Frugal Friday

[ecosophia]

Welcome back to Frugal Friday! This is a weekly forum post to encourage people to share tips on saving money, especially but not only by doing stuff yourself. A new post will be going up every Friday, and will remain active until the next one goes up. Contributions will be moderated, of course, and I have some simple rules to offer, which may change further as we proceed.

Rule #1:  this is a place for polite, friendly conversations about how to save money in difficult times. It's not a place to post news, views, rants, or emotional outbursts about the reasons why the times are difficult and saving money is necessary. Nor is it a place to use a money saving tip to smuggle in news, views, etc.  I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #2:  this is not a place for you to sell goods or services, period. Here again, I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #3:  please give your tip a heading that explains briefly what it's about.  Homemade Chicken Soup, Garden Containers, Cheap Attic Insulation, and Vinegar Cleans Windows are good examples of headings. That way people can find the things that are relevant for them. If you don't put a heading on your tip it will be deleted.

Rule #4: don't post anything that would amount to advocating criminal activity. Any such suggestions will not be put through.

With that said, have at it!

Comments

Home hydroponics

[ecosophia]

There's a little more to this week's image than my usual burst of search engine fu, looking for a good illustration for each post. A couple of weeks ago I landed another improbable find at the local thrift store: one of those little compact home hydroponics kits that had fifteen minutes of fame during the Covid lockdowns. This is the model I got:

It's about $130 new, and cost me $11.99, so I decided to give it a try. Hydroponics used to be a big deal in the appropriate tech scene of the 1970s; the New Alchemy Institute used hydroponic tanks for their greenhouse arks, and provided the nutrients by raising tilapia in tanks:

Since my little system uses LEDs for its gro-lites and an efficient little aquarium pump for water circulation it uses very little electricity (36 watts when both the lights and pump are cycling on), and it came via a thrift store, I figure it's frugal! What I want to determine now is whether it's a reasonably cost-effective way for apartment dwellers to add some fresh salad greens year round to their diet. I'm using the nutrient mix that came with the kit for now, but plan on shifting over to organic sources once I get some experience.

It's been up and running for three days now -- I had to get seeds and a few other supplies -- and four of the twelve seeds I planted have already sprouted and are photosynthesizing away under their little microgreenhouse caps. I'll keep everyone posted on how it goes.

Re: Home hydroponics

[(Anonymous)]

Hydroponics on the large, commercial scale has become controversial. lately. Commercial hydroponics companies are demanding organic certification, to take advantage of the higher prices. That is why organic farmers have taken to calling their movement regenerative farming, to show that they improve their land whilst those guys are simply using resources from Somewhere Else. I do think that hydroponics on a large scale is likely not sustainable in a very long term, but for in home use, I expect it to become another kind of house plant growing, with the advantages of adding to family nourishment and cleaning the air.

Good luck with yours and do keep us posted. Mary Bennett

Re: Home hydroponics

[methylethyl]

I have a friend who's been doing the aquaponics (plants+fish) thing for years now, with pretty good results. I don't think it's necessarily a viable commercial production model, but friend successfully raises tilapia for dinner, really excellent tomatoes, ginger, and greens, all in an area with extremely poor soil, so growing the veg in the ground is not necessarily more efficient.

It helps a lot to live in a warm climate: reduces the necessary inputs WRT heating the tanks and indoor lighting, and the long growing season reduces any gap you might have where plants aren't growing and filtering the fish water.

Re: Home hydroponics

[(Anonymous)]

Congratulations! And good luck with the Hydroponic adventure.
Best wishes
Tired21

Re: Home hydroponics

[(Anonymous)]

Hi JMG,
I hope you will consider getting a little goldfish as your nutrient producer. If you leave enough room in the tank for the fish to swim around a bit, the fish food and the normal products of metabolism should be enough to fertilize your greens.
Maxine

Re: Home hydroponics

[(Anonymous)]

A new year means a new gardening season, in which we solemnly promise ourselves that the photo spread worthy landscape of our dreams will become reality This Year, and last year's disaster can be forgotten.

For us in Northern Hemisphere cold climates around the 45th latitude it is now winter sowing season. What always worked well for me is to plant brassicas, alliums (long day onions, scallions and leeks), perennial herbs and flowers and lettuce now. The more tender plants wait till after March 21.

I use repurposed milk jugs and the plastic containers in which fancy salads are sold. Last year I bought cheapo potting soil from Family $ and nothing sprouted. Learn from my sad experience. This year I was able to find two bags of Happy Frog, an excellent mix, at a decent price.

