Review: Of Veg and Cheese...and Java Dilemma

In the original "Of Veg and Cheese" post I outlined how, in accordance with life in the early 1940's, we would be limited to seasonably available produce during the rationing year, with the exception of canned and frozen produce which would be subject to ration points and market fluctuations.

So how did it go?

Well, last winter was tough - no bones about it. With just one pound of frozen vegetables setting us back one quarter of our weekly blue/green points, we were forced to work with seasonally available produce. This meant mostly carrots, potatoes and cabbage. And trust me, with all other green, leafy vegetables unavailable you start to appreciate cabbage on a whole new level.

Going without fresh salad for a few months definitely helped us understand how much we really love salad, even if it's as basic as a few green leaves and a simple dressing. Luckily, growing lettuce and mesclun indoors (or in a hoop frame or cold frame) is so easy we were able to get a jump start on our spring greens.

Once early summer came around we had locally grown produce available from our gardens, the farmer's market and our CSA bag. As you know, we had a hard time maintaining our Victory Gardens, and my new work schedule made visiting the farmer's market logistically tricky. And for a second year the CSA bags were a bit of a disappointment (some of the produce was actually of poor quality); I don't believe we'll do CSA bags in the future.

On the other hand, you just can't beat locally grown fruit. This past year we consumed our share of local strawberries, blackberries, apples and pears. Nothing can beat a fruit that was allowed to ripen fully before picking...and then immediately eating it. Really, I cannot downplay the physical and sensual joy of experiencing a local "u-pick" establishment.

As far as cheese goes...well, it's a staple we never want missing from the fridge. The versatility of hard cheese (snack, recipe ingredient, sandwich topper) make it a very useful, albeit rationed, resource. And thank goodness sour cream and cottage cheese weren't rationed - they have frequently been used to bulk up a sauce or soup (the former) or add protein to an otherwise light meal (the latter).

And finally, coffee. As outlined in the post "Java Dilemma," during rationing each adult received one pound of coffee every five weeks, assuming shortages didn't throw a kink into your coffee purchasing week. Both TMOTH and I increased our coffee consumption during the past year, in exchange for shrinking our soda intake. Even with that change, though, we were never in danger of running out of coffee supplies before the next ration amount could be purchased. We even had enough of a coffee surplus to, umm, be creative.

So, what of veg and cheese and coffee after rationing? We plan to continue focusing on seasonably available produce in an effort to reduce the carbon footprint of the fruits and vegetables we eat. And we'll continue to drink coffee at our current rates and avoid heavily-sugared sodas.

And cabbage...dear, sweet cabbage. You will always have a special place in our hearts...even if you're not as frequent a visitor at the table.

--Rational Mama

Not So Victorious Gardens

*A garden summary, by TMOTH

Mary, Mary quite contrary. How does your garden grow?

As of last week we are officially done with this year's gardens so it is time to assess how we did. I wish I could say better. Should I start with the excuses now or save those for later?

Sorry, it’s not like me to be so negative but I judge myself more harshly than others and the gardens were one area of the rationing project where more responsibility rested with me. I can’t think of any reason not to say that the amount of produce was disappointing. We knew going in that even with the additional garden space shared by friends (thanks again everyone) we were far short on space recommendations for successful Victory Gardens.

Even considering our space limitations we had high hopes. Especially for tomatoes, which took up the largest share of space. While I have to admit that I could/should have been more diligent with weeding and watering, I take some solace in the number of other gardeners I heard lamenting this year's tomatoes. I’m no master gardener to explain all of the variables but I also heard some say their tomatoes were great. In fact, one of our borrowed plots had plants that just wouldn’t give up. After suffering with the rest through brutal heat and a long dry spell what thick skinned fruit was on the vine split when the rains finally came. With the help of the late summer rain those plants started growing like crazy and loaded up with fruit all over again. Most of it never got to ripen on the vine. Last week I took what I thought were mature enough to finish on the shelf and pulled out the plants. Even when I finally uprooted the plants last week they were green bushy and still producing flowers and fruit in all stages of maturity.

It was a tough decision to take down those enthusiastic die-hards but I was afraid that we were just robbing nutrients from the soil for tomatoes that would never have a chance to ripen with the shorter days and cooler nights. (Can I really be thinking of frost already?).

