I have a weakness for vines. Even a brief survey of our property will make this abundantly clear. We have mexican flame vine, pothos, bougainvilleas (not technically a vine but can be trained to act like one), jasmine, lilikoi, more pothos, wandering jew, morning glory, and strawberries. I can fiddle with them all day, training, pruning, or just imagining what they will look like when they reach their full potential. I love the tropical ambiance they add to the landscape, and how they can cover ugly, boring, or monotonous structures, literally bringing them to life. But because of their growth habits, vines can be naughty, and my problem child is the sweet potato.

This is just ridiculous...

...and it was after I had removed all of this.

Most vegetable gardening books will recommend sweet potatoes as an easy crop, provided you have the growing season to allow them to reach maturity (that's 4-6 months). Even with a shorter growing season, many people like to use them in mixed container plantings as an annual ornamental. They are easy to start and propagate (my planter box monster was started from a few stem cuttings stuck in the ground) and they tolerate a wide range of soil conditions and a fair amount of neglect once established. But once they get going, the books rightfully warn, you have to practice some tough love or they will take over the garden. And how.

My sweet potato vine (okinawan purple potatoes, a local delight) has escaped the boundaries of the planter and made its way into the adjacent bushes, through the rock garden and almost out to the street. Each weekend I go out there and vow to do a severe pruning, then when the time comes for action, I can't help but admire the way it fills in the blank spaces, and really it isn't bothering the peppers so much, and I don't cook with sage that much anyway...it seems like every week I take less and less.

To add insult to injury, despite their greedy use of space and sun, they don't seem to be, well, producing any food. I decided to dig up just one of the plants a week or so ago, since we're at about the four month mark. It had an impressive tap root, extending at least eighteen inches into the soil, but no tuber. I suppose they just need more time, but in the meantime I'm so weak-willed that my rock garden is going to be one big sweet potato doing battle with the only formidable opponents, the unkillable vincas and my giant man-size non-blooming marigold.

Aside from maintenance, such as it is, I've dialed down the gardening activity for the time being for a number of reasons. I've been working my tail off at my day job and remembering why I don't work outside the home 40 hours a week anymore. It's been a struggle just to get dinner on the table and keep the house in some kind of order when all I want to do is go to sleep on the couch when I get home at night. If I didn't have a family, I'd totally be living on chips and salsa and spending the evenings watching old Scrubs episodes and making up names for the dust bunnies multiplying on the floor. Aside from that, we are about to head to the mainland for 2 1/2 weeks, so I've had to restrain myself from planting anything that will need daily attention in the short term. Chris has been busy relieving some of this maintenance burden with a combination of PEX tubing, soaker hoses and drip irrigation (an investment of time and money worthwhile to any serious gardener).  There have also been a few distractions.  One is the large pile of rocks we had dumped in the yard last Saturday.  The last couple of evenings, instead of lying zombie-like on the couch, I've been plodding back and forth across the front yard, moving rocks from the pile to my borders.  Oh, I have a wagon, but I prefer to take them one by one, slowly carrying a rock over to the flower bed, placing it in its new home, then staring for a minute, contemplating.  Then I wander back over to the pile to look for just the right rock to use next.  This ritual is strangely soothing.

I've also been turning my sights to the interior of the house, thinking about finally remodeling / kid-proofing the bathroom that has already seen a fair bit of abuse, which has led to an interest in laying tile, which of course meant how-to books, which then spurred an interest in resurfacing the lanai to get practice before tackling the bathroom, and then I heard a piece on NPR about pervious concrete and...well, you get the idea.  It's just how I roll, baby.

But my REAL obsession the last few days has been finding a way to add pharmaceutical caffeine to baked goods.  Let's just say I'm tired of going to the bathroom all the time, and we have a long flight ahead of us next week.  It turns out caffeine pills break down really well with a mortar and pestle.  But I digress.  The point is I've been distracted and I'm trying to restrain myself from planting anything new for now.

