Sometimes, in my quest to do things what I see as the "right" way, I hit little bumps. Sometimes we may just need a reminder why it's not ok to go squirt a little roundup on that stubborn thistle that wants to grow in our carrot patch. It's easy to have good intentions, it's a bit harder to actually follow through.
So, in order to help remind myself, and my family, and anyone else who might read this, I've assembled a list of the most common farm chemicals and their negative effects. This may seem a bit like I'm focusing on the negatives here, but in my view, there really are no positives to using these chemicals. Whatever short term gain they are designed for is far outweighed by the long term loss.
Let's start with the top 5 most used herbicides and pesticides in the USA.
Glyphosphate/Roundup
-disrupts/reduces production of human sex hormones
-kills tadpoles
-causes genetic damage to human and animal cells
-laboratory confirmed link between exposure to Glyphosphate and cancer, ADD, miscarriage
-causes genetic damage and immune dysfunction in fish
-causes genetic damage and abnormal development in frogs
Atrazine
-contaminates lakes, rivers, streams and groundwater easily
-skin, eye irritant
-severely disrupts reproduction in amphibians and other animals even in very low doses <0.1ppb
2,4D
-acid and salt formulations cause blindness on contact with eyes
-linked to Lou Gherig's disease
-causes ataxia, miscarriage in rabbits
-causes weight loss, nerological issues in dogs
-causes retinal degeneration in rats
Dicamba
-Respiratory, skin, eye irritatant
-highly soluble in water, groundwater contaminant
Trifluralin
-eye irritant
-possible carcinogen
-likely disrupts endocrine function
Soil fumigants, possibly the most toxic chemicals used in industrial agriculture
Methyl Iodide
-if inhaled, causes ataxia, cough, diarrhoea, dizziness, drowsiness, nausea, sore throat and vomiting
-Highly toxic to most animals
-known carcinogen
-potential ground water contaminant
-neurotoxic
-causes miscarriage
Metam Sodium
-highly toxic
-known carcinogen
Chloropicrin
-highly toxic poison gas
How about a few others, maybe the common household ones?
Diazinon
-residential use outlawed in 2004
-symptoms in people include abnormal blood pressure, abnormal heart rate, breathing difficulty, chest pain, anxiety, convulsions, dizziness, coma, tremor, twitching, abdominal cramps, vomiting
Carbaryl (Sevin)
-can cause nerve damage with long term exposure to high doses
-can leech into streams and lakes and kill beneficial aquatic insects
I could type all day long about this. Really. The list of chemicals one might encounter on a farm or even a garden is staggering. If you're wondering, these are the "common" ones listed here.
http://wssa.net/wp-content/uploads/wssp-09-01-01_4_back_124_132.pdf
Yeah, four pages of names, and that's just the "common" ones. And that doesn't include fungicides, insecticides, etc. I don't want to eat that stuff, do you?
A couple weeks ago, I started a batch of dandelion wine. I just went out and picked flowers. I can do this because I know that there have been no chemicals on my property in years. Of course my neighbors down the road complain about all the flowers, they blame their dandelion problem on me. I tell them that it's not a problem to have a pretty, edible plant that requires zero care growing everywhere. They just shake their head and go back to spraying 2,4D all over the place, while their grandson plays in the yard.
Yesterday a neighbor told me that they can't grow anything without chemical fertilizer and herbicides. I tell them that's not true, they can actually grow more, but they're going to have to get their hands dirty. Change tactics, think differently. This is usually met with a blank stare and the feeling that the person I'm talking to thinks I'm wacky. There are better ways than spraying everything full of poison. There are pioneers in this area named Sepp Holzer, Joel Salatin, Paul Wheaton and many many many others, all of whom have succeeded at growing food and animals without synthetic chemicals. There have been stacks of books a mile high written on the subject. There are hundreds if not thousands of websites like Permies.com that are loaded with information. Can't grow anything without chemicals? That's ridiculous. Maybe they believe me, maybe they don't, but it would be a shame if they or their family got sick because someone was too lazy to weed the tomatoes.