Sorry that I don’t have an accurate tally of what we DID get but in general the gardens gave the occasional fresh produce for meals including a variety of greens and broccoli in the spring, eggplant, tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers and a small variety of squashes later with basil on demand throughout (still growing). Unfortunately we didn’t get the amount needed to save massive amounts for later.

I won’t go too deep into the excuses I promised earlier but I will leave you with this one insight. Trying to keep up with in four different small gardens in four different locations does not mix well with trying to limit your mileage.

--TMOTH

Screwed

Take a look at this excerpt from the April 18, 1943 edition of the Topeka Daily Capital:

(You can click on the chart to enlarge the image)

It's a handy dandy chart outlining exactly how much of each vegetable plant needs to be included in your Victory Garden and how many jars of produce should be preserved from the summer bounty to get a patriotic family through the next winter of rationing.

It makes me very unhappy.

The chart recommends 15 tomato plants per person, which would be 60 plants for a family our size, resulting in 120 quarts of preserves for future months. And beans? According to the chart we would need 300 feet of green beans to have enough to eat and preserve the suggested 108 quarts.

Ummm...yeah.

Even if the the summer hadn't pre-baked the tomatoes and eggplants on the vine there is no way we could even get close to these ideals. Despite having gardens in four different parts of town, we have no where near the room to accommodate this large of a plan. And I have to wonder if folks in the 1940s had similar restrictions. Is (and was) the numbers set forth in this chart a realistically obtainable goal?

Let's talk about space first. During WWII many vacant lots were turned into community gardens and businesses frequently allowed employees to garden on their grounds. We are not so lucky today. Here at Rational Living we managed to patchwork four different spaces together in our general area of town, but combined it is still no where near the space needed for 60 tomato plants, 300 feet of beans, 60 feet of lettuce/spinach, 48 feet of carrots, 60 feet of onions, 3200 feet of potatoes, and so on. It's seems like even an acre of suitable land may not be enough to plant all the recommendations in the chart, even if one is being wise and rotating early/late crops in the same space. Was that kind of space really available in during WWII rationing?

And then there's time. Who the heck is keeping up with all this gardening? The weeding, hoeing, pruning, and harvesting can become overwhelming with a modest-sized garden. What about a larger garden? While somewhere around 3/5th of the population gardened during the War, I seriously doubt that a significant portion of those Victory Gardens matched the ideals set forth in the chart above, just based on time considerations alone. And even though it makes sense to think of all those housewives spending their days out in the Victory Gardens before making a delicious SPAM loaf for their loving family's dinner, in reality a large proportion of Victory Gardeners were men. In fact, most of the propaganda surrounding Victory Gardens focuses on men as the growers, with women reduced to the role of harvesters or processors (this is deftly pointed out in Amy Bentley's Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity).

By the way, the Rational Living experiment mirrors this quite nicely, with TMOTH doing most of the weeding and such while I'm at work, since he is off four days a week. And then I do the canning and other processing on my days off, while he's at work. Sigh.

Anyway, what's my point in all this? My point is that it's really really easy to feel like a failure at Victory Gardening. And I imagine the same was true in the 1940s. With ridiculous charts like the one above it's easy to feel beaten even before you begin. And I'm sure there was always someone else's Victory Garden that was bigger and better than yours.

So yeah, I'm disappointed that our gardens don't match the WWII ideal. And I'll miss having all those preserves to choose from during the winter months. But I won't miss storing all those jars, and I won't regret spending time at the girls' swim meets instead of weeding.

And I won't be defeated. I'm already planning next year's garden.

--Rational Mama

It Was So Hot...How Hot Was It?

It was so hot...people ran out of superlatives.

So, we caved and turned on the house air-conditioner in the wee morning hours of June 23rd. For the next few weeks it ran sporadically until July 13th.

The air-conditioner switch stayed in the "on" position from July 13th until this morning.

Why? Because a massive heat wave started on July 14th and this has been the hottest summer here in at least the past decade. Ugh.

Since July 13th we've had 25 days with the heat index at or above 100 degrees.

Seven of the last 14 days have had temperatures at 103 degrees or higher. That's just the temperature - not the heat index.

This year July had 17 days with highs above the average.

So far in August all but one day has had above average highs.

But how does the summer rank historically?

