GardenFork Radio

How to make hard cider, how to brew beer, and how to make your own soap are the topics on GF Radio. Ben joins eric to talk about hard cider and how homemade hard cider is made, and what not to do when making hard cider. what yeast should you use when making hard cider? wild yeast or a cultured yeast? eric used a champagne yeast the last time he made hard cider, you can see his how to make hard cider video here. Beer Brewing comes next, both Ben and Eric homebrew beer; Ben talks about making up your own beer brewing recipes, brewing beer from grain instead of from malt extracts, and how to brew beer in a studio apartment in brooklyn. Eric prefers recipes for malt exract brewing, there is less to mess up that way. making lager beer, or lagering, is a goal for Eric. Making a lager beer is harder, you have to control the temperature more better, from what we understand. Next up is making your own soap and deoderant. Ben is now making dishwasher soap, shampoo, deoderant, and dish soap for his family.  its not hard, he learned from a class at work, but you can learn online. we'll have to make a video about how to make soap soon, it sounds like even Eric can make soap.

We read a nice note from Alice and reflect on what is GardenFork? And a big thank you to Christina of FelineDesignInc.com , check out her site if you need web and graphic design work. Kevin takes us to task for mispronouncing words like Propolis, for Rick, english is a second language. Gardening for the fall season, what vegetables do you plant to harvest in the fall? Kale, spinach, lettuces, mesclun, radishes. Rick brings up a few gardening apps, Mother Earth News has a few good ones for gardening. Rick tells us about grafting tomatoes. neat. And the importance of providing water for your honeybees. Rick also tells us about a black light flashlight that he uses to find tomato hornworms on his tomato plants. Then we talk about olive oil, is it adulterated? Rick tells us a few olive oils that were recommended by a consumer magazine. Related to the olive oil talk, we talk about how to make your own balsamic vinegar dressing in this video and if you want to make your own balsamic vinegar reduction, or the balsamic vinegar hack, watch the video here. For the salad dressing recipe, its not necessary to use a metal bowl, i just like to use a metal bowl. And finally, Rick liked Eric's Porchetta Recipe Video, watch it here.  

Producer Sarah and Eric do a honey tasting in Brooklyn of Rick's Melissa Bee Farm Honey . and a thank you to Christina of Feline Design for designing Rick's honey label. you can get the Vitamix Sarah has here:

Monica joins Eric to talk about what Monica has been up to lately. We talk about her new rescue pup, and the trouble the younger dog can get into, but also the fun too. Monica uses the laser pointer to exercise her dogs, its a good exercise tool when its too hot to go outside. Twitter is discussed, Eric uses twitter a lot to keep up with people, using TweetDeck, Monica likes it for fast access to news events. How to cope with hot weather? Stay hydrated. Monica removed the grass from their yard and put down pavers, the pups had torn up all the grass anyway. you can follow Monica on Twitter: @Stuccolow

Mike and Eric talk more about cycling, with Mike's first group ride with a bunch of people older and healthier than he is. If you wnat to find a cycling group in your area, we suggest a web search for 'cycling club' in  your area. Keep in mind that we all start from somewhere, so go join a club and get riding. Then tell us about it. We talk about the Cardboard Bike Mike read about, here is the link We cannot overstate the importance of wearing a helmet when riding a bike. Bike helmets might look weird at first, but they can save your brain and your ears, the same ears that you use to listen to this fine program, GardenFork Radio. Mike's new recipe is for Pork Chops with Savory Apple / Carrot saute , getting his daughter to eat carrots, which is a rare event, we are told. Plywood Boat Plans and how to build a plywood boat: Eric responds to questions people have asked about how to build a plywood boat, what kind of paint to use, how thick the plywood should be, etc. Eric's latest video, how to make a balsamic vinegar dressing, is discussed, Mike tries to poke fun but it doesn't quite work, but that's ok. Our goal is to get people to stop buying poorly made salad dressing and go make their own. The balsamic vinegar reduction hack video is here. Loft bed plans - Eric posted photos and plans for a loft bed for kids, and mike has some suggestions. Eric then talks about why you should not use drywall screws when assembling this loft bed.   photo by alvimann

Mike and Eric talk about how to use arduino controllers in pinball and beehives, how easy it is  to use them and program them. Repairing a shower mixing valve without cutting a  hole in the wall, be sure to turn off the water before you replace the mixing valve cartridge. Eric did put in a new shower mixing valve at his parents house,  the video will be posted soon. Mike talks about being overwhelmed with success of a bootstrapped pinball project, and how what was once great is now a ball and chain. Eric tells of how one of his beehives swarmed and what he did to try to capture the beehive swarm. Lacking a tall ladder to retrieve the swarm  cluster, swarm traps are brought out. Did it work? listen and learn.     photo by ppdigital

Mike talks about how to lose weight by reasonable dieting, cycling, and a new outlook on his health.   photo by kcconnors