However, addiction is addiction, and when the neighbor offered me her potted patio plants when she moved away, I accepted them sight unseen, figuring (ha ha) I can easily freecycle whatever I don't keep. My inheritance, it turns out, has played out more like a rescue mission than a gift. "They all need repotted," she warned, "and some of them are seriously root bound." What I got was a motley assortment of brown plants with more roots in their pots than soil. Mind you, when we moved here from the mainland, we had to give up all our plants, save a few cuttings that Chris managed to import and propagate. The oldest and most important plants went to friends of the family at my insistence, and the rest went to a very nice lady who sounded like she would treat them with the same love that we (mostly) had. My point being that I get attached, and I understand the desire to make sure the babies go to good homes.  But some of these....even I would have composted.

Still, they all had a spark of life and by virtue of surviving the obvious neglect at all, I figured they must be pretty tough. At first I just stuck the pots here and there, based on my best guess at the necessary conditions, but the wind kept blowing the top-heavy planters over. This morning I decided to transplant a few into our back garden, which needed some tall plants to fill a bit of space behind the lower growing taro. This area is blessed with a soaker hose and a recent reworking of the soil, so I think they will have a chance even in our absence.

Already looking better.

Oh, and I broke just about every rule of transplanting in the process. Just because I have a gardening blog doesn't mean I'm not a nitwit, I'm just a nitwit with a blog. Anyway, here are some guidelines for transplanting/repotting success:

• Choose your location carefully. One of my new charges is a bone dry anthurium that had been kept in full sun. I only recognized it because it had a few shriveled blooms. The sad part was, when I pulled it out of the pot, it still had the tag that said "shade, keep soil moist". Many plants at garden centers will come with these helpful, if minimal, instructions. Heed them. If you are not so lucky, go home and do your research about the growing requirements of a particular plant before you buy. And be realistic about how much maintenance you have time for or care to do. The internet is a rich resource for plant care information, and you can find help for just about anything you want to grow with a quick google search. Use it!
• Potted plants need lots and lots of water because they can't tap into the groundwater, and pots dry out quickly in hot weather, especially in direct sun. The smaller the container, the more quickly it dries. The healthy looking six packs of marigolds at the store are probably being watered more than once a day; if you don't have time for that, and who does, wait to buy until a day you will have time for planting.
• Try to do your planting in the early morning or evening, and not in the heat of day, especially if you will be working in direct sun.
• Gather your supplies: shovel, hand trowel, compost, potting soil if applicable, water, the new pot if repotting, and pruners.
  
• Pre-dig your hole or prepare the recipient pot. For transplants into the ground, follow the guidelines (which you researched, right?) for this particular plant. Sometimes you will luck out and it will be on the tag. Generally speaking, you want as a bare minimum a hole at least equal in diameter and depth of the root ball. For some applications, notably fruit trees, you need an even bigger hole, and some plants, such as tomatoes, appreciate being planted deeply, even covering one or two sets of leaves (they respond to this treatment by putting out extra roots, a big asset to thirsty tomatoes) while others need to be planted with the root ball level with the ground. For repotting, put enough potting soil in the bottom to have the top of the root ball at the appropriate level.  Keep in mind that you will want to leave some space at the top - in other words, the soil level should not be even with the lip of the pot unless you want to make a mess every time you water.  Do not put gravel in the bottom of a planter. Conventional wisdom dictates that adding some sort of permeable layer like gravel will improve drainage; however, evidence-based research has shown that this actually discourages drainage by creating a pot that is shallower and wider instead of deep and narrow. I don't care what mom told you, don't do it. Work in some compost, unless you are planting a tree.
  
• Please note that we have made it all the way to step six and you have not so much as touched your plant yet. Transplanting is all about the preparation. The actual transfer is, and should be, very quick. Roots hate to be out in the hot, dry air. With adequate preparation you can give your plants the least transplant shock possible and therefore the best chance at survival. Now that you have your destination prepared and plenty of water on hand, I give you permission to remove your plant from its pot. Try to be gentle - sometimes plants are so root bound that the container will need to be destroyed so as not to disturb the roots - avoid this by not purchasing root bound plants or letting your own get that way before repotting (unless its a species that likes that sort of thing).
  
