Solar Cooking: Solar Brisket and a Potato Bag Harvest

Solar Brisket

 

Recipe

 

1 Brisket

8-10 Mushrooms

1/2 Large Onion

3 Carrots

1 tbsp Chili Powder

1 tsp Onion Powder

1/4 tsp Cayenne

1 tbsp Lawry's Seasoning Salt

1 tsp Garlic Powder

Not adding any liquid at all

 

Steps

 

Mix the spices

 
Rub the brisket with the spices
 

 
Rough chop the carrot and onion, leave the mushrooms whole
 

 
Add around the brisket in the pot
 

 
Cover and place in the solar cooker.  I'm shooting for 250-300 degrees for 5-6 hours.  Like I've said before, when I'm done "cooking" I just won't re-aim the oven and let it cool to warm (180-200 degrees)
 
Results
 




 
Looks great and look at all the fat and liquid.  Take note, added no liquid to this and put the brisket in frozen.
It turned out terrific, juicy with a slight spice to it.  Definitely a keeper.  No Lessons Learned on this one.
 
Potato Harvest
 
Decided to pull a grow bag of potato's tonight and here are the results.  Pretty decent harvest but the best part is the boy digging through them finding the treasure!  3 lb 7.8 oz
 

 

 

 
BTW, we have recouped over $57 at this point.

Garden Update: Everything In Full Swing

Just an update on all the growth going on.  It is happening so fast at this point.

Roma Tomato:  Over 30 tomatoes on it

Nectarines growing great.

Blackberry's from flower to fruit.

Some Betsy Tomatoes starting to turn red

Succession garden growing great

Collard greens and a radish for a salad.  Look at the size of that radish!  And look how beautiful those greens look.

Cucumbers all over the place.

Three sisters garden is like a jungle.  How compact I planted the corn may have stunted some of the stalks.

Squash are emerging every where now.

Grape flowers have turned to fruit.

So lots of changes in very little time.  This week we canned 9 pints of meat sauce, though I didn't take any pictures.  Lazy!  We also made chicken stock and canned 4 quarts.  Again, Lazy and didn't take any pictures.

Couldn't Resist: New potatoes for Dinner.

Pulled up one of the plants last night.  Just really curious!  Pulled off 3 nice young potatoes and added them to the beef stew.  The plant had another 6 very small potatoes on it, just too small to use.  But, a good sign of a big harvest to come.

UPDATE:  I was wondering if I might have left some in the dirt, so I dug down and found 3 more potatoes so 6 usable in total and 6 too small but that would have been 12 total on the plant.

Garden Update: Sucession garden growing fast.

Wanted to show the difference in two weeks that the 4x4 garden has experienced.  The left picture is from 5 April, the right picturer from 17 April.

 



5 April

17 April

 

You can see from the photo below, the vine is begining the end of late flowering.  Should have fruit soon.

 

 

 

The canopy really came in well with the major prunning I did.

 

 

I moved the tomato's over to the fence by the blueberries to regulate the sun a little bit.  As it gets hotter here in south Texas this will help with the afternoon strong heat.  One thing with the grow bags, I have to water every morning.  Really healthy plants, one Roma's has 26 tomato's growing now.

 

Blackberries are flowering now.

 

Been a while Garden Update

Sorry it's been a while.....life happens.

 

Big update on progress.  It's all cool though!

 

Here's an overview picture of the garden.  You can see the three sisters garden, grape vine, succession garden, grow bags, and the window sill planter

 

 

Here's a shot of some of the first beefsteak tomato's.

 

Here's the three sisters garden with a close up shot so you can see the squash and beans.  Not yet worried about overcrowding but I really pushed the envelope on this design.  If I need to thin it I will and learn for next year.

 

Always nice to see the grapes starting out.  After pruning so heavy this year I wasn't hopeful about a decent crop but it looks as if it's not going to be bad, and I'll get the shape of the vine I want.  BTW, no leaves yet on the 42 potted cuttings but it can take some time.

 

 

 Here's a nice shot of some of the Roma tomato's.

 

 

 

 

The secession garden is doing really well. The cucumbers were thinned and are vining out well. The peas are growing well in the back right. Some Cherokee beans in the back left. Lettuce, collards, and beets succession nicely as well as the radishes in the bottom left.

 

 

 

Here are the parsnips and the carrots. The parsnips in the closer half of the picture.

 

Didn't expect any blueberries this year so this is great.  I have 4 blueberry bushes. 

 

This garden has everything!  Strawberries, garlic, onion, sage, blackberry, oregano, thyme, dill, mint, and onion.

 

 

The fruit tree has a ton of nectarines starting to grow.

 And lastly, the hummingbirds.  They make my day.

Three Sisters Garden (TSG): Corn update......Squash planted

Please comment or share, any dialogue is appreciated.