This is not a scientific publication, but here's some references anyway.
http://www.epa.gov/caddis/ssr_herb_int.html
http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/hazards-of-the-worlds-most-common-herbicide.aspx#axzz2Un4Q9DMO
http://www.epa.gov/oppsrrd1/REDs/factsheets/24d_fs.htm
http://www.pesticideinfo.org/Detail_Chemical.jsp?Rec_Id=PC32871
http://www.panna.org/resources/specific-pesticides/fumigants
http://www.pesticideinfo.org/Detail_Chemical.jsp?Rec_Id=PC38191
http://www.pesticideinfo.org/Detail_Chemical.jsp?Rec_Id=PC32859
http://www.pesticideinfo.org/Detail_Chemical.jsp?Rec_Id=PC35061
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diazinon
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Garden status update
Considering that it's the end of May, all of my gardens are way behind what I expected at this point. The weather has been very uncooperative. Crops that were planted early either did not germinate, or took so long to germinate that there was no point in planting early. Cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, peas, and onions were all planted on May 1st and 2nd. Onions are finally now coming up, 27 days later. Peas came up quickly, but growth has been very slow due to very little sun. The ground is waterlogged thanks to cool temps and 1/2 inch of rain every other day on average.
But, I can finally say that everything is planted, even if some of it still hasn't come up.
Roll call for the main garden, the one I converted to raised beds in April.
Snap peas
carrots (3 different varieties)
beets
radishes
Spinach
Various types of leaf lettuce
Romain lettuce
Cabbage (two varieties)
Broccoli
Brussels sprouts
Eggplant
Anaheim pepper
Green Bell pepper
Orange Bell pepper
Chocolate Bell pepper
Jalapeno pepper
Ancho chile pepper
An unnamed heirloom red bell that I got from a friend of my Mom's
Dr. Walter tomato
Brandywine tomato
Marglobe tomato
Amish Paste tomato
unnamed cherry tomato
Zucchini
Cucumber
Three varieties of onions from seed
One red onion from transplants started indoors about a month earlier
A generic white onion from sets
A generic red onion from sets
Radiccio
Celery
Contender green bean
That garden totals about 600 sq feet, after it was all said and done. It's planted very densely, but I carefully spaced every seed just where I wanted the plants, so I will have to do zero thinning. Any seeds that didn't germinate are replaced. This guarantees that I'll have a staggered harvest of most crops. Not intentionally, but I don't see it as a bad thing either. As soon as the plants are visible above ground, I start mulching with grass clippings from the lawn. As the plants get taller, I build up the mulch. This guarantees that I'll do little or no weeding and water way less than I would otherwise as the mulch holds moisture in the ground. The grass clippings also add nice organic matter to the soil as it breaks down and is hand tilled into the garden in the fall. Just make sure that your grass clippings come from a lawn that hasn't been sprayed with any chemicals. I stopped using chemicals years ago, now I just pick the dandelions and clover and feed it to the chickens. It's a much better use of those nutrients.
Other than that garden, there is a sweet corn patch planted in a freshly tilled garden. I can't use it for much of anything else until the 2nd year because of all the grass that will germinate in it, so it's a good place for that. That garden is about 1000 sq feet, but only about 700 of that is in corn. The rest is planted in a large growing variety of pumpkin.
The third and largest garden is a bit of a family garden. Last I measured it, it was about 6,000 square feet. My father grows sweet corn in about 1/3 of it. A portion is set aside for tomatoes for his house, and the rest I plant into pumpkins, squash, canteloupe, and several varieties of watermelon. Overall, I planted about 2,500 sq feet into those crops. This garden is by far the most work, because it's too large to mulch. We do use a garden tractor to cultivate it until the vines get too long. After that, I chop and drop weeds before they go to seed, and if necessary I get out the machete and a well sharpened hoe to take care of the big stuff. It will end up with more weeds that I'd ever tolerate elsewhere, but there's only so much that can be done about that, and most of the big weeds are dynamic accumulators anyway so they're good for the soil because they grow deep taproots and draw nutrients up from the subsoil.
