A new crop for 2022

This weekend we decided, pretty much on the spur of the moment, to add a new crop to our 2022 garden. And it all started with a batch of sushi.

Brian and I seldom go out for sushi these days. Instead, Brian makes his own, which is still not cheap, but significantly cheaper. He's learned to make sushi rice using plain old white rice, and he buys the nori sheets and chunks of sushi-grade salmon at the local H-Mart. (All the sushi-grade fish used to be stored in a case with the amusing label "Roll Your Own," but I guess corporate decided that joke wasn't funny.) However, H-mart doesn't sell the little tubs of wasabi paste that normally come with the sushi; you can only get those if you're buying your sushi ready-made. So, as a substitute, he bought a little tin of wasabi powder that he could mix up with water to make his own wasabi paste. 

This time, however, when he mixed the wasabi, he found that it completely lost its bite. Even I, a complete spice wimp, could lick the powder right off my finger with no ill effects. A quick search on Still Tasty revealed that wasabi powder, properly stored, should last three to four years — but on reflection, we realized that we'd probably had this tin for about that long. We just didn't eat sushi often enough to use it up. So the remaining powder went into the compost bin (or, since it was a somewhat windy day, the area immediately around it).

This got me wondering about whether there might be some way to acquire wasabi (or horseradish, which is what most sushi restaurants actually serve) in smaller quantities, so that we wouldn't waste so much of it. The way we usually do this with herbs, such as rosemary or oregano, is to grow our own and snip off a bit as needed. So I got to wondering: would it be possible to do the same thing with horseradish root?

A quick search revealed that horseradish is, in fact, easy to grow. Almost too easy, in fact, as it has a tendency to take over any area of the garden where it's planted. Good Housekeeping warns against tilling the ground where you've planted it or putting any bit of the root in your compost bin, as that's a good way to spread it all over the yard. Fortunately, it's easy to grow in containers as well, provided they have good drainage and a sunny spot to sit in. And we just happened to have several large buckets that we'd used for our largely unsuccessful potato experiment. Since we never actually got around to putting in a potato crop last year, we decided to repurpose the buckets and see, just for a lark, if we could manage to grow some horseradish.

The first challenge was to find horseradish root. That was easy; a quick call to the Belle Mead Co-Op, where we'd bought our seed potatoes, confirmed that they had some in stock. And since we needed to go there at some point anyway to buy more copper fungicide for our plum trees and some netting to replace the worn-out sections on our garden trellises, it wouldn't even cost us an extra trip. The price was a little steeper than we expected — $12 for a bag of three roots packed in wood shavings — but if the experiment works, this could supply us with all the horseradish we need for a lifetime to come, so what the hey. We decided to start two of the three roots, even though one horseradish plant would probably be plenty to meet our needs, since that would give us a backup in case one of them didn't grow well.

Fortunately, we didn't need to buy anything else. We already had the buckets and a supply of small rocks to create a drainage layer on the bottom. On top of that, we added some ordinary garden soil, amended with a scoop each of compost from our bin and rotted manure from Home Depot (which we've already tested for safety). Then we planted the roots (a few inches deep and at a forty-five degree angle, according to the instructions) and covered them with some wood mulch, which we scavenged from the area around our honeyberries. (We'll need to buy a load of mulch for them this year anyway, so replacing a little bit more won't matter much.)

Our new plants are now tucked into the sunniest corner of the garden, and by all accounts, they'll pretty much take care of themselves from here on out. All we'll need to do is give them a little water during dry spells and prune off any stray suckers. By the end of the year, we should be able to dig out the roots, cut off as much as we need, and replant the rest. The harvested portion should keep for up to three months in the fridge, up to six months if grated and frozen, or up to a year if we can figure out a way to dehydrate it. Storing the root in damp sand in a cold, dark cellar, apparently, is also an option. Or perhaps we could harvest one plant in late fall and the other in early spring to keep us going throughout the summer.

Of course, we'll have to be extra careful when preparing the horseradish, because the chemicals in this stuff are an incredibly potent irritant. Recommendations range from "prepare in a well-ventilated area" to "prepare outdoors" to "wear a ventilator mask and safety goggles." But I guess that's a problem we'll worry about when the time comes. No use counting our radishes before they're dug.