According to NOAA, 1943 (our template year for rationing) is ranked as the 15th hottest summer on record in these parts. In comparison, 2006 (which had been the hottest year in the past decade or so) is ranked as the 21st hottest year on record.

Considering we're blowing the 2006 figures out of the water, I'd say we've ended up with a fairly historically accurate summer.

So we've been running the air-conditioner in the house (set between 78 and 80 degrees), instead of taking in the daily showings at the local "air-chilled" theater, instead of spending copious amounts of time at the public swimming pools or bathing in ice water (all 1940s examples). But in the 1940s life would sort of stop during this kind of summer heat. We didn't have that luxury.

Don't loose complete faith in us - we've only run the air-conditioning in the vehicles on a few long road trips where having the windows down would actually decrease energy efficiency. Otherwise, I know of one time that TMOTH used the air-conditioning in the car and I used it once last week when it is was so hot I was actually having trouble concentrating on the road (the van thermostat registered an outside temperature of 112 degrees - I felt justified).

And my job is only semi-air-conditioned, a little of both worlds just to keep my body confused. Poor TMOTH suffers three times a week when he goes to work in an un-air-conditioned warehouse.

Yards and gardens around town are crispy and dry, due to a combination of ridiculously high temperatures and very little rain. But they're not a total loss - we're still bringing in enough tomatoes to warrant canning before they rot.

But a cold front moved in yesterday and the air is absolutely delicious. We'll use these next few weeks to repair any damage to lawns, gardens and psyches that occurred over the last month.

That is, if any of us can stop smiling at the change in weather.

--Rational Mama

Take That, Rationing!

I just did a kung-fu roundhouse kick to the rationing chart. KA-POW!

Okay, maybe that's more figurative than literal...

But, I MADE KETCHUP (or, actually, catsup since that's how the recipe was labeled).

Ketchup is ridanculously expensive as far as ration points go (so expensive I had to use an imaginary word). One 14 oz bottle of ketchup will set you back more than one person's weekly allowance of blue/green points.

But having kids in the house means ketchup is a required condiment. They tell me, after all, that one can't possible eat hot dogs, hamburgers, french fries, onion rings, chicken strips and such without ketchup - to do otherwise would being considered abusive.

So ketchup we must have.

Using peeled, cored and pureed Roma tomatoes grown in our Victory Gardens (little hands are great peelers), I followed this recipe (adapted from the canonical Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving).

1. Combine 2 quarts pureed tomatoes, 1/2 cup sugar and 1 1/3 cups vinegar in a large sauce pot.
2. Add a spice bag containing 2 TB whole allspice, 2 sticks of cinnamon and 1 tsp whole cloves.
3. Add 1 1/2 tsp paprika (I used Hungarian), 1 tsp dry mustard, 1 tsp salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper.
4. Cook slowly until thick, stirring frequently.
5. When desired thickness is reached (took about an hour for me), ladle hot ketchup into hot, sterilized jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space.
6. Add caps and rings and process in water bath for 15 minutes.

The recipe said it would make 2 pints and that held true, although I used some half-pints for shelf-life considerations once individual jars have been opened. In all, I think this adds up to about 35 or 40 points worth of ketchup. Not too shabby.

The final product is nice and thick, although a bit sweeter than I expected - I think I'll reduce the amount of sugar in any future batches. The girls both like it, although Sissy remarked that it was more of a hot dog ketchup rather than a dipping ketchup. Whatever that means. TMOTH said it was a very tomato-y ketchup, which I believe was a compliment.

I think I'll try to make at least one more batch before the end of summer. Combined with what we already have in the fridge that should give us more than enough to make it through the winter.

--Rational Mama

Garlic Harvest

I love garlic harvest time. There is something magical about digging up the earth and finding these hidden gems underneath.

Up the come, and then head to the drying screens to cure.

After a few days the tops are cut off. Then they cure some more.
Eventually the dirt and outer paper layers are removed and then they are ready to store.

Oh, the possibilities!

--Rational Mama

It's Happening...

The summer produce transition is happening.

This past Saturday we harvested the last three heads of broccoli (surprised they made it this far into summer), much basil, a cucumber, over a dozen paste tomatoes (our first tomatoes of the season) and around 25 heads of garlic.

The squash are full of flowers, the beans are climbing and the eggplants are oozing purple baby fruits.