Just a quick update.  The corn is doing very well.  We'll see how it turns out.  The corn is on average about 2 inches tall.  I direct sowed 9 squash and 3 zucchini.  3 of the squash was butternut, 6 are crookneck, and the 3 zucchini are black beauty.

By the look of things, the pole beans will probably be direct sown next Saturday and that will complete my first three sisters garden.

The plan, as this huge amount of corn is ripe, is too obviously eat some with dinner but for the rest, I'm going to let it dry on the stalk and then store it whole.  The best stalk of corn I will save for seed next year.




I may have gotten a little overzealous with the two grow bags!

Part of the plan with this garden is to also minimize having to buy seeds year-after-year.  I also believe that genetically, the plants will adapt to the environment and be stronger in successive years.

Garden Update....So far so good.

It's been a little while but I've been a bit busy lately!  The garden is doing well and I have a lot to update.

Some new developments:  I have two blueberry bushes to go in near a fence and some strawberry's to replenish my strawberry patch.

EDIT:  Just to note about the corn, I have two stalks coming up already.  Normal germination is 4-12 days.  I soaked the seeds for a day and a 1/2 and planted 7 days ago.

First, all the corn was planted on Feb 24.  Should be in good shape, no frost or overly good weather in the future.  Do have an 80+ predicted for tomorrow though.  The corn all went into the three sisters 5x5 garden.  Had some seeds left over and didn't want to waste them so I planted about 25 in each of the grow bags behind the bed.

To the right of the corn, you can see the Topsy turvey I mentioned in an earlier post.  I ended up planting 10 jalapeno seedlings into it.  Again, it shouldn't be too cold for them.

The potato's are growing well.  It is interesting that some are growing so much better than the others and the red potato's are growing the best.  I did have a little cold weather damage but the plants have pushed through and created new leaves.

The tomato's are doing pretty well.  I have lost a few, but those were the hot weather variety that I probably should have waited to put in.  The okra, on the bottom right, could have probably waited as well.  It's pretty sickly looking compared the the okra directly to the left that I just transplanted today.

The buds on all the cuttings look like they are going to produce leaves so I'm excited about the 42 that I planted in the quart containers.  There are buds on the vine that look about ready to say hi as well.  It was about this time last year the first growth appeared.

On the bottom left of the picture I planted four horseradish roots.  They were pretty well developed so they should do well.

So, on to the 4x4 garden.  As they say, a plan is not a plan until you run out of time for changes!  The asparagus roots just didn't seem to make it through the winter.  Might have been too wet as the roots were decomposing.  Had to change the plan.  So now there's celery, peas, lettuce, greens, beets, and radishes.  I am succession planting here.

In the grow bag is the cucumber and below that two other tomato plants.  

Succession planting can be very powerful.  I can't count how many times we had garden food rot because everything matured at the same time.  Decided to get smart this year.

l-------l--------l---------l---------l

  4 Cel   4 Cel    16 Pea

l-------l--------l---------l---------l

  5 Let   5 Let  5 Let   5 Let

l-------l--------l---------l---------l

  5 Grn 5 Grn  5 Grn   5 Grn

l-------l--------l---------l---------l

      32 Radish     16 Beets

l-------l--------l---------l---------l

The back left half will be 8 celery, planted 2 at a time every 10 days.  

The right half of the back is 16 pea's which all went in at once.  

The next row 3 lettuce planted today, then alternating 2/3 every 10 days.

The next row of greens done identical to the lettuce.

The radish is planted 4 at a time every 10 days.

The beets planted 8 a time with 20 days between.

Thanks for visiting.  If you have any tips or advice or questions don't hesitate to post them.

Grape Vine and Garden Update

First, the grape vine.  Finished pruning back the vine to take the shape I wanted.  I have three main vines trailing up to about five feet and have run wire across the trellis for this years growth.

Here's how I have been replanting some of the pruning to try and root some more vines.

You can see below that I've trimmed the piece of vine into two sections with two to four solid buds on each one.  Also, at the planted end, I stripped it to the core before dipping it into the 'take root.'

I was pretty liberal with dipping the root end.

And here, the finished product.  Only about 38 more to go!!!!!!

For the Garden, first the potato's are coming in really well.  Every planter potato has bloomed.

I've prepped the 5 foot by 5 foot bed that the Three Sisters is going to be planted in.  I added 3 forty pound bags of composted cow manure and mixed into the top 4 inches.  Watered it well and am letting it settle.  Plan is to plant the corn the 24 of February.

The first casualty of the year is one tomato plant.  The two year old fell and butt planted on one of the Manaluce tomato's!  No worries, I've got four more.  The cucumbers have all started to appear and I moved the bag to take advantage of the trellis by the 4 by 4 bed (top right corner of the photo below).

Lastly, here's two heads of cabbage I started from seed in the garden in October.  The heads are about the size of baseballs so these should be ready in the next four weeks.