Last, but not least, is 1/3 of an acre of several varieties of potatoes. Good Friday? Not a chance. More like May 10th. The ground was way too wet to get into before that. There was actually still snow on that ground until May 1 about. These are planted with an antique John Deere tractor pulling a 90 year old potato planter, and harvested with the same tractor and an antique potato digger. This harvest is split up amongst the family, and if there's any left after that 2000 pounds or so is handed out, the rest will be sold at the farmer's market. I primarily plant Yukon Gold, Kennebec, and Norland Red potatoes.
This ended up being a pretty long and sort of pointless entry, I realize now. However, one of my purposes with this blog is to document for my own purposes. If it's of any use to anyone else, that much the better.
Happy Gardening!
But, I can finally say that everything is planted, even if some of it still hasn't come up.
Roll call for the main garden, the one I converted to raised beds in April.
Snap peas
carrots (3 different varieties)
beets
radishes
Spinach
Various types of leaf lettuce
Romain lettuce
Cabbage (two varieties)
Broccoli
Brussels sprouts
Eggplant
Anaheim pepper
Green Bell pepper
Orange Bell pepper
Chocolate Bell pepper
Jalapeno pepper
Ancho chile pepper
An unnamed heirloom red bell that I got from a friend of my Mom's
Dr. Walter tomato
Brandywine tomato
Marglobe tomato
Amish Paste tomato
unnamed cherry tomato
Zucchini
Cucumber
Three varieties of onions from seed
One red onion from transplants started indoors about a month earlier
A generic white onion from sets
A generic red onion from sets
Radiccio
Celery
Contender green bean
That garden totals about 600 sq feet, after it was all said and done. It's planted very densely, but I carefully spaced every seed just where I wanted the plants, so I will have to do zero thinning. Any seeds that didn't germinate are replaced. This guarantees that I'll have a staggered harvest of most crops. Not intentionally, but I don't see it as a bad thing either. As soon as the plants are visible above ground, I start mulching with grass clippings from the lawn. As the plants get taller, I build up the mulch. This guarantees that I'll do little or no weeding and water way less than I would otherwise as the mulch holds moisture in the ground. The grass clippings also add nice organic matter to the soil as it breaks down and is hand tilled into the garden in the fall. Just make sure that your grass clippings come from a lawn that hasn't been sprayed with any chemicals. I stopped using chemicals years ago, now I just pick the dandelions and clover and feed it to the chickens. It's a much better use of those nutrients.
Other than that garden, there is a sweet corn patch planted in a freshly tilled garden. I can't use it for much of anything else until the 2nd year because of all the grass that will germinate in it, so it's a good place for that. That garden is about 1000 sq feet, but only about 700 of that is in corn. The rest is planted in a large growing variety of pumpkin.
The third and largest garden is a bit of a family garden. Last I measured it, it was about 6,000 square feet. My father grows sweet corn in about 1/3 of it. A portion is set aside for tomatoes for his house, and the rest I plant into pumpkins, squash, canteloupe, and several varieties of watermelon. Overall, I planted about 2,500 sq feet into those crops. This garden is by far the most work, because it's too large to mulch. We do use a garden tractor to cultivate it until the vines get too long. After that, I chop and drop weeds before they go to seed, and if necessary I get out the machete and a well sharpened hoe to take care of the big stuff. It will end up with more weeds that I'd ever tolerate elsewhere, but there's only so much that can be done about that, and most of the big weeds are dynamic accumulators anyway so they're good for the soil because they grow deep taproots and draw nutrients up from the subsoil.