Soon our plates will be both literally and figuratively full!

--Rational Living

If the Dog Won't Stay Out of the Cucumber Patch...

...I'm going to have to sternly read him the last two sentences of this April 21, 1943 article from the Topeka Daily Capital.

Seriously, respect the fence, pooch.

--Rational Mama

You Say Potato...

I say, "Really? The year we don't plant potatoes because we failed miserably the last two years with the tire method, we get volunteer potato plants that actually make potatoes? Go figure."

We went ahead and harvested the volunteer potatoes a little early because I was concerned about them encroaching on some of the plants that we planted on purpose. It's not a huge harvest, but it will be tasty, boiled and buttered.
In other garden news, the peas are done and the broccoli is about three-quarters done. The basil harvest has begun and the garlic is starting to take on a slight yellowish tone which tells me this time next month we'll be harvesting garlic. This is good news, because I really love harvesting garlic. Really!

Several pepper plants have baby peppers on them and the first of the Malabar spinach sprouts are up - they take 21 days to germinate! I'll wait until they're a little bigger to sample a leaf.

Our friends at the Artists' Garden let us pick another generous batch of blackberries, so I'll make some more jam this weekend.

We've been able to comfortably catch up on some gardening work due to a lovely cold front that moved through the other night. Nightly lows in the mid-60s! Can't beat that!

And how is your garden, dear reader?

--Rational Mama

Garden Plans, Part II (Extremely Overdue Post)

Whew! The planning and planting of the Victory Gardens took way more energy and time (due to a very wet spring). Finally, here's the overview of what we have planted in all the various gardening spaces!

Home Base (the garden in the Rational Living Backyard)
4 tomato plants
2 eggplants
3 hills cucumbers (regular and pickling)
peas
2 pepper plants
8 basil
1 dill
2 hills (volunteer) potatoes
7 broccoli
1 cilantro
2 mint
1 parsley
Malibar spinach
lettuce/mesclun/lettuce (already harvested)
radishes (already harvested)

Artists' Garden (space space by a lovely family of local artists)
10 tomatoes
1 parsley
3 basil
2 eggplant
5 broccoli
1 summer squash
*they have also offered to share some of their cucumbers, tomatoes and blackberries

L's Garden (space donated by two sweet and fun gals)
8 tomatoes
1 dill
1 cilantro
4 broccoli
peas
2 basil
1 pepper
1 hill cucumbers
1 zucchini
1 cantaloupe
1 ice-box melon

A's Garden (another patch of donated space by a lovely family which I don't have a photograph of yet)
Enough pole beans to fill a 8' x 6' patch of brown earth

Rational In-Laws Garden (a great place for a few odds and ends)
2 tomatoes
1 pepper
1 cantaloupe

Each of the families involved has been very generous with their space. Our goal is to stay up on the needed maintenance of each garden and share a generous portion of the produce with the families in gratitude. This should prove interesting as the summer progresses.

And what have you planted, dear reader?

--Rational Mama

Blackberries!

We were invited by some sweet friends to partake of their abundant blackberry patch today. Wow! It's a very very good year for blackberries - the perfect weather for blooms and no late frost to hurt the buds. I couldn't believe the amount of berries on the vines, in all stages of maturity.

The girls and I headed out into the thicket with our buckets, but they soon found other diversions once they realized how thorny blackberry vines can be. I continued to wade through the vines, which managed to grab my arse more than a drunken construction worker (note to self: wear heavy-duty jeans when picking blackberries).

In the end we came home with roughly four pounds of fresh, organic local blackberries. Wonderfully huge and sweet, blackberries are no doubt my most favorite berry (strawberries are a close second). And they way the vines are drooping with unripe fruit we'll probably be able to do at least one more round of picking (thank you, friends).

The absolutely crazy schedule this week doesn't allow for any canning, so this time we'll eat the fresh fruit as-is which, after many months of very limited fresh fruit intake, is an easy sacrifice to make. The blackberries should get us through to the early apple season, which we're all quite excited about.

What fruit would you most look forward to eating after a long hiatus?

--Rational Mama

Volunteers for Victory Gardens Found!

Every year we have volunteers in our garden. Granted, these aren't the kind of volunteers you're probably thinking of - these are plant volunteers. Vegetables that grow either from seed dropped from the plant during the previous summer or from plants that somehow overwintered into the spring.