Environmental Sustainability piece for Perch

A quick update here to let you know about another piece I did for Perch Energy, this one on the topic of environmental sustainability. 

Sustainability is sometimes described as “saving the planet.” I think this is misleading, because our planet survived for billions of years before humans existed, and it'll continue to survive after we’re gone. It's more accurate to frame sustainability in terms of saving ourselves—ensuring that our species can survive and prosper long into the future. And since we don’t have another planet to move to, environmental sustainability means preserving the resources on this planet that we need to live and to thrive. 

So how do we do that? That's what the rest of the piece is about. It provides a simple illustration of how sustainability works, some examples of what we're doing now that isn't sustainable, some goals we must meet in order to achieve a sustainable future, and some examples of barriers we must overcome to get there. 

Environmental Sustainability: What It Means & Why It Matters

Money Crashers: 2 financial pieces

Here are two more Money Crashers articles dealing with core financial topics. The first is a companion to my earlier piece on debt settlement — arranging with creditors to cancel your debt for less than you owe. I noted in that piece that debt settlement isn't the only option for debt relief and isn't always the best one, so in this article, I explore some of the alternatives, such as credit counseling, debt management plans, debt consolidation loans, and bankruptcy. 

8 Alternatives to Debt Settlement for Debt Management and Relief

The second article is on the broader topic of getting your finances under control. For anyone who's ever struggled to make ends meet, it provides a complete, step-by-step guide to taming every aspect of your financial life — from budgeting and building emergency savings to paying off debt, investing, and estate planning.

How to Get Your Finances Under Control – 19 Things to Do Right Now

Gardeners' Holidays 2022: First Sowing

We're a little behind with our work in the garden this year. Between errands, visits to out-of-state friends, and trying to prepare our tax return and a new RPG campaign, our weekends have been so packed that we never got around to preparing the beds for planting. So when the first day of spring rolled around — the traditional day for sowing our snap peas, the first crop of the year — it found the garden still covered in weeds.

Thus, it's quite easy to see in this picture where the peas went in: It's the one place where the weeds aren't. Brian cleared them out just in that one little patch, and I poked in the peas, gave them a good watering (with the watering can, since the outdoor water is still off and the rain barrel is still in storage) and covered them with the row protectors Brian constructed. They're not much of a barrier, but we hope they'll at least deter squirrels from digging up the peas.

Fortunately, not all the plants coming up in the beds are weeds. While planting the peas, I discovered a couple of small, twisty leeks in the next bed over. Apparently they never got harvested last fall, and they managed to overwinter successfully. So even if our first seeds just went into the ground, we already have one crop that we could harvest right now in a pinch.

And there are more edibles waiting in the wings in other parts of the yard. In the asparagus patch, the first few spears are just starting to poke their little heads up. In the rhubarb patch, all four plants are visible (though some more so than others), a harbinger of pies and crisps to come. And beside the shed, the garlic we planted last fall is sending up narrow green shoots, which should be ready to harvest in May or June.

In short, spring is doing its thing, whether we are ready for it or not. So if we want to get our next set of crops (lettuce, leeks, scallions, and arugula) in as scheduled on April 10, we are going to need to make time in the next week or two for some serious garden work. Our to-do list includes:

• Weeding all the beds, as well as the areas under the fruit trees and bushes
  
• Excavating compost from the bin to spread on the beds
  
• Testing the bagged compost that we bought last weekend to supplement what our little bin can produce
• Buying some mulch to put down on our flowerbed, shrubs, and trees
• Making room for the mulch in the shed by getting the rain barrel and patio furniture out of there
• Making room on the patio for the furniture by burning the branches we cut off the rosebush last month
• Setting up the rain barrel
• Extending our garden fence in the hope of keeping out deer (more on this later once we figure out what the sam hill we're doing)
• And, whenever it arrives, planting the new honeyberry bush we ordered to replace the dead one we failed to replace last year
  

So we certainly have no shortage of outdoor jobs to keep us busy. To get it all done, we'll either have to work on it in the afternoons and evenings over the next couple of weeks or block out a whole weekend to devote almost entirely to the garden. Because food (with the exception of plums, when we're lucky) doesn't just grow on trees.