• Once removed, correct any root problems. Root bound plants will often have roots winding around the edge of the pot, forming a circle. This can lead to eventual strangulation, especially in trees, and should be corrected. Try to gently pull the roots loose and straighten them out. Cut if necessary. Go ahead and spread the roots out a little to encourage healthy development in the ground. Some authors recommend immersing the roots in a bucket of water to work with them, and certainly this should be done of problems are severe and will need several minutes to correct, but I rarely bother.
• Now get that plant into its hole. Back fill with the native soil or potting mix. Water thoroughly. This will cause the dirt to settle, and you will likely need to add more soil. Water thoroughly again.
• Mulch. A few inches deep is very good, but don't mulch trees within a few inches of the trunk.
• Watering is critical to recently disturbed roots, even with so-called drought tolerant plants (with the exception of portulaca, I don't think its possible to kill that stuff). You will discover that most authors are reluctant to recommend a specific schedule for watering, because the answer is...it depends. That said, I give a good dose of water daily (sometimes more frequently for containers) for at least the first ten days. If your substrate has halfway decent drainage, this won't cause problems, and under watering is probably the leading cause of transplant failure. This will give the roots a chance to get established, then you can back off a bit. Drought-tolerant perennials generally do not become truly so for a year or two; until then they will need regular watering. Over-watering, however, is harmful in the long term and can cause root rot in some plants, especially in poor draining substrate.  So there you go, my own vague recommendation for how much to water. 

Some other time, I will talk about how to select plants you are considering purchasing, and the properties of a good container.  In the meantime, happy potting!

Round up for June 12th

Everything is growing fast after the recent heavy rains saturated the ground.  Getting tired of waiting to hear about chickens, I called the hatchery and they said they finally had eggs in.  The first hatch would be occuring on July 1st and I was at the top of the list for two Browns.  One catch:  we are going to be on the mainland for much of July.  I had her move me back to the list for the first August hatch, which should be happening on the 10th.  Yay! 

I'm still looking for grapevines.  Gaia Yoga had no idea if anyone was trying to cultivate grapes in Hawaii, and suggested that if they would be successful, people would already be growing them.  I'm doggedly persisting anyway.  Like Don Quixote.  I sent an email to Volcano Winery (their conditions are much different and I want table grapes, but I'm getting desperate).

Here are some pictures from this morning:

I should put the zinnias out of their misery, I know, but it's the kids' project and they aren't ready to let go.  The blooms, at least, look pretty from the street, and if you squint you can't really see all the browning foliage.  They appear to have a fungal infection which temporarily responded to an application of rosemary oil.

The pumpkin vine sure is getting pretty.

My "bean tee-pee".  The foil is supposed to deter aphids.  I've only had a small problem with them so far, which responded to an application of insecticidal soap and neem oil.

A bumper crop seems to be shaping up with the Healani tomatoes.  This is a special hybrid for Hawaii.  The cilantro seems to be happy in the partial shade offered here - this is my third attempt at growing it.  That's sweet potato vine on the right and an eggplant (waimanalo long, like the skinny Japanese eggplants) in the pot.  The plant doesn't look to healthy but it has yielded a few fruits before maturity.

A volunteer something-in-the-squash-family.  I should pull it but I'm curious.

I guess we should harvest this thing already!

The newest addition is a Kaffir lime tree, already producing fruit!  This tree is usually cultivated for its leaves in Thai cooking (I wish this was a scratch and smell picture, their fragrance is divine) but we like the juice of the limes too.

The much smaller and fruitless Cara Cara Navel orange.

Plumbago, one of my favorite ornamentals and tough as nails.  I still almost managed to kill it.

Work in progress...

Red ginger.

I built this border entirely from rocks we dug out of the yard (and those are just the big ones).  I'm out of rocks, so I guess it's time to dig some more.

Peanut plants!  Seem to be doing well, so if all else fails I can at least have a peanut butter garden, and there's always barter.

Pumpkin blossom.

The tortoise likes catnip.

Stitch says it's potent catnip.  The buds seem stronger than the leaves, much like another mood-altering herb.  Ahem.

Escargot, Anyone?

I have blood on my hands.  If slugs had blood.  I have slug slime on my hands. 

Lily holds one of the smaller snails before sending it to live in the ocean.