My go to seed company is MIGardener, proven, old time OP varieties, all packets 2$ each, free shipping for orders over $20. Luke Marion, the proprietor, is also, right now, run don't walk, offering 4 varieties of seed potatoes @ $4 a pound. If you are a tater grower, I strongly suggest, do not pass this up. I ordered 1# each of two varieties, for which I paid $8 + $6. shipping. Some companies are charging more than that for just 1#, shipping added!

For the occasional I just have to try this extravagance, I like Baker Creek. Their huge catalogue, the Big One you have to pay for, is a work of photographic art. I am presently trying to convince myself I really can spend $6 for seeds of an all yellow, baseball sized watermelon.

I also want to strongly recommend a tomato, Kim's Civil War Oxheart, sold only by Victory seeds. An old time variety: I suspect it might be related to the 'Jory' a former commercial variety once grown in the Willamette Valley, which is offered by Adaptive Seeds. KCWO is early, 65d., grows well in heavy, acid soil, and delicious.

Re: Home hydroponics

[claire_58]

Great score.
What fun!

I planted my first few indoor seeds, onions and leeks, on Thursday. Not quite within orb of the full moon but whatever. The growing season has started!

Re: Home hydroponics

[industrialchemy]

Great find! I scored two Aerogarden systems at a thrift store a couple of years ago. They did great at first but then younger sprouts started dying. I'm hoping that a thorough cleaning and running vinegar through the system is enough to fix whatever was going on. We haven't yet tried replanting after the cleaning.

We did get more lettuce and herbs than we could eat from the first batches, though!

Re: Home hydroponics

[(Anonymous)]

Congratulations!

I didn't know the plant-fish cycle was so widely used. My wife stumbled upon it by chance on her own. She uses aquarium water for all her plants, and they love it - orchids and hibiscus flowering in mid-winter, for example. We haven't tried vegetables because she gets too emotionally attached to plants she has cared for to eat them :-(

[degringolade]

Excellent find John Michael.

Keep us posted on how it works. I need to go down to my local thrift shop and see what they have.

Regarding the discussion last week concerning rice cookers versus stove top. I did go and actually do a couple of test runs using one cup of water and a half a cup of brown rice.

What it pencils out to is that it takes about 400 W to cook rice in a rice cooker (0.4 kWh) and around 750 to cook on the stove top. All things considered, including the rice, water, pots, rice, cookers, time, And everything else. I’m calling it a push.

[ecosophia]

Thank you for this! I'd had that sense, but didn't have the numbers.

[(Anonymous)]

Nice!

I love it when someone actually runs the numbers on these things! I'm often left guessing, based on how hot the air around the cookpot gets...

[claire_58]

Thank you, thank you.
I love it when someone runs the numbers on these things.
Much appreciated.

Insulation, maintenance, low thermostat setting, and making your furnace last longer

[teresa_from_hershey]

Bill and I bought our built-in-1954 house in July of 2001.

The furnace, an old, oil-burning workhorse from Oneida, had been installed in 1986 or so the paperwork attached to the side claimed.

Based on the maintenance in the rest of the house (a book's worth!), I did not have high hopes over how long the furnace would last. I KNEW the previous owners did not understand routine maintenance.

I called the listed furnace company and got started on annual maintenance right away. We changed the filter monthly. Those are the ONLY things you, dear homeowner, can do keep your furnace in good working order.

Or so I thought.

As it turned out, you can make your furnace last longer by turning your thermostat lower (because it doesn't need to work so hard) and by insulating and weather-stripping your house from top to bottom (because the furnace doesn't need to work so hard).

Who knew. And thus, the furnace that was probably poorly maintained from day one began receiving regular maintenance at the 15 year mark. And, we began insulating, weather-stripping, instituted draft control measures, and set the thermostat low during the day and even lower at night.

I got another 23 years out of our old Oneida workhorse. It lasted 38 years in all.

We replaced it in November of 2024 with an oil-burner that may not last nearly as long as the Oneida but we'll do everything right from day one. We'll find out.

The takeaway to make your heating system last longer is to maintain it faithfully! If you have radiators, you need to bleed off pressure. You need to change the filter every month in the winter and if your furnace (like ours) uses the blower for your AC, it's even more critical that you change the filter in the summer every month.

If you use your furnace less because you don't try to heat a drafty castle to 78 degrees in January, it doesn't have to work as hard.

Find out what your HVAC system needs to be happy and do it.

