Here are my seedlings after 12 days in my recycled toilet paper rolls. I used the paper rolls cut in half for my plant starts. Here are the details on how to use toilet paper rolls for seedlings. These starts are leaf lettuce and I also have some tomato and carrots seedlings growing.
I’m happy to report that all the seeds sprouted in the rolls and are about ready to be replanted into my garden. I’ll post again soon with another progress report.
I have used cast iron for cooking for years. The secret of using cast iron pans and dutch ovens is how you care for the pots before and after use. The first most important thing before use is the proper seasoning. If the pot or pan isn’t seasoned thoroughly you will find cooking in it is miserable. Everything sticks in it, it looks rusty, and doesn’t smell good. If you have any of these issues, your pan isn’t seasoned properly but take heart. Even the worse cast iron pots and pans can be corrected with the proper seasoning.
Let’s take a rusty dutch oven that I recently obtained for example. It had rust spots on the outside and the inside. It had a rough and dried-out look about it on the inside too. But I knew with proper care, I could restore this pot to good usable condition. I didn’t take any pictures of the dutch oven before I worked on it but just let me say it was in need of some serious TLC.
Here is the inside lid after I applied oil to the inside and outside and put it in the oven to season it up.
Steps to Seasoning your Cast Iron: Wipe with cooking oil, I like to use Olive oil, on the inside and the outside. If you have a dutch oven that is in bad condition, place it on a cooking sheet inside your oven at about 300-350 degrees. I left mine for a half hour before checking. Check the progress and turn the lid if necessary. Make sure its getting hot enough for the oil to be absorbed into the cast iron. Add more oil if needed so it has a generous amount of oil on the cast iron. Let it bake for another 30 minutes so it has baked for a full hour.
Re-apply more oil to the inside and outside. Wipe the oil around with a paper towel. I always leave a little excess oil inside the pan so it can adsorb even more.
An important tip: Never use soap on your cast iron. Rinse out the pan in the sink and scrape out any food. Boil water in the pan and use a nylon scrubber to get any hard stuck stuff off of your cast iron. I also reminded that the Boy Scouts use dirt or sand to scrub out their cast irons pans when they are camping. Then they boil water in the pans before adding some oil to season the pot for the next use.
Here is my favorite large cast iron fry pan. It is all seasoned after the last time I used it. I don’t know if the picture shows it well enough but this pan has a wonderful seasoned finish to it. When I cook in this pan, it’s almost like using a non-stick pan.
Once a pan has a good seasoned surface like the cast iron skillet above, you can just rinse it out in the sink after use. Boil water in it if necessary on the stove to get it clean. Once it is clean, I pour some cooking oil into the pan and put it on the burner on medium until the oil heats up good. Wipe the oil around with a paper towel making sure you get the inside of the pan well oiled. Leave it on the burner for another few minutes. I usually turned the burner off and just let it cool down and finalize the seasoning process at this point.
A final note here is my dutch oven stored. You don’t want the lid left on tight but leave a gap so it can breathe. I put a folded paper towel inside the lip to keep the lid open with a gap between the pot.
Here is a useful idea for your seedling starts. You can recycle toilet paper and paper towel empty rolls for seedling pots. I just cut the toilet paper rolls in half to create little pots for my garden seedlings. If you recycle paper towel rolls just cut off about 2 inches for each pot.
Once I had my rolls cut into pots, I placed them on an old cookie sheet I use for my seedling starts. I did not close the bottom but left it open. Fill the pots with dirt and plant your seeds. Once the seeds sprout and the plants are ready for transplanting into your garden, simply place the cardboard pots into the dirt. With the bottoms open, the roots can just grow out from the bottom and the cardboard will decompose.
I just planted about 20 pots today and will post photos once the seedlings emerge from the dirt in the pots.
Here is a frugal tip that I found works great to clean the glass on a woodstove. This is a natural and free way to clean your woodstove door glass.
First make sure the glass is cold or at least just warm. Wet some newspaper and add some ash from your woodstove to the paper. Use the damp newspaper with the ash to wipe off the inside of the glass. The wood ash acts as effective paste to clean off the glass. If you have some stubborn soot buildup just continue to scrub with the paste until it comes off. It does make a bit of a mess on the glass and a lot of elbow grease if you have a hard soot buildup to clean off.
Once you have the glass cleared of soot, let it dry. Then use a dry paper towel or rag to wipe off the glass for a final clean up of the woodstove door.
Baking soda has so many different uses but I wanted to share one useful idea that I recently tried. I put baking soda in my vacuum cleaner bag with wonderful results.
Sometimes when I vacuum, the room ends up with that stale, musty odor. So I added about a 1/4 cup of baking soda inside my vacuum bag. I just sprinkled it inside the round opening of my bag and reattached the bag to my vacuum cleaner. And off I went vacuuming.
The result was a pleasant, odor-less smell after I finished vacuuming. Baking soda has long been known for its odor absorbing abilities and it works well in a vacuum cleaner bag too. Oh and one more tip, buy your baking soda in a 4 pound box as shown. It is much more reasonably priced that way than buying the smaller, more expensive little boxes.
Here is my recipe for making homemade liquid laundry soap. I have tested and used this soap for nearly a year now with great results. It cleans clothes well and is also a great stain remover.
Supplies Needed:
Directions:
Grate 1/2 of the bar of Fels-Naptha soap and place in cooking pot. Add 6 cups water and heat gently over low to medium-low heat stirring occasionally until the soap melts. Keep the heat low as not to allow the soap cooking to bolt while the soap flakes are melting.
Once the soap flakes have melted, add the washing soda and the borax stirring until all ingredients are dissolved.
Add 4 cups of hot water into the cooking pot and stir well. I added 8-10 drops of lavender essential oil to the soap mix at this point. This is an optional ingredient but the oil gave my final soap just a pleasant hint of fragrance. Now add 1 gallon of hot water to the plastic bucket mix, add soap mixture from the cooking pot, and stir well again.
Let the soap mixture sit at least 24 hours to gel.
The soap has an egg look to it. Here is a photo taken after I used a few scoops from the bucket. As you can see from the picture below, it has a crust on the top and that runny egg look underneath. But you just scoop out a glob and it works great for washing.
I use 1/3 cup of soap in my top-loading large washer. For best results I place the soap in the washer and use a little hot water to dissolve the soap before placing my clothes into the washer. Also this laundry soap is a low sudsing soap so don’t be alarmed when you don’t see many suds while your clothes are washing. Additionally this soap can be used for stain treatments by either pre-soaking or spot treat the stain directly with a small amount of soap before washing.