Money Crashers: 2 new articles

Here's a quick update on my two latest articles for Money Crashers. The first is very much in an  ecofrugal vein: a list of ideas for eco-friendly small businesses. If you're thinking of starting a side business, making it a green business could help you stand out from the crowd. More than one-third of all consumers, especially younger ones, are willing to pay around 25% more for green products and services. So you can  both boost your profits and help the earth — a win-win.

20 Green Small Business Ideas for Eco-Friendly Entrepreneurs

The other is less ecofrugal, but still useful: a list of the most common credit card scams of 2022. To protect your money, learn to recognize these cons and stay one step ahead of the scammers.

9 Credit Card Scams and Frauds to Watch Out For

Recipe of the Month: White bean and kale soup

We just got back from a weekend visit with friends, so this is just going to be a quickie post to tell you about March's Recipe of the Month: white bean and kale soup.

Last week's newsletter from It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken brought a recipe the author presented as "my go-to vegan soup." I'm always eager to expand my soup repertoire, and the blogger declared this dish to be "delicious, easy, hearty, and healthy," taking only 20 minutes to make. And fortuitously, the recipe called only for veggies we already happened to have on hand: canned white beans, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, and kale (which Brian had bought on a whim on our last trip to Lidl). 

The only thing that gave me pause was the combination of seasonings: a teaspoon each of oregano, thyme, and cumin, half a teaspoon of turmeric, and a quarter-teaspoon of black pepper. To my mind, the oregano and thyme seemed compatible, as did the cumin and turmeric, but not all four together. And adding these five spices to our usual Penzey's vegetable stock seemed like it would have an even greater potential for conflict. So, out of caution, we made just half a batch of this soup for our first foray.

The good news is, it was indeed quite easy. It was pretty to look at, too, with a nice combination of colors and textures in the bowl. And it was certainly hearty enough to make a full meal with a slice of whole-wheat bread on the side.

But the aroma coming off the bowl wasn't exactly appetizing, and the flavor wasn't an improvement on it. The combination of spices that had seemed so questionable to me when I tasted it in my mind didn't taste any better in my mouth. The cumin was predominant, but the turmeric contributed a faint but distinct sort of mustiness in the background, and neither of them really tasted to me like it belonged with the other ingredients. Brian, who rather enjoys a cumin-forward soup, liked it fairly well, but I ploughed unenthusiastically through about two-thirds of my portion before giving up and reheating some leftovers. In short, while this soup earned full marks from both of us for "easy, hearty, and healthy," only one of us could give it a passing grade on "delicious."

So I wouldn't make this dish again as written. But I think it might be worth trying again with different seasonings, or perhaps even with no seasonings at all except the flavors provided by the Penzey's stock. The rest of the ingredients are so simple that it's hard to imagine them not working together, and the soup base has enough flavor that it could probably carry the soup on its own. And if it didn't, we could continue to tinker with the seasonings (bay leaf? parsley?) until we had a version we both liked. Then we'd have a genuinely "delicious, easy, hearty, and healthy" soup worthy of being a go-to recipe for both of us.

Earthships: the ultimate ecofrugal home that I don't want

Last week my mom sent me an email with the subject line, "homes off-grid, climate resilient, and built from trash." Inside was a link to a Washington Post article about Earthships: earth-sheltered homes out in the New Mexico desert built largely from a combination of used tires, dirt, and other waste and designed to be largely self-sustaining. 

Unfortunately, I couldn't read the piece because it was behind a paywall, but fortuitously, a condensed version of it turned up in this week's Star-Ledger Extra, a freebie we get with our weekly supermarket fliers. Between that and the official website for Earthship Global, I was able to glean several interesting facts about how Earthships work and why people build them.

First, Earthship construction minimizes the use of limited resources, like wood, while making use of materials that would otherwise go to waste. They homes are built chiefly from used tires packed with dirt, turning a major waste product (we currently have 2.5 billion old tires in the U.S., with another 2.5 million discarded each year) into a wall that's strong but not brittle, heavily insulated, and naturally fire-resistant. It's also a large thermal mass that absorbs heat during the day and releases it at night. In short, it's about as ecofrugal a building material as you could ask for. Many Earthships also incorporate other waste materials, such as cans and bottles, often as decorative elements.