Re: Insulation, maintenance, low thermostat setting, and making your furnace last longer

[slclaire]

A few months after we bought our house in 2002, we replaced the furnace and air conditioner, both of which dated from the late 70s. We're still using the units we bought in 2002. Along with replacing the filter regularly, we also have a local HVAC contractor do a clean-and-check on each unit once every year or two. The HVAC techs have told us our units are in better shape than units half their age or less.

We've done the same kinds of things that you have to minimize usage. We had the house sealed and insulated in 2005, which dropped usage of natural gas and electricity by almost half. As my husband and I have aged we have gradually raised the thermostat in winter to 66F during the day and 68F for five hours in the evening, but it's set to 50F from 10pm to 6am. We have the thermostat set to 80F when we use the AC, which is a total of 3 to 6 weeks.

Re: Insulation, maintenance, low thermostat setting, and making your furnace last longer

[weilong]

I haven't done any math on this, because it's not relevant to my situation, but there's probably a balance to strike in terms of heating capacity. I mean that if you get a furnace that's bigger than you really need, it won't have to run as much. You could save money by getting a furnace that just covers your heating needs, but it will be running all the time (for part of the year). That might mean a smaller (cheaper) unit will have a shorter lifespan.

morning muffins

[michele7]

When I was a younger mother and wanted to send my brood off in the morning with something warm, I used to prep muffin mix the night before. Pick your favorite sweet or savory muffin mix. Mix all the dry ingredients together, cover and set aside. Mix your wet ingredients, cover and place in fridge. In the morning, preheat the oven, add the dry ingredients to the wet, mix gently until combined, fill your muffin tins and bake. If you are adding any perishables like meat or cheese, add it to your dry ingredients, cover and refrigerate. You could most likely do this with biscuits and scones by combining your dry ingredients, cut in your fat, cover and refrigerate. Mix your wet ingredients, cover and refrigerate. Mix in the morning while oven preheats, knead slightly, cut into preferred shapes and bake. I have to admit I'm slightly lazy when it comes to biscuits. I form my dough into a round and cut triangle shapes (1/8s) or pat into a square shape and cut equal sizes.

Saving text online

[xcalibur_djs]

Not sure if this fits exactly, but it's so useful to me that I wanted to share it anyway (I mentioned it briefly on Monday, but it deserves a post here). If you have a Yahoo! email, there's a feature called Notepad, where you can save and edit text. On the inbox, the icon for it is next to contacts and calendar, to the upper-right. From there you can create multiple notes and drop text into them, where it's redundant and accessible from anywhere. That way, even if your setup gets fried, you can be sure your text is safe on their servers. It's also more private & secure than other options like pastebin, although the latter is still quite useful for sharing text with others.

DIY mosquito and tick repellent

[kallianeira]

Hello forumistas and JMG.

I have been making my own mosquito repellent with neem seed oil for a while. The initial paper I read a long time ago, from India, found a 2% solution was effective. Memory suggests that it was diluted in coconut oil. But there are many species of mozzie and it seems to deter some better than others. Addition of some other essential oils was helpful after a product was advertised incorporating oils in wrist bands, which gave me the idea to add some of them to the mixture. The smell was certainly improved.

A few essential oils have been found in a recent study to be useful against ticks and mosquitos both. The most effective being cinnamon, clove and geraniol (from geraniums), according to the following paper published in 2023:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-28820-9
They used 10% essential oil, which is extremely strong and would be rather expensive. I am going to make my next batch with 2% neem again and about 1% of a mixture of the 3 oils mentioned and see how it goes. Maybe by northern summer time I'll be able to report on my success.
The base lotion in which the oils were mixed in the study is this product:
https://chemistrystore.com/product.cgi?product=62375
which is largely water and plant oils, not petrochemicals, but note the presence of the preservative phenoxyethanol. That is in a huge range of beauty and cosmetic products and is harmful to some people. Phenoxyethanol and many other common non-innocuous additives are listed at https://www.safecosmetics.org/chemicals/

As for cinnamon oil, it has been discussed on this forum as an ant deterrent and I now love it for that, mixed in vegetable oil at a very low concentration, maybe 1% - I just make it up ad libitum. They stay away from it. Three varmints with one thing? Frugal++.

Re: DIY mosquito and tick repellent

[athaia]

Clover and cinnamon are very potent etheric oils and can irritate the skin. I'd use them at half the percentage of the geraniol, or substitute them with other oils. Personally, I had excellent results using a combination of rosemary and lemongrass.