Gardening without winter has its rewards.  Although the viability of crops undoubtedly varies with the seasons (forget tender greens in the summer), there is always the opportunity to grow or plant something.  If an experiment fails, I can for the most part just start over instead of having to wait another year to try again.  Long season crops have the chance to develop to their potential, and some plants that are considered annual in most places function as perennials here.  But.

Critters have it good here too.  Without the winter die-off, they thrive.  Constant vigilance is needed to prevent one's home from literally being destroyed by Formosan termites.  Fleas are resistant to some of the most effective insecticides.  Everything in the kitchen has to be sealed air tight or the ants will find it.  I've even turned my microwave into an overpriced breadbox by storing my baked goods in it.

At this point, critters have probably enjoyed more of my crops than my family has.  Pepper maggots, aphids, leafminers, and scale were foreign terms to me just a few months ago - now I'm an expert on all of them. 

Oh, I knew this was going to be the case.  But as a general rule, I don't like to kill stuff.  I thought my moral dilemma was going to be focused on cockroaches and centipedes.  So far (knock on wood) a centipede has yet to make an appearance in my yard, let alone the house.  I've come to an agreement with the cockroaches, which can be as large as a human thumb and sometimes fly.  So long as they do their usual thing - only come out at night, stick to the walls and dark corners, and run away from me when I approach - I let them live unless they are inside the house (I did meet one noble soul who, as a Buddhist, is committed to a "catch and release" cockroach management program.  Good for her.).

I've begun to reevaluate this agreement, however, since one of the buggers violated our pact the other morning.  I was minding my own business, doing my morning exercise on the back patio, when he sauntered right up to me IN BROAD DAYLIGHT.  So far as I am concerned, this makes him fair game even if we were outside, but I didn't kill him.  I suspect this may have been due to lack of a suitable weapon (a flip-flop).  I rolled my exercise ball over him instead.  I don't think very clearly in the morning.

No, the conundrum for me has really centered around snails and slugs.  Somehow, I have become the scourge of gastropods.   The problems started when I installed the rock garden by the mailbox.  One morning I came out to discover that my lovingly nurtured creeping thyme, happily spreading between the stepping stones, had been stripped bare to its stems in many places.  The next morning, even more leaves were gone.  Then the margiolds started mysteriously falling over as if a tiny lumberjack was coming out at night to chop their little stems.  It took some time to figure out what was happening, but a nighttime reconnaissance mission with a flashlight solved the mystery.  I had planted several vincas around the mailbox, and they had flourished.  Not long after, we had a couple weeks of heavy rain.  The slug population in my rock garden exploded under these ideal conditions - they would hide in the cool dense shade under the vincas by day, and eat my thyme and marigolds by night.

I am stubbornly opposed to the use of poisons and chemicals unless it is my last resort.  Several organic methods are recommended for removing snails and slugs.  Most sources maintain that the most effective method is to go out at night and pick as many of the critters as possible.  The usual suggestion is to throw them in a bucket of soapy water to drown, but after the first couple dozen, this starts to get pretty gross.  And I feel a little bad drowning the little guys, given that death by drowning is my worst nightmare and hey, they're just trying to live their lives.

I should back up a moment to point out that we are talking about very large slugs and snails.  The most common snail pest  is an introduced species called the Giant African Snail.  That's not only creepy sounding, but accurately descriptive:  they don't belong here and they're very giant.  I was out for a pre-dawn walk one day and stepped over something on the sidewalk in the darkness.  A beat later, my brain registered that I had just seen something that was Not Right.  I turned around and pointed my phone at the ground like a flashlight.  It was a snail the size of my fist.

Not liking the soapy water bucket much, I next attempted brute violence, determining that a quick kill with the trowel would be the most humane.  But again, after twenty or thirty repetitions, it began to mess with my head.  I was also becoming concerned because the kids seemed just a bit too keen on killing slugs.  Some context:  a few weeks prior, I had found a Bufo toad in our backyard.  Bufo marinus is an invasive species and secretes a highly toxic substance that can kill a large dog if they so much as put their mouth on it.  This will also happen to any human dumb enough to put a toad in their mouth (or touch the toad and put their finger in their mouth).   I try to discourage toads from visiting our property by eliminating standing water and keeping things dry, but sometimes they show up anyway.  Making a snap judgement to kill this intruder in the name of protecting my family and the island ecosystem, I grabbed a spade and swung.  He hopped.  I gave chase.  He hopped more frantically.  Now I was beginning to feel like a serial killer in a slasher flick, but conviction drove me on.   I cornered the toad by the fence and dealt a swift blow, flattening it - but then, disturbingly, he popped back up.  I struck again and this time he ruptured.  Ick.