Last, but not least, is 1/3 of an acre of several varieties of potatoes. Good Friday? Not a chance. More like May 10th. The ground was way too wet to get into before that. There was actually still snow on that ground until May 1 about. These are planted with an antique John Deere tractor pulling a 90 year old potato planter, and harvested with the same tractor and an antique potato digger. This harvest is split up amongst the family, and if there's any left after that 2000 pounds or so is handed out, the rest will be sold at the farmer's market. I primarily plant Yukon Gold, Kennebec, and Norland Red potatoes.
This ended up being a pretty long and sort of pointless entry, I realize now. However, one of my purposes with this blog is to document for my own purposes. If it's of any use to anyone else, that much the better.
Happy Gardening!
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Homemade chunk charcoal - a documentation of failure
On a completely unexpected whim, I decided to attempt to make chunk charcoal. Now, I did some research on this before hand. Not much though, as I've seen this done using roughly this method. I want to preface this entire post by saying that this was by all accounts a failure, but I felt it worth documenting, as I find I learn as much from failures as I do from successes.
My basic plan was to fill a steel drum with small chunks of wood, place it above a hot fire and then close it up leaving only minimal venting to prevent a bad bad case of explosion.The idea is that the heat will vaporize off all the volatile gasses and leave only solid carbon behind. That's the plan anyway. It can work, I just got sloppy.
So, step one is to cut up a bunch of wood. Check.
Step two, fill the barrel. Check.
Step three, build a nice hot fire, Check.
This is where the pictures come in.
This is immediately after setting the barrel on the fire. I let it get good and hot to dry out the wood in the barrel. Very little smoke, mostly steam came out of the barrel for the first 20 minutes. When I started seeing actual smoke coming out, I closed up the lid.
The lid on this barrel is just a square cut out and hinged with some tie wire. I set that closed, laid tinfoil over the top to cover the gaps in the lid, and then piled it full of dirt on top to act as weight. This closed the top up nicely, with only two vent holes.
I let this cook for about 3 hours and then took a peek. There was essentially no change to the wood inside, even though it was venting air at about 300 degrees. I decided that it just needed to either be hotter, or cook longer to remove any remaining moisture. I could feel the smoke still had a lot of steam in it, which is what led me to try the second option.
I rebuilt the fire with about enough to burn for an hour or so, and then went in the house. When I checked it before bedtime, the fire was burned almost all the way down and the top of the barrel was cooling. I figured that it was probably undercooked, but didn't want to overdo it so I left it to finish burning down as it was mostly just loose cool coals at this point.
The next day, much to my surprise, the barrel was full of ash.Completely burned down.
So, what I learned from this:
The wood has to be DRY DRY DRY.
Temperature control is difficult at best
Duration is hard to judge unless your barrel has a window.
There are other methods to make charcoal, but this one is easy for me so I'm going to try it again.
Things I'm going to do differently.
I'll use only wood that has dried in the sun for several weeks. Any wood that is recently felled or green will be saved for a later batch.
I'll pay more attention to the heat of the fire, I'm sure it got too hot towards the end when the moisture had steamed off.
I'll use a lid that allows me to check the state of the charcoal more easily, so that I can monitor more closely.
Less heat
Less time
And hopefully, I'll have something that more closely resembles charcoal than ash.
Any and all constructive input is welcome, especially if you've made charcoal before.
My basic plan was to fill a steel drum with small chunks of wood, place it above a hot fire and then close it up leaving only minimal venting to prevent a bad bad case of explosion.The idea is that the heat will vaporize off all the volatile gasses and leave only solid carbon behind. That's the plan anyway. It can work, I just got sloppy.
So, step one is to cut up a bunch of wood. Check.
Step two, fill the barrel. Check.
Step three, build a nice hot fire, Check.
This is where the pictures come in.
This is immediately after setting the barrel on the fire. I let it get good and hot to dry out the wood in the barrel. Very little smoke, mostly steam came out of the barrel for the first 20 minutes. When I started seeing actual smoke coming out, I closed up the lid.