We always have lots of tomato volunteers - particularly cherry tomatoes. Near the end of the growing season we git a bit lazy about picking tomatoes every day and some eventually fall to the ground (or get relocated by a squirrel). Thus, the next year I pull out a dozen baby tomato plants because they never seem to volunteer where we need them.

We've also had dill grow from seed deposited during the previous year and the same is true of impatiens.

The year before last we had a wonderful pumpkin volunteer growing out of the compost bin. It must have been from one of the girls' novelty pumpkins (or been a hybrid and not bred true) - it made sweet little (five inch in diameter) pumpkins just in time for the fall holidays.

The volunteer of the year this year is a bittersweet addition.

That's a potato plant. A very healthy and happy potato plant (there's another one in a nearby corner of the garden). The last two years we tried (quite unsuccessfully) to grow potatoes. Both years we used versions of the tire-stack method and failed miserably. Initially the plants thrived but by the time we got to the third tire the plants became waterlogged and soggy, despite our attempts to increase drainage to the stack. So each year we abandoned the potatoes and removed the tires to spread out the soil.

To our great surprise, this year there are two volunteer potato plants, each in a location where a tire stack was located last year. Are they plants from the original seed potatoes planted in March 2009? Are they plants growing from maybe one or two baby potatoes that managed to grow before we removed the tires? I have no idea.

What I do know is that apparently we can't grow potatoes unless we aren't trying.

We'll mound the soil up on each plant and see how far the experiment goes this year. A few extra potatoes would be nice, especially after I just read a dozen articles from spring/summer 1943 about an impending potato shortage.

Hopefully, between our volunteers, the farmers market and such there will be no tater shortage for us!

--Rational Mama

Black and White and Green(house)

It's finally that time of year when I feel I can safely take the tender baby plantings from the protection of the greenhouse and plant them in their summer homes. The broccoli, lettuce, mesclun and radishes have been in the ground for a month or so, but the ever present threat of a late April/early May frost in Kansas, combined with the nasty hail-loving weather we've had the last week, has prevented me from planting the tomatoes, basil, peppers and other goodies that I've grown from seed in the greenhouse.

But today will be planting day!

I thought I'd give you a little black-and-white tour of the greenhouse before it's emptied of its occupants.

There's oak-leaf lettuce, ready for the picking. It was planted back in late January and harbored in the house until the temperatures of the unheated greenhouse would suffice.
There's Buddha - happy that last year's potted mint has survived the winter.
There's nearly 30 tomatoes, a dozen basil, and numerous peppers, lemon balm, coleus and such. Most are big enough to be planted straight into the ground.
Some, like the tomatoes, are more than ready - reaching up towards the sun.
There's a geranium, given to me by my supervisor on Administrative Professionals' Day (two weeks before I gave my two week notice).
And there's one tired gardener who takes care of them all.

--Rational Mama

Lettuce Rejoice and Eat Radishes!

Remember that little lettuce bed the runs along the length of the greenhouse? In late April, after we planted a few lettuce starts and seeds for more lettuce, spinach, mesclun and radishes, it looked like this:
Today, it looks like this:
Isn't nature amazing? That's some mesclun closest to the camera, then oak leaf lettuce, spinach and radishes in the back. We've been eating our own home-grown lettuce and spinach for weeks and today I harvested our first radishes.



I think radishes are like the crocuses of the vegetable world: not amazing enough to really want all year round, but as a symbol of wonderful things to come they can't be beat. They're both harbingers, of a sort.



In the meantime, though, I can't get too distracted. The heart of the summer planting season is just around the corner (if we can get a break from this nasty, windy, hail-ridden weather - another round is expected tonight and tomorrow night). A few weeks ago we had several days of near 80 degree temperatures and some of the spinach started to bolt! So as I happy as I am with the lettuce and radish bed I have to start thinking of transitioning it to its next stage. During the heart of the summer it will be home to Malabar spinach. This is the first year I've grown Malabar spinach, so we'll see how that goes.

In the meantime I'll enjoy a few more weeks of fresh lettuce, spinach and radishes and start dreaming of fresh, ripe tomatoes and cucumbers.

--Rational Mama

Batten Down the Hatches!