Tool, Foam Dispensing Gun

[(Anonymous)]

This is my favorite tool. Saves so much money when sealing and insulating. You need to make sure to buy the cleaning spray when you buy the gun and foam can. I wipe off the tip with a bit of the spray cleaner after every session. You leave the spray foam can on the dispensing gun. Manufacturer says good for 30 days, I have forgotten and left it longer, 2 or 3 months, but try to take it off by the 30 days they recommend ! Manufacturer also says NOT to take the spray can off and run the cleaner thru it every time you use it, not only is it overkill and wastes cleaner, but the solvent of course is hard on seals so will prematurely wear out the spray gun. Best is to, beginning of home improvement time, just use it every so often, at least once a month, cleaning the tip off, then when you know you are not going to use it, done with all projects, run the cleaner thru it. Just run it thru until it runs clear.

I just bought my son in law one for his birthday, as they have just bought a house. They have gone up in price, so it is easier when someone just gifts it to you, like I did for him. Now they will be encouraged to air seal up that house and will save money on heat, and will save money on spray foam they use, and will save money on clothes and such as it makes much less of a mess.

Atmospheric River

[(Anonymous)]

To JMG, what was that astrology software that is keeping you tied to old versions of Windows?

I suspect it could be removed from Billy Bluescreen's clutches.

[ecosophia]

It's SolarFire 6.0, dating from 1997 or so. Quite possibly it could, but I'm not exactly eager to learn an entirely new operating system, especially one in which important questions seem to evoke drastic disagreement: I've had Linux fans insist that it's perfectly stable and easy for a non-geek to use, and plenty of other people disagree heatedly with both points. Since I have no dog in that fight -- I've never owned a new computer, and I get my operating systems for free with the old computers I buy from a local repair shop -- I'll wait until somebody local I know can set me up and fix the problems that will doubtless pop up.

Garden seed saving

[white_bear_chronicles]

The discussion upthread about seeds and seed potatos is an important one. The choice of seed is one of the most critical decisions a gardener makes and January is the time to make it here in the northern hemisphere.
The better suppliers, Johnny's, Bakers Creek, and Harris are my favorites, have extensive zone, soil type and light information that should be studied carefully before buying. Their seed tends to be more expensive but more productive. Leftover seed should be stored clearly labeled and dated in your veg crisper and can last years. I have planted some 7 year old seed with success. Seed potatos can be stored perfectly at 45 to 55 degrees over winter if you have a root cellar. This makes an initial $4/lbs seed potato quite affordable pretty quickly.
Seed priming, soaking your seed in water for a few hours, then briefly drying for handling, helps improve and speed up germination even with old seed. I'll be adding 1% hydrogen peroxide and a bit of sugar to the mix this week to try and rejuvenate some hemp seeds that faild a germ test recently. Hemp, carrots, fennel, dill and others are known to have short shelf life while I've grown 10yr old heritage corn seed successfully. Buying high quality seed, storing correctly and priming can make expensive seed frugal.
Gawain

A great resource

[(Anonymous)]

About 6 years ago I got my hands on some wild plum seeds, both prunus niger and prunus americana. Last summer was my first harvest, just 2-3 pounds. So I started searching the net for ways to preserve them. When I get larger harvests I will attempt slivovitz ;)

Alan Bergo from Minnesota forages wild plants, mushrooms etc and transforms them into fabulous dishes. His recipes are very well explained without any snootiness and can be printed from a well designed recipe card. His comment section is well monitored and answers all questions presented.

So, with my plums I made a great spicy plum ketchup for meat, and as I discovered last week, a delicious addition to a salad dressing. But wait, there's more ;) he has a recipe for "fruit scrap vinegar" which is made from the skins, pits and remaining flesh of the fruit. I used the plums but it can be made with any fruit scraps. With the discussion we had here recently about using vinegar to braise boney meats I think the potential to use vast amounts of homemade vinegars is in my frugal cards. (I just bottled it today, which is why I thought to pass it along to all of you)

So go to his website and prepare to explore rabbit holes galore.

Alan Bergo ----- www.foragerchef.com

Lentil sprouts

[(Anonymous)]

Discovered this recently, I forget where, but it's really great. Regular store bought lentils can be sprouted into a nice hearty fresh green veggie. This time of year this is very doable for me, much more so than lettuce (which is expensive, sometimes nasty, and can go bad quickly). A bag of lentils is about a dollar here and can make many batches of sprouts. The main thing for me is that I don't mind eating a handful with a meal. I do not find many vegetables particularly easy to incorporate into my life because of some food issues. But this is cheap and nutritious and not difficult to eat, for me. Recommended.