The lid on this barrel is just a square cut out and hinged with some tie wire. I set that closed, laid tinfoil over the top to cover the gaps in the lid, and then piled it full of dirt on top to act as weight. This closed the top up nicely, with only two vent holes.
I let this cook for about 3 hours and then took a peek. There was essentially no change to the wood inside, even though it was venting air at about 300 degrees. I decided that it just needed to either be hotter, or cook longer to remove any remaining moisture. I could feel the smoke still had a lot of steam in it, which is what led me to try the second option.
I rebuilt the fire with about enough to burn for an hour or so, and then went in the house. When I checked it before bedtime, the fire was burned almost all the way down and the top of the barrel was cooling. I figured that it was probably undercooked, but didn't want to overdo it so I left it to finish burning down as it was mostly just loose cool coals at this point.
The next day, much to my surprise, the barrel was full of ash.Completely burned down.
So, what I learned from this:
The wood has to be DRY DRY DRY.
Temperature control is difficult at best
Duration is hard to judge unless your barrel has a window.
There are other methods to make charcoal, but this one is easy for me so I'm going to try it again.
Things I'm going to do differently.
I'll use only wood that has dried in the sun for several weeks. Any wood that is recently felled or green will be saved for a later batch.
I'll pay more attention to the heat of the fire, I'm sure it got too hot towards the end when the moisture had steamed off.
I'll use a lid that allows me to check the state of the charcoal more easily, so that I can monitor more closely.
Less heat
Less time
And hopefully, I'll have something that more closely resembles charcoal than ash.
Any and all constructive input is welcome, especially if you've made charcoal before.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Thought I'd make a quick post to update on the dandelion wine. The day after pitching yeast and closing it up, it started fermentation. It's now been a week, and it's been bubbling nicely since then. It's not the nearly violent fermentation that I've seen with fruit wines but it's steady and looks to be coming along nicely. I'm hoping to have a glass after I get done digging potatoes this fall. :D
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Dandelion Wine
Ever since I first became interested in making wine, I've been curious about unique homemade wines. My first batch was wild plum wine and it was delicious, although it didn't keep very well and started to degrade in quality about the time the last bottle was used up at about a year of age. After a few other attempts at non-standard (not grape) wines (mead, blueberry, apple) were less than a great success (the apple was drinkable but not great, the mead tasted like nail polish remover and still does 3 years later, and and the blueberry got contaminated by wild yeast), I kind of put the idea on hold. I mean, I like making wine, but it's a time consuming process and there just wasn't the time to commit to it.
But, somewhere early in my first winemaking adventures, I learned about dandelion wine. What an idea, wine made from flower petals. And not just any flower petals, the most available flower petals I could imagine. I'll admit, the idea of plucking the flower petals put me off for a long time, but this past weekend after seeing all the dandelions blooming in the yard, I figured it was time to take a stab at it.
All of my previous batches of wine were five gallon batches. I have a six gallon primary and a five gallon carboy, but gathering the petals for a batch that size would have literally taken all day. After hunting around the house I came across a one gallon glass jar that my mom brought for making kraut, and a 3 liter plastic bottle that had spring water in it. I don't really like the idea of using plastic, but it's the only thing I could have fit an airlock to easily.
It took me about 45 minutes to pick what looked like about a gallon of dandelion flowers without stalks. Just pick the flower head and remove any flower stalk that comes with it. Sarah and I sat down at the kitchen table and started plucking petals. There may be easier ways to do this, but the method I settled on after some trial and error was to squeeze the flower between my thumb and index finger right at the base of it and roll it. This caused the base of the flower head to tear and kind of unroll, allowing me to pull most or all of the petals away with my other hand. I warn you, this took us over an hour to do a gallon of flower heads and I ended up with stiff hands afterwards.
This gallon of flower heads yielded about 2.5 quarts of petals. I left about 1/2 cup of the flowers whole, as some recipes I've read suggest that this adds some desirable flavor to the wine, at the expense of taking longer to age. The greens of the flower head are bitter if too much is used, so my research suggests they should be used sparingly.