Also, Earthships are built to be "autonomous." They're self-powering, using solar panels for electricity and passive solar design to keep them at a comfortable temperature year-round. They have indoor gardens that can supply 25% to 50% of their residents' food needs. Their plumbing systems use the same water multiple times: first for drinking and bathing, then for watering the garden, then for flushing toilets, and finally out into a septic tank where it helps fertilize outdoor plants. 

All this makes them appealing to what the Post article calls "climate doomers." Many Earthship owners aren't just trying to live lightly on the planet and help stave off the climate apocalypse; they're planning to survive it. An Earthship builder quoted in the article says many clients see the house as their "panic room." The article says many young people see Earthships as offering "a clean break from a world that feels like it's on the verge of breaking itself."

Now, I can certainly see the appeal of living in an Earthship. They're not exactly cheap to build — in fact, they cost a bit more than other homes of similar size, though you can reduce costs by doing the work yourself with a bit of training. But they're eco-friendly and self-sustaining, and they can offer a haven from disasters that knock society to its knees either temporarily (weather emergencies, the coronavirus pandemic) or permanently (climate catastrophe). And yet, as I read the article, I didn't feel even the slightest temptation to go west and build one of my own.

Because the fact is, I don't want to live in a fortress of solitude in the New Mexico desert.  An Earthship of my own could potentially meet my needs for shelter, water, energy, and even food, but not for human companionship and community. Maybe if I could build an Earthship right here in Highland Park, from which I could still visit the library and attend outdoor movie nights and go for walks in the park and run errands in town, I might be at least slightly tempted. But retreating into the desert to live in my own little earth-sheltered hermitage, cut off from the world and its problems, has no appeal for me. I want to be a part of the world, a part of my own community, and a part of the solution.

What I'd really like is if, instead of paying $2,500 to spend a week at the Earthship Academy learning how to build a complete Earthship from scratch, I could pay some more modest sum to learn how to incorporate elements of sustainable Earthship construction into an existing home. How to add passive solar elements to my home to reduce the need for heating and air conditioning. How to recycle water while staying connected to the town sewer system. How to grow more food at home, indoors and out, without having to build a new house from scratch around the garden.

Making my current home more Earthship-like wouldn't just benefit me. The changes to my home could serve as a model for others in the neighborhood as well. I could find ways to share the knowledge I'd gained with my neighbors (lectures at the library? materials distributed online?) and help them make their homes more sustainable too. And we could work together to make not just individual homes, but our whole town better able to weather disasters, with resources like community gardens and community solar that would benefit everyone.

Then I wouldn't just be the captain of my own Earthship; I'd be part of the crew of a town-wide Earthship sailing toward sustainability. Together, we could all help fend off the climate apocalypse or, if worse came to worst, survive it as a community. Which, to me, seems much better than surviving all by myself.

New articles from Money Crashers and Perch Energy

A quick update here to let you know about three new articles of mine that have gone live at Money Crashers, as well as one new one from Perch Energy.

The first Money Crashers piece has split off from my earlier piece on flooring. That one covered the different flooring options available and their pros and cons, particularly with regard to cost; this one is about how to save money on the materials and installation for whatever type of flooring you want.

How to Save Money on Flooring - 9 Steps to Get What You Want For Less

Continuing in the home renovation vein, here's a piece about remodeling your basement on a budget. In it, I cite as examples several of the techniques we used in renovating our already-kind-of-finished basement to turn it into a real room.

How to Save Money on a Basement Remodel - 10 Useful Tips

Next, a simple little piece about community banks. I explain what sets them apart from big banks and the pros and cons of choosing one for your banking needs. (In the process of writing this, I learned that our bank, Provident, was a community bank when we joined it, but apparently is no longer. As of last October, it has too many branches to qualify. So we're now using a regional bank instead, but we're okay with that.)

What Are Community Banks?

And lastly, my new piece for Perch is about tidal energy. I explain how this renewable energy source works and why it isn't used more (spoiler alert: it's mostly about cost).

Tidal Power Explained: What is Tidal Energy & Is It Renewable?