My husband and I are back from our two-month stay in Mesa, Arizona. The snowbanks have melted from the yard, and gardening will soon begin.
There are so many gardening questions running around in my mind: what to trim and when, what to move to a new location and what to plant?
A wonderful source of information for these questions is gardenline.usask.ca, which is free to the public with the support of the University of Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan government.
Articles answer questions about pests, house plants, trees and shrubs, vegetables, yard and garden and fruit to grow and pick. Also featured are a master gardener list and a section called potpourri or miscellaneous.
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Gardenline can also be reached by phoning 306-966-5865, although the phone service is closed from September to April.
As well, specific questions can be e-mailed to gardenline@usask.ca or mailed to 51 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, Sask., S7N 5A8, attention Gardenline.
Trimming a cedar
I had a question about trimming a cedar tree growing into my view from the kitchen window. I found the answer in an article about pruning cedars on gardenline.usask.ca.
I’ve learned that I should prune my columnar cedar in the spring, before growth starts, taking care not to remove too much.
In the future, to keep it in shape, I should shear it a little once a year, between mid-June and mid-July or even more often, but not after mid-July.
Moving trees and shrubs
Another article provides information on moving and transplanting trees and shrubs, which many people may be considering this time of the year.
The article says that deciduous and evergreen trees and shrubs may be planted either in the spring or the fall.
Deciduous plants may be moved in the spring as soon as the frost is out of the ground, until the time when new foliage is partly unfurled.
In the fall, they may be planted once the leaves start to turn colour and until the ground freezes.
Although all trees and shrubs can be moved in spring or fall, softwoods such as willows, poplars and birches do better when moved in the spring.
Evergreens should be moved earlier in the fall than deciduous plants so they have time to form new roots. They need at least six weeks before the ground freezes. In spring, evergreens can be planted up to four weeks after deciduous trees have opened their leaves, as long as the newly planted trees receive adequate water.
Return home
We enjoyed our first Sunday night dinner in our son Bob and wife Pam’s rebuilt farmhouse. They and their family rebuilt the house much like the one that burned 16 months ago. It is such a treat to finally have it ready for them to live in once again.
For dinner, Pam served this tasty potato dish from the 2008 Atco Blue Flame Kitchen cookbook, Everyday delicious.
Mashed potatoes with spinach and bacon
6 cups cubed peeled potatoes 1.5 L
1/3 cup hot milk 75 mL
2 tablespoons butter 25 mL
3/4 teaspoon salt 3 mL
1/2 teaspoon ground pepper 2 mL
2 cups slivered baby spinach 500 mL
3/4 cup shredded cheddar 175 mL
cheese
2 tablespoons crumbled 25 mL
cooked bacon
Cook potatoes in boiling salted water until tender; drain. Add hot milk, butter, salt and pepper. Mash potatoes until smooth. Stir in spinach, cheese and bacon.
Cover and let stand until spinach is wilted and cheese is melted, about two minutes. Serves six.
Overnight french toast
Here’s a recipe to surprise Mom with on Mother’s Day.
4 cups cubed French bread 1 L
4 ounces cubed cream cheese 113 g
2 cups fresh or loose-pack 500 mL
frozen blueberries
4 eggs
1/2 cup milk 125 mL
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon 1 mL
1/4 cup maple syrup 125 mL
blueberry or other syrup
Place bread and cheese in a lightly greased nine by nine inch (22 x 22cm) baking pan. Layer berries over top. In a small bowl, beat eggs, milk, cinnamon and maple syrup; pour over berries. Refrigerate overnight.
Bake, uncovered at 375 F (190 C) for 45 minutes, or until the egg mixture is set. Serve warm to Mom in bed, with blueberry syrup and her choice of beverage. Serves four.
The recipe may be doubled or tripled, depending on the size of your family.
Source: The Gardener for the Prairies, spring 2009, submitted by Ruth Anne.
As Ruth Anne says: “Clean up after yourself without being told (the best Mother’s Day present of all).”
Cabbage casserole
When looking for a quick and easy casserole for supper, I tried this recipe. It fit the bill.
1 pound lean ground beef 500 g
1 small onion, chopped
1 medium head cabbage, chopped
2 cups grated cheddar cheese 500 mL
3/4 cup sour cream 175 mL
bread or cracker crumbs
Brown ground beef with onion. Add cabbage and simmer 10 minutes. You might need to add a little water to keep it from burning. Add cheese and sour cream. Put in a casserole and sprinkle bread or cracker crumbs on top. Bake at 350 F (180C) for 30 minutes or until hot and bubbling. Serves approximately six.
Source: The Best of Elrose Lioness.
Decaffeinated coffee
For those who love coffee but not caffeine, there is decaffeinated coffee. Some people feel that the whole point of coffee is the caffeine, while for others coffee decaffeination allows them to enjoy the flavour without the caffeine.
Research shows that caffeine content varies from brand to brand. The international standard is removing 97 percent of the caffeine in the beans. The European Union standard is 99.9 percent.
Green coffee beans are decaffeinated by swelling them in water or steam to make the caffeine available for extraction with water, solvents or carbon dioxide.
Steam stripping removes solvent residues or other substances used in the extraction.
The beans are then dried back to their normal moisture content.
The solvents used are not known to have harmful effects.
None of the solvents are left in the beans when the process is finished.
An Arabica type bean, which is considered higher quality than the robusta bean and contains little caffeine, was discovered in Ethiopia in 2004. This may change how low-caffeine coffee is produced in the future.
Also, genetic modification may eventually create an inherently caffeine-free coffee.
Baby carrots
E-mail information can be inaccurate. For example, an e-mail is circulating that claims baby carrots are made from deformed carrots and soaked in chlorine, and that the white blush on them is chlorine surfacing. This scare e-mail is full of inaccuracies.
When first marketed in the 1980s, baby carrots were cut from misshapen but not nutritionally inferior carrots to salvage them.
Today, they are cut and tapered from specially bred carrots and are more accurately called baby-cut carrots. Genuine baby carrots, which are harder to find and expensive, are harvested when they are young and may retain greens at the top.
The February 2009 University of California Berkeley Wellness Letter said that like other ready-to-eat fresh vegetables, baby-cut carrots are rinsed or sprayed with diluted chlorine to reduce the risk of bacterial contamination and then washed and bagged.
This process is approved in the United States and by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, with strict rules governing chlorine concentration and length of time carrots can be exposed.
Chlorine is similarly used as a disinfectant in public water supplies and sometimes in poultry processing. It is toxic at high concentrations, but there is no evidence that trace amounts left on food and in water are harmful. The whitening that may occur is caused by drying of the damaged (peeled) tissue when the carrots are exposed to air. In contrast, whole carrots retain their protective peel.
Plastic bags
Humans use one million plastic bags a minute. They end up in landfills and oceans and as litter strewn across the globe. This plastic pollution kills more than one million seabirds, 100,000 marine mammals and even more fish in the northern Pacific Ocean every year.
Except for a small amount of plastic that has been incinerated, every bit of plastic manufactured in the last 50 years still remains somewhere in the environment, and it’s already surpassed one billion tonnes.
We should each do our part to reduce the use of plastic.
Source: SaskWatch, published by Saskatchewan branch of Consumers’ Association of Canada, March 2009.
Alma Copeland is a home economist from Elrose, Sask., and one of four columnists comprising Team Resources. Send correspondence in care of this newspaper, Box 2500, Saskatoon, Sask., S7K 2C4 or contact them at team@producer.com.