Meanwhile, my little angels were jumping up and down at the back door and squealing with delight.  "MOMMY KILLED A TOAD!  SHE KILLED IT WITH A SHOVEL!"  This was all a little too Lord of the Flies for me.  Their eyes still light up when they recall the incident, while I'm having flashbacks and considering treatment for PTSD.

Remembering this episode, I wasn't too happy about letting the kiddos witness me whacking away at the slugs, so I settled on dumping them in the storm drain to become Sea Slugs and live happily ever after in the ocean.  You know, like Gary from Spongebob. 

A few other tricks for getting rid of snails and slugs:

Reduce habitat and hiding places as much as possible.  Think dark, cool and moist.  Keep the yard picked up of debris, toys, lawn clippings, etc. and make sure the areas under your bushes are clear of underbrush. Avoid letting grass grow tall and unruly, especially in the wetter parts of your yard.  True to their reputation, gastropods move slowly, so their range is limited to how far they can travel to and from favorable conditions at night.  This range is extended after rains.  When it's very cloudy and wet, you will find them out in the open by day. 

Traps are a popular method of organic snail control.  Beer traps are widely recommended on the internet, but most authors don't include critical information on how to design a successful trap.  So I will tell you:  Gather some cheap beer (you can use expensive beer, but why?) and a cup or glass - something at least 3-4 inches deep is sufficient on the mainland, but I usually opt to use tall cups for our megafauna.  Dig a hole and seat the cup in the soil so that the lip is even with the ground.  Pack dirt around the edges.  If your lip is too high above ground level, your victims will not be able to crawl into the trap.  If your cup is too shallow, they will crawl back out before they die.  Fill with beer. The theory here is that beer attracts slugs and snails, they crawl in, can't get out, and drown.  I had amazing luck with this in Utah, not so much here in Hawaii.  They do seem to have a preference for Coors Light over PBR, so I guess the local snails aren't the hipster type.  Change daily unless you have a strong stomach for rotten snails and sour beer. Keep in mind that if you do this incorrectly, all you will do is attract slugs and snails to the area so that they are more likely to munch on your plants and wash it down with your beer.  Then they'll take home some floozie they met all sleazy under the marigolds, and since all they got in high school health class was abstinence training, they'll reproduce like crazy.  Don't let this happen to you.

An alternative trapping method has not worked as well for me, but other people swear by it.  Wet down an area near slug habitat/feeding grounds and place a board or some other flat structure over it.  Prop up one end slightly with some pebbles so that the snails can crawl underneath.  Come back during the day, turn your board over and then scrape the slugs and snails into a bucket of soapy water.

Barriers are another common recommendation.  Copper, in my experience, is effective.  They seem to be reluctant to touch it.  You can purchase copper tape for containers in a garden center, or you can get creative with copper flashing or other ready-made devices.  Reportedly they hate coffee grounds and eggshells as well, although I have no direct feedback on this (I do spread coffee grounds around certain plants anyway, as they're a good nutrient source.  Be careful, however, because the grounds are very acidic and enough of them can alter the pH of your garden soil).

Finally, a word about poisons.  I never, ever advocate the use of metaldehyde snail bait.  It is extremely attractive and toxic not only to snails and slugs, but to dogs and kids as well.  There are better ways.  Iron phosphate is safer, although if small children get into the bottle, they can still be poisoned.  After I have depopulated an area, I will usually sprinkle a little iron phosphate around to catch the survivors. 

Snails and slugs are destructive pests that can ruin an entire garden in a matter of days.  Effective control is a bit labor intensive at first, but if you design your landscape carefully and thoughtfully, you can minimize the problems in the long term by reducing habitat.  Occasional surveillance will address problems before they turn into a crisis.

Happy slaughtering!