The recipe I worked up was based on several I found on scattered about the internet, and formulated for 1 gallon of wine. My makeshift secondary fermenter is only 3 liters, so I did a little math and adjusted for this. I'll post the entire recipe at the bottom of this entry. An interesting tidbit about dandelion wine is that it does not have a lot of body on its own, and one suggestion I found to remedy this was to add rhubarb to the mix. I just happened to have a quart of frozen rhubarb in the freezer, the last of last fall's harvest, so that was my solution. so I lightly mashed that in a bowl and strained the juice into the primary. The mashed rhubarb
While Sarah stuffed all the petals and the 1/2 cup of intact heads into a nylon stocking with some marbles in it for weight (otherwise it'll float in the primary, you need at least 10 sterile glass marbles), I scrubbed the glass jar and crushed up a campden tablet to rinse it and my other tools with, and started that process. After everything was clean, I lightly mashed the rhubarb in a bowl and strained the juice into the primary. The mashed rhubarb was added to the nylon full of dandelion petals and the whole thing was tied shut and put into the primary. I boiled slightly more than 3 liters of water and poured this over the nylon and into the jar. It instantly took on a pretty yellow-green color. This was covered and allowed to cool overnight.
The next day, I squeezed the juice out of the petals and rhubarb in the nylon, poured the liquid back into a kettle, heated it to just shy of a boil. I stirred in two pounds of sugar, a little bit of lemon zest, and the juice from one large lemon. The lemon is to adjust the PH down as our tapwater is very alkaline, ranging from 7.8 to 8.6 depending on the time of year. This was poured back into the glass jar and allowed to cool overnight.
The following day I sterilized the three liter plastic jug, cut a whole in the cap that would accomodate the rubber cork that the airlock fits into. I poured the whole mixture into the plastic jug, leaving a small amount of sludge behind, added a crushed campden tablet to this mix, fit the airlock and let it stand for 24 hours.
The last step was to add yeast (I always use Montrachet) and a small amount of yeast nutrient and cover it up to keep it out of the sunlight. Right now it's been 26 hours since I pitched the yeast, and there is only a small amount of bubbles forming at the top. I expect fermentation to start slowly, as I did not add as much yeast nutrient as I would have liked, and my yeast is not as fresh as I'd like. I do expect it to ferment eventually, though, and even if it doesn't, I won't deviate from this process if I had to do it over again.
As a side note, I don't know what the starting specific gravity was, due to an unfortunate situation with the drawer my hydrometer was in. However, 2.5 pounds of sugar per gallon of must is a pretty average ratio for a semi-sweet wine. I prefer mine a little sweeter than that, so with 2 pounds in 3 liters, I've got a ratio of about 2.75 pounds per gallon, which should leave a sweet wine with fairly high alcohol content.
Recipe reference:
http://www.jackkeller.net <-- this site is LOADED with useful info for home winemaking.
Dandelion wine recipe:
2.5 quarts of dandelion petals
1/2 cup of whole dandelion flower heads with no stems
1 quart cut rhubarb
2 pounds sugar
zest from 1 lemon
juice from one lemon
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1 packet yeast
But, somewhere early in my first winemaking adventures, I learned about dandelion wine. What an idea, wine made from flower petals. And not just any flower petals, the most available flower petals I could imagine. I'll admit, the idea of plucking the flower petals put me off for a long time, but this past weekend after seeing all the dandelions blooming in the yard, I figured it was time to take a stab at it.
All of my previous batches of wine were five gallon batches. I have a six gallon primary and a five gallon carboy, but gathering the petals for a batch that size would have literally taken all day. After hunting around the house I came across a one gallon glass jar that my mom brought for making kraut, and a 3 liter plastic bottle that had spring water in it. I don't really like the idea of using plastic, but it's the only thing I could have fit an airlock to easily.