So what do you do when you've started your Victory Garden and you live in Tornado Alley and have two hours to prepare for a storm heading your way that has a history of producing tornadoes, 60 mph winds and tennis-ball sized hail?

You cover the peas.
You cover the older broccoli and lettuce.
You cover the baby broccoli (and hope the garlic roots can recover from any beating).
You decide to call the other lettuce and radishes a potential loss.

And you cross your fingers that everyone and everything makes it through just fine.

Ah, life in the central plains! We'll keep you posted.

--Rational Mama

Historic Recipe: Cabbage Delmonico (and, a farewell to a good friend)

Friends, throughout the course of this experiment you've read my ruminations about cabbage. Ah, that staple of restricted wartime winter diets; the only source of semi-fresh green leafy things for many months. We've baked it, made various salads out of it and had moments of frustration with it.

Today, I honor cabbage with another historic recipe: Cabbage Delmonico. The recipe comes from Joanne Lamb Hayes' Grandma's Wartime Kitchen: World War II and the Way We Cooked and is described as a "meatless main dish." Here's my version as I made it...

Ingredients:
2 lb head of cabbage
2 TB butter
3 TB all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp dry mustard
3/4 tsp paprika (Hungarian is best)
3/4 tsp salt
2 cups milk
1 cup grated extra-sharp Cheddar cheese
1/2 cup bread crumbs

Cut cabbage into 6-7 wedges and cook in boiling water for about 5 minutes (the recipe said to boil for 8 minutes but I didn't want to overcook my cabbage, per grandmum's instructions). Drain the cabbage.

In a small saucepan melt the butter over low heat. Gradually stir in the flour, mustard, paprika and salt until smooth. Gradually stir in the milk, stirring constantly over low heat. Add in the cheese bit by bit and stir until all the cheese is melted.

Place cabbage in 9" x 9" baking dish and top with the cheese sauce. Sprinkle the bread crumbs and extra paprika over the top and bake for 20 minutes.

This is what it looked like coming out of the oven:

And this is what it looked like on the plate:

Sigh. Can't cabbage ever look attractive? If you have an even half-way decent imagination then you can ascertain how this dish turned out. After all, it's pretty much just cabbage and a mild cheese sauce. I'm not sure if the "meatless main dish" description is historically true, or just one the cookbook's author felt fit well. Either way, there's not enough protein or carbohydrates to make this a satisfying meal.

Cabbage, dear cabbage...you're like the Susan Boyle of rationing. Humble? Yes. Comely? Yes. Underestimated? Yes. And then you get your chance to shine and surprise us all by how tasty you can be in such dishes as baked cabbage and Asian cabbage slaw.

But like Susan Boyle, your moment to shine will fade...and so fade, you must.

Due to the seasonal restrictions on our produce selection, this will be the last time we purchase/prepare cabbage in the house until late summer. The next few months will be filled with fresh spinach and lettuce and many other green vegetables which have waited anxiously to have their moments of recognition.

And so, cabbage, this is farewell. At least, until late August.

Adieu.

--Rational Mama

Salad!

On Sunday night we had roast chicken, fresh bread and butter and SALAD!

Real salad!

Salad that included more than just the store-bought iceburg poor-excuse-for-something-green-and-leafy thing.

Salad that included this:
Isn't it beautiful? This is hand-picked red lettuce, green lettuce and mesclun from our garden/pots. (Squeal!)

I was able to pick a decent bowlful for Sunday's dinner, but I did have to supplement it with the iceburg lettuce for volume. Still, around half of it was homegrown!

And even though there were no extras in the salad (tomatoes, cucumbers and such are not yet seasonally available) everyone ate all their salad with just lettuce and dressing.

This is the first time in over three months that non-iceburg lettuce has been in our house. That's over one-quarter of a year, folks!

AND, the farmer's market opens this weekend in our town, and our CSA subscription starts next week. All of this means our produce selections will immediately skyrocket!

Ah, the good life!

--Rational Mama

A New Addition to the Rational Living Family

That's right readers! There's a new addition to the Rational Living household. Don't worry, there's no pitter-patter of little feet...in fact, there's no feet at all!

We now have a wormery! Our very own vermicomposting system! They're quite simple to make; ours was made with a plastic tote bin, 2 bricks, an extra screen, a plank of wood, dirt, shredded paper and small amounts of compost-able material. We already had all of these supplies, so our materials cost was zero.