 

That's so Vanilla

Ever wonder how they get vanilla beans? A lot of hard work. Last night we piled the family in the Jeep and ventured into the jungle around Mililani. There, in an unlikely gated community which felt more "Heart of Darkness" than "McMansion housing development", we met up with a lovely German gentleman who sold us two meter-long vanilla vines and gave us detailed instructions on where to place them and how to hand-pollinate the flowers, should we be lucky enough to get flowers.

This project is going to be Chris's baby. In, oh, five years, we should have homegrown vanilla extract...if it works, anyway. Vanilla is an epiphytic plant in the orchid family. The ever-evolving plan is currently to grow the vines on a trellis behind some coffee trees for the required dappled shade, with misters to provide the needed humidity (note that we do not live in the jungle). For now, however, the naked vines are sitting on top of a dead microwave in the garage, which I am assured is OK.

Wait, Don't Go-Gurt!

Ugh. I installed a simple rain gauge on the edge of one of my raised beds - we get frequent showers here and it can be difficult to tell if we got anything significant - and since I put it in, we had about three weeks straight of what amounted to drought, which meant a lot of standing outside with the hose. Now we have had 6+ inches in the last 24 hours, most of that falling within two hours yesterday morning. I spent a muddy afternoon digging drainage ditches and pretty much made a mess of the side yard. There has to be a better way - in fact there are several other better ways. More on water management in a future post.

Since there's not much going on outside, let's spend today in the kitchen, shall we?   Self-sufficiency is about more than having a vegetable garden or a few backyard chickens.  Think about the flow of energy, resources, and materials through your home. There's what comes in: energy, durable goods, disposable/consumable items, water, and the resources/energy/water required to deliver those items to your family. Then there's the outflow: garbage, recycling (in many ways just another form of garbage), runoff, human and animal waste, to name a few. Living sustainably, in my mind, means trying to minimize that flow as much as possible.

Let's take a carton of yogurt as our example. First, there are the ingredients that go into the yogurt - milk, "cultures" (bacterial organisms that make your yogurt), maybe some pectin. That's if you're buying a plain, organic yogurt without additives. You're getting a whole lot more for your buck if you consider the ingredients list on a popular brand, which comes in convenient individual pouches (look, ma!  no spoon!) and marketed as "healthy": milk, milk solids non fat, sugar, strawberry juice (min. 2.5%), pear juice, thickener (1442, pectin, agar), halal gelatine, mineral calcium (341), natural colour (cochineal), natural flavour, acidity regulators (sodium citrate, malic acid), live yogurt cultures (Acidophilus and Bifidus).

In addition to ingredients, there's packaging (more for single serve than quart containers), the energy required to make the product and its packaging, transportation (of ingredients and packaging to the manufacturing facility, of the product to your grocery store - a more convoluted path than you might imagine - and of the product from store to home), and water (what goes in the food as well as what is needed to make the food and the packaging). Wait, I forgot about the production of the ingredients as well - say, the environmental impact of farming practices used to make the milk, the treatment of the animals used in production, and what happens to those animals when they reach the end of their useful life.

As you can see, even for something like yogurt it can get complicated very fast, and there are many unknowns that we could never get the answers to, even if we had the time to research every item in the pantry.  There's no pat answer to eating sustainably - each individual food must be considered and the relative factors weighed - organic vs. local vs. minimal packaging.  Don't be overwhelmed..  As with any change in lifestyle, minimizing your impact can, and probably should, be taken on in baby steps. Small manageable goals are less overwhelming than big ones, and they do add up.

A good place to start is to whittle away at the processed foods in your pantry and start making more things from scratch. Maybe pick one or two things.  This is going to require an investment of time and money - they call them convenience foods for a reason, after all - but I am going to argue that it is time and money well spent. Of all the developed countries surveyed, Americans spend the least time per day preparing food - a mere thirty minutes(1). How much time do you spend per day watching television? How about watching cooking shows? As for money, it seems that the more hands that are involved in preparing our foods, the less they cost. How can that be? Processed foods contain a high percentage of corn in all of its forms, a commodity which is heavily subsidized by the government(2). And I am going to make an argument here that while food seems expensive these days, it really isn't breaking those of us who aren't already living in poverty or on the edge of it.  Americans as a whole spend less than ten percent of total disposable income on food, compared to 25 percent or more decades ago(3).  Furthermore, I am not so convinced that cheap food is such a bargain when you consider the cost in health care and loss of productivity that comes with eating too many calories and not enough nutrients.   Sometimes, as in our yogurt example, the cost of the final product at the grocery store (if you are buying a comparable in quality brand) is more than what you will spend on the ingredients.