It took me about 45 minutes to pick what looked like about a gallon of dandelion flowers without stalks. Just pick the flower head and remove any flower stalk that comes with it. Sarah and I sat down at the kitchen table and started plucking petals. There may be easier ways to do this, but the method I settled on after some trial and error was to squeeze the flower between my thumb and index finger right at the base of it and roll it. This caused the base of the flower head to tear and kind of unroll, allowing me to pull most or all of the petals away with my other hand. I warn you, this took us over an hour to do a gallon of flower heads and I ended up with stiff hands afterwards.
This gallon of flower heads yielded about 2.5 quarts of petals. I left about 1/2 cup of the flowers whole, as some recipes I've read suggest that this adds some desirable flavor to the wine, at the expense of taking longer to age. The greens of the flower head are bitter if too much is used, so my research suggests they should be used sparingly.
The recipe I worked up was based on several I found on scattered about the internet, and formulated for 1 gallon of wine. My makeshift secondary fermenter is only 3 liters, so I did a little math and adjusted for this. I'll post the entire recipe at the bottom of this entry. An interesting tidbit about dandelion wine is that it does not have a lot of body on its own, and one suggestion I found to remedy this was to add rhubarb to the mix. I just happened to have a quart of frozen rhubarb in the freezer, the last of last fall's harvest, so that was my solution. so I lightly mashed that in a bowl and strained the juice into the primary. The mashed rhubarb
While Sarah stuffed all the petals and the 1/2 cup of intact heads into a nylon stocking with some marbles in it for weight (otherwise it'll float in the primary, you need at least 10 sterile glass marbles), I scrubbed the glass jar and crushed up a campden tablet to rinse it and my other tools with, and started that process. After everything was clean, I lightly mashed the rhubarb in a bowl and strained the juice into the primary. The mashed rhubarb was added to the nylon full of dandelion petals and the whole thing was tied shut and put into the primary. I boiled slightly more than 3 liters of water and poured this over the nylon and into the jar. It instantly took on a pretty yellow-green color. This was covered and allowed to cool overnight.
The next day, I squeezed the juice out of the petals and rhubarb in the nylon, poured the liquid back into a kettle, heated it to just shy of a boil. I stirred in two pounds of sugar, a little bit of lemon zest, and the juice from one large lemon. The lemon is to adjust the PH down as our tapwater is very alkaline, ranging from 7.8 to 8.6 depending on the time of year. This was poured back into the glass jar and allowed to cool overnight.
The following day I sterilized the three liter plastic jug, cut a whole in the cap that would accomodate the rubber cork that the airlock fits into. I poured the whole mixture into the plastic jug, leaving a small amount of sludge behind, added a crushed campden tablet to this mix, fit the airlock and let it stand for 24 hours.
The last step was to add yeast (I always use Montrachet) and a small amount of yeast nutrient and cover it up to keep it out of the sunlight. Right now it's been 26 hours since I pitched the yeast, and there is only a small amount of bubbles forming at the top. I expect fermentation to start slowly, as I did not add as much yeast nutrient as I would have liked, and my yeast is not as fresh as I'd like. I do expect it to ferment eventually, though, and even if it doesn't, I won't deviate from this process if I had to do it over again.
As a side note, I don't know what the starting specific gravity was, due to an unfortunate situation with the drawer my hydrometer was in. However, 2.5 pounds of sugar per gallon of must is a pretty average ratio for a semi-sweet wine. I prefer mine a little sweeter than that, so with 2 pounds in 3 liters, I've got a ratio of about 2.75 pounds per gallon, which should leave a sweet wine with fairly high alcohol content.
Recipe reference:
http://www.jackkeller.net <-- this site is LOADED with useful info for home winemaking.
Dandelion wine recipe:
2.5 quarts of dandelion petals
1/2 cup of whole dandelion flower heads with no stems
1 quart cut rhubarb
2 pounds sugar
zest from 1 lemon
juice from one lemon
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1 packet yeast
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