so we weren’t sure what to expect or really how to grow them well.

So he, my husband, lovingly and to the delight of Peanut brought home to mesh bags. One filled with 200 ladybugs and the other with a preying mantis egg casing. He handed over both to my mother with some cryptic tips about hanging the bag of the egg casing and just dumping the ladybugs wherever she wanted them.

Later on she (my mother) came over and dumped some on my garden with a promise to share the preying mantis when they hatched, or emerged, or whatever.

We laughed and played with the ladybugs. Peanut collected about 50 in her bug box and we, thinking they knew that our little porch was home, went smilingly to bed.

The next day we counted maybe 10 ladybugs and about 5 in the bug box since my husband had let the rest out into the garden in the wee hours.

Today I find none on the porch and two in my mother’s garden.

And by the way she (my mother) came over this morning to let me know it might be a good idea if we had read the instructions on the ladybugs.

As nice as the ladybugs are it’s their babies we want and they were supposed to be laying little egg bunches here and there within the garden.  We were also supposed to water where placed them.  We aslo are supposed to be on the lookout for their babies.

The preying mantis will be tiny and the look of their little cocoon thingy won’t change as they emerge.

I found out more about them here Preying Mantis school

Have I mentioned before my love/hate relationship with lettuce?

I love it. It’s so fresh and adds so much to a sandwich, or salad.

I’ve been trying to grow it forever.

I’ve discovered I’m not patient enough and I usually start cutting and picking leaves long before the stuff has matured.

This year I bought a lettuce bag and planted tons of little tiny lettuce seeds.

As I mentioned before I’m impatient and I got my nose out of joint because they didn’t sprout soon enough for me.

So now I have tons of lettcue.

I wanted to plant a succession of lettuce crops but that means planting thinly which I did not.

My other pet peeve is washing lettuce.

This is my method…

1. Spray lettuce before cutting.
2. Soak a few minutes in a cold water bath in the sink
3. Drain the water and soak again.
4. Drain the water and soak again
5. Spray leaves as I’m pulling out to spin (my mother finally gave me back our lettuce spinner)

On my drain yesterday an earwig went down the drain…

WHAT?!

I had washed the mess THREE times!

I still love lettuce and we ait it anyway.

BTW I’ve had the stuff from the grocery store hatch larvae in my fridge before sssshhhhuuudddderrrrr!!!! It was organic

By the way this week’s e-newsletter from Molly Green was about lettuce. Recipes and all. If you don’t subscribe you should. It’s free for the weekly newsletter and you get nice tips and some free resources.

How do you wash your lettuce?

I’m almost to the end of my challenge and giveaway (enter please if you haven’t already) and here are some of my reflections on this whole hanging the laundry to dry thing….

• I have plans to keep this up for the rest of the summer. At least while it’s so hot. It keeps the house cooler, cuts on our energy usage (smaller bill), and things dry so quickly in this heat.
• I’m keeping up better with the laundry since I only have so much hanging space.
• It’s not that much more work than using the dryer and I feel very vintagey, homemakey while attending to the task
• An apron is a good thing to have while doing this. It holds the pins well and adds to the feeling mentioned above.
• Note to self keep clothes pins away from Peanut. She managed to remove the springs from half of my collection. It’s a little difficult to put them back together so I’m just going to get some more.

So heres some great techy information on what’s in many laundry detergents.

Masking Agents: What Are They Hiding?

·         Truly fragrance free products have a scent. If there is no scent, it is likely that the product contains a masking agent.

·         Masking agents are actually synthetic fragrances that neutralize the scents so that there is no appreciable odor in a product.

·         Masking agents have similar effects to fragrances – some people have skin and respiratory sensitivity to them.

·         If a product does not contain fragrance it may still contain a masking agent – “no masking agents” claims indicate to consumers with sensitivities to fragrance that there are no fragrances present.

Optical Brighteners: Not a Brilliant Idea

·         Optical brighteners are chemicals that make fabrics seem brighter or whiter than they are.

·         They remain behind on clean laundry as a coating and when invisible ultraviolet light hits this coating; they convert it into visible light to create an optical illusion that tricks the eye into thinking our clothes are super clean.

·         Optical brighteners are designed to remain behind on clothes/laundry which means they come in direct contact with skin.

·         They can cause allergic reactions in some people.

·         Some are poisonous to fish and other aquatic life.

·         Many are not biodegradable and remain in waterways.

Why Seventh Generation Laundry Products are Different

·         Plant-based laundry detergents are non-toxic and biodegradable

·         Hypo-allergenic

·         Free of phosphates and optical brighteners

·         Safe for septic and greywater systems

·         Not tested on animals and are Kosher certified

Learn more about Seventh Generation’s line of laundry products at http://www.seventhgeneration.com/Natural-Laundry-Detergent

So how’s it going so far (this is me talking to myself). It’s week 3 in Project Laundry line and again so far so good. We’ve moved the laundry line out of the garage and upstairs where I can open windows and let a good breeze dry our things in a few hours.

As I’ve said before our outside setup is not the best for laundry so I’m improvising. It’s going well.

I’m a bit shocked that it is going so well. I thought I would get behind in the laundry due to the dry time and the additional work of hanging. But not so. Yes there is the additional time of hanging but it seems a bit therapeutic and old timey. Anyway not bad.

Here are my pros so far:

• Cooler home without the dryer running.

Want to get in the hanging your laundry to dry act? Here is a really great post on hang drying your laundry, hang drying laundry.

And please don’t forget to enter our giveaway and win a pack of your own laundry supplies.