Making your own yogurt can be a fun project and will build your confidence in your ability to live sustainably. You can control what goes into it, how much sweetener to add, and where your ingredients are sourced from.  Packaging is cut down by reusing a container for subsequent batches.  It will also forever secure your creds as an accomplished cook with your friends and family.  It sounds intimidating at first, but as long as you carefully follow safe food handling practices (remember that everything your mixture touches after scalding needs to be very clean but not necessarily sterile) you will be successful.   I haven't died yet, anyway.

What you will need:

Candy thermometer
Medium saucepan
Quart mason jar, washed out quart yogurt carton, etc.
Big bowl
Yogurt incubator - the only specialized item needed. These can be bought inexpensively, or if you luck out like I did, you can get one on the cheap at a yard sale. 

1/3-1/2 cup nonfat powdered milk
3 1/2 cups milk
Ice
1/4 cup yogurt with live active cultures
Up to two tablespoons of sugar, honey, or other sweetener if desired

1.  Pour milk into the saucepan and whisk in 1/3 to 1/2 cup powdered nonfat milk.  The more dry milk powder you use, the thicker the final product will be.

2.  Place your candy thermometer in the mixture, securing to the side of the pan so that it does not touch the bottom (otherwise it will read too hot).  Heat to 185 - 195 degrees Fahrenheit, stirring frequently.  I used to do this part in the microwave, but the taking out, stirring and checking was too time consuming, plus I had to worry about the glass cracking when I did the next step.

2.  Fill a large bowl with ice water and place your pan of milk into it (or use another bowl to cool it faster.  Metal works best as it conducts heat rapidly).  Stir frequently until it cools to 115F.  You don't need to use the ice water bath, but it makes things proceed much more quickly.

3.  Now that your milk is at the proper temperature to support life (and has been sterilized so that any pre-existing critters will not grow instead), put your yogurt into the mason jar or whatever other container you are using and add just a little of the milk.  Whisk or stir well until smooth.  Then add the rest of the milk and stir well.  If you want to add sweetener, this is the time, but no more than 2 tablespoons.

Make sure you use yogurt with live, active cultures.

4.  Place your yogurt mixture into the incubator and cover.  Allow to sit 6-12 hours; the longer you allow your culture to grow, the firmer and more tart your yogurt will be.

5.  If you want to add more sweetener or flavoring, now is the time.  Personally, I prefer it as is.  Oh, and if you want to reserve some culture for the next batch, remove it and set aside in the refrigerator before adding any flavorings.  You can use it for up to ten days.  Theoretically, you could keep this up indefinitely, but I prefer to start with a fresh store-bought yogurt after a few generations.

And that's it!  Making yogurt really isn't hard or time-consuming.  The biggest challenge is timing it so that you are home when you want to finish incubating.  I generally go the whole 12 hours so this is not a problem for me most of the time. 

Happy culturing!

Ka-Ching!

I've been searching for homesteading help in the tropics and I finally found a great website and resource.  I stumbled on this site when I was searching for information on poha berry bushes (the lady at the farmers' market said they won't do well at lower elevations.  bah!).  How can you not love a place that has an entire section labeled "edible/useful perennials"?  I can't wait until the next time I'm on the Big Island so I can get a tour of the nursery:

http://www.gaiayoga.org/nursery/index.html

Edible hibiscus, anyone?  How about a beautiful perennial spinach that doubles as a groundcover?  Have I died and gone to heaven?

Not quite.  Unfortunately, they do not grow grapes.  I've been on the hunt for grapevines that will do well in a humid coastal climate.  Rumors are that the Isabella cultivar does so well here that it has been observed to "go native."  I've had several leads on a source but they all led to naught.  My next step is to contact the folks at Gaia Yoga and see if they know of anyone.

Happy gardening!