in re:

So they don't necessarily relate to each other, but maybe you'll bear with me here while I am up here in Cleveland visiting my parents and some friends for a few days. Anyway to start out I had a great dinner tonight at one of my favorite Cleveland Heights restaurants Night Town, which always makes me feel like I stepped out of the country just a tad and the food is always good, I’d never had their Halloumi Kebob appetizer before (pieces of cheese from Cyprus with veggies on a skewer ) and it was really good. Any way, thought I’d go back and talk about something from a couple days ago…

I was sitting around Saturday morning with WOSU PBS on in the background and I was amazed to see on this gardening show with Jerry Baker (his website is pretty trashy, more on him later) where he makes his own ‘lawn tonics’ and the sort, to help the lawn. The ingredients of his tonic include, dish soap, beer, ammonia, corn syrup etc. I didn’t think too much of it at first, I knew I wasn’t gonna be doing it, but it did strike me as odd that you’d be putting all of this on your grass. Later in another segment I notice he told you to put some chemical on your lawn, but overlaying the show (and showing the shows age) that the chemical was no longer available (EPA has said it is too toxic), which made me wonder if Jerry Baker, who they claim is a master gardener (its a registered trademark no less). They say he wrote the garden section for world book encyclopedia. So I did a quick search and found a host of another garden show claiming that putting ammonia on your lawn (for nitrogen) is pretty silly as it won’t stay long enough to be used (evaporates quickly) and he also mentions how plants can’t use the carbs in beer as plants can only use complex carbs. Anyway, I don’t have the answer, I am no master gardener myself, I struggle with my houseplants, but I’d like to learn and somehow I am a bit doubtful about the beer on the lawn, so I looked a bit more and found only briefly not too much on the guy, but some folks in a message board said he was a snake oil salesman and that those at agriculture schools don't agree with his ideas and that he apparently doesn't have a agricultural education. Who knows

Ok, so it later in the day and I noticed that my dining room table needed some cleaning. Thinking back to a few weeks earlier I remembered reading in the Columbus Dispatch a home cleaning solution for polishing wood, utilizing a mix of four parts olive oil to one part white vinegar. So while I had a can of pledge under the sink I decided to try it out and in an old Poland Springs bottle I added a bit of olive oil and then the vinegar, shook it up and polished the table. I have to say that I was impressed with the result, although I didn’t do the side by side comparison with the pledge. Basically like the lawn care tonics, I started wondering if we really needed all the products that are advertised (and the resulting extra containers and cost) or if maybe their scientific formulations are really any better than household remedies.

The other advantage? Well the leftover cleaning solution you can use as salad dressing for your lunch…

Filed under: Minutiae, Misc