All we had to do was add the right kind of worms. And thanks to a generous gift from Karla (an experienced vermicomposter who found herself with too many worms), around one pound of worms were mixed into our own bin today.
These hardworking little guys and gals...wait, these worms are hermaphrodites...well, then I guess each worm IS a guy and a gal...anyhoo...these little critters will happily decompose the following household waste:

• Rotting fruits and vegetables
• Vegetable and fruit peels
  
• Coffee grounds
  
• Tea bags
• Stale grains (bread, cracker and cereal)
• Eggshells (rinsed off)
• Leaves and grass clippings (if needed to neutralize the pH)

In return we get year-round composting and vermicompost (in layman's terms, worm poop) which is an excellent fertilizer for the vegetable garden. And, if we decide to go fishing we have a ready supply of bait.

As you may be able to tell from the photo, we are keeping the wormery in a corner of the basement, where the occupants should be happy with a near-constant temperature. Come summer we may need to redesign the screen cover to keep any flies out, but we will deal with that when the time comes.

In the meantime, we'll be saving our compostable waste in a little jar on the kitchen counter and take it down to the worms a few times a week (the girls are already in heated discussions as to who gets to feed the worms first). Any excess material will be tossed into our regular compost bin outside.

I haven't been able to find any information about the use of worm bins during WWII, but I believe the reuse of kitchen scraps falls within the spirit of "use it up!" And who knows, maybe the results will make our Victory Garden that much more victorious!

--Rational Mama

Garden Plans, Part I

Isn't this great?

It's from the February 26, 1943 edition of the Topeka Daily Capital. At this point sugar had been rationed for nine months and canned goods rationing was set to start within a week. Red point rationing of meats/oils/cheeses was still over a month away.

But can you see the excitement in their eyes? That's how the Rational Living family has viewed the seed catalogs this year, too.

We've always perused the catalogs in spring, dog-earing and asterisking (whoa, that's a real word) interesting options and day-dreamy ideas. Typically, we might try one new thing a year (or we might try - and fail - at container potatoes twice), but we normally just fall back to the standard, small tomatoes-n-such garden.

But this year, gardening is serious business. Really serious business.

We will really need to maximum our garden harvest this year so that we have plenty of fresh produce during the summer to eat PLUS have enough extra to store-up for winter. The more home-preserved produce we have going in to the fall and winter the fewer precious ration points we will have to spend.

In order to do this we must be more selective about plant varieties and expand our garden size from modest to massive. This post will cover the varieties and a future post will take you on a tour of our gardening spaces.

The article on the left is from Feb. 23, 1943 and it includes a thorough list of what vegetables were recommended for Victory Gardens. Over the past few months we've developed our own list of what we will plant, based upon family preferences and growing conditions. Here's what we have so far:





Spring Garden
Lettuce
Mesclun
Spinach
Peas
Garlic (Inchelium Red, already in the ground)
Radishes

Summer Garden
Tomatoes (cherry, standard and paste)
Peppers (bell and jalapeno)
Garlic (harvest in July)
Cucumbers (standard and pickling)
Eggplant
Yellow squash or zucchini
Green Beans (pole)
Malabar spinach
Melon (space permitting)
Dill
Basil
Mint
Lemon Balm
Sage

Autumn Garden
Lettuce
Spinach
Mesclun
Kale
Garlic (back in the ground)
Beets
Broccoli
Radishes

We're not going to bother with some items (such as carrots, corn, cabbage and okra) because they are readily available at our local farmer's market for very reasonable prices. Additionally, we will have some surprises each week because we've signed up for our local CSA again.

In the spirit of not wasting, I'm vowing to use up most of the produce seeds that we have leftover from previous years. This includes seeds for tomatoes, pickling cucumbers, spinach, lettuce, mesclun, beans, radishes, some cucumbers and most of the herbs. We ordered the rest of our precious seeds from Seed Savers.

We'll be starting seeds in the greenhouse before the month is over and the peas should be in the ground by then as well. Of course, that means we need to get supplies and start turning over the soil and mixing in compost and the like. We've had so much moisture on the ground for the last several months that that everything is too wet; hopefully some dry, sunny days are in our near future.

That's our list...what are you planting, dear reader?

--Rational Mama