Rick's homemade worm composter; we learn more about how rick made a worm composter out of a barrel. Rick also posted a how-to video on our site here on how you can make worm composter, and gives us some more pointers. How to make kefir: Producer Sarah tell us how she made kefir, a fermented milk beverage, with special grains she ordered on the web KefirLady.com . You can't just start making kefir, you have to get the grains from someone. We will be talking about how to make your own soap with Sarah soon, btw. Rick isn't into smoothies, we learn. And Eric confesses that he forgot to post the cedar jelly tasting from the Cedar Jelly a viewer sent us. If you chain saw wont start, watch this how-to video, and then listen to us talk about chain saw repair Rick is growing malibar spinach in his aquaponics greenhouse, its not a true spinach, it is a vine and you harvest the leaves. You can read more about Rick's aquaponics and aquaculture here. How to pollinate tomatoes in a greenhouse? Rick tell us how to pollinate vegetables in a greenhouse with a toothbrush, you have to listen to this to understand how Rick does this. Gary House of Cooking-Outdoors.com has posted several articles on how to cook with a dutch oven here on our site. A big thank you again to him for doing that. check out his new DVD on his site here. Rick is hoping the cast iron foundry startup Borough Furnace will make a cast iron dutch oven soon. The letterpress shop Eric talks about is Hatch Show Print

Learn how to build a cold frame and extend your growing season with Niki Jabbour, author of The Year Round Vegetable Gardener. We talk with Niki about how to use a cold frame to start plant early and keep your harvest  going into winter, even in Canada! ( Niki lives in Nova Scotia, Canada, btw ) Recycling stuff you were going to throw out into cloches is a big lightbulb moment for Eric, and the fact that holes in your lettuce greens at a store or restaurant means that bugs were on them, and that is a good thing, meaning it probably wasn't sprayed with insecticide, is the other lightbulb moment for Eric. We talk about ways to extend your growing season without spending a lot of money on fancy greenhouses, in other words, how to grow vegetables in the snow. The cool thing about Niki's outlook is that its based on her learning as you go method, much like gardenfork. Simple and easy, made out of recycled materials. I'm interested in the idea of using newspaper hats as a simple cloche to protect plants for frost. stay tuned. Read our review of The Year Round Vegetable Gardener here Watch our how to build a hoop house video here. Watch our how to build a cold frame video here. A big thank you to Jean Ann Van Krevelen for introducing Niki to us, what fun.

How to do worm composting in your house is our main topic. Rick has almost zero waste in his house by using worms to compost his kitchen scraps. Rick tell us how to make your own worm composting bins and where to get composting worms, aka red wigglers. You can also use night crawlers for worm composting. Rick shreds paper, be it junkmail or newspapers for bedding material and mixes this with the food scraps from the kitchen into his worm composter. He tells about how to make your own worm composter and where to locate the composter in your home. And how to aerate your worm compost bin with a home made rig. Fruit flies are easily controlled with the shredded paper and keeping the worm bin not too wet. How to build an aquaponics system is next, Rick tell us how to make your own aquaponics or aquaculture system. If you have an aquarium, you have half the the parts to an aquaponics system. Balancing the pH of the system of a challenge. Right now Rick is using goldfish to fine tune his system,  he is growing tomatoes, lettuce, peppers with his aquaculture system. You can read some of Ricks aquaponics how-to posts here.   photo by Kahanaboy

A special guest joins eric to talk about wedding etiquette, IOW, how to behave at weddings, luna moths, poached eggs, moving beehives, and ledge birdhouses.

Power tool questions answered here, Tracy joins Eric to ask about the torque settings on her cordless drill, what are those numbers on the ring near the chuck? Tracy declines Eric's offer to answer more of life's deeper questions though. Move on to grounded and not grounded power outlets in your house, can i replace the outlets that don't have a ground plug with a grounded outlet? why or why not? Again, Eric provides the answers to this and a few more of tracy's questions. Have a question? ask us on GF Radio.

Stuart Silverstein joins us to talk about how to build backyard bread and pizza ovens. You can watch our how to build a brick pizza oven video here. You can buy Stuart's book here

The 5 minute chocolate mug cake recipe video how to starts off the show, as Eric and Mike discuss making the 5 min microwave cake. Eric fixed the posted recipe, hoping no one actually put 2 tablespoons of salt in the cake. Katja from Holland tells us that the Dutch use butter, not oil in their baking, and has some suggestions for making  grown-up version of the cake with espresso powder, orange liqueur, or rum. yum... but its the ubiquitous fork in the chocolate cake recipe video that caught one viewer's eye, and we learn Eric may have valuable silverware in the drawer. That's not just a for, it's a "Kirk Repousse Sterling Silver fork" and it may be worth some cash. wow. we talk about the overnight cole slaw recipe, here is the link to the recipe Eric's Ford F150 has a bunch of error codes from his code reader, the one that is of the most concern is the 513 PCM Int Volt Failure. Here is the full list of KOEO codes: 117 Eng Coolant Temp Sensor below minimum voltage 126 MAP sensor pressure above or below normal 122 Throttle Position Sensor - replaced this one - 112 Air Charge Temp Sensor below minimum voltage 327 EGR valve position circuit below minimum voltage 513 PCM Int Volt Failure 553 Thermactor Air Diverter Solenoid circuit fault 552 Air Management Circuit 1 failure 565 Canister Purge Solenoid circuit fault 556 Fuel Pump relay primary circuit fault 558 EGR valve regulator solenoid circuit fault Computer Geek talk is next with a warning to Mac OSX users of a actual Apple virus, here is the article. Hotels and other businesses who allow you to use their wifi may be inserting ads in to the web pages you browse, Mike and Eric talk the ethics of such doings, here is the article this is based on. We move on to viewer mail and great note from Lauren, here is her blog, Plenty Of Words For You. photo by jusben

Mike tell us about his recent road trips to gaming conventions and Florida. then there's some viewer mail.   photo by chelle