Jeff Bigelow

Not sure how “idiot-proof” this dressing is, but my “fancy” dressing when I want something with a bit more to it than just oil and vinegar is a Dijon dressing. I take a spoonful/forkful of Dijon mustard and put it into a small 4oz jar, then whisk it as best I can with a fork while drizzling in a little bit of good olive oil. Once it gets a bit airy and the volume has maybe roughly doubled, I mix in some apple cider vinegar/lemon juice and some maple syrup. Takes about 2 minutes start to finish and makes an excellent dressing.

Happy to share that this sauerkraut tastes excellent. I made a little bit of 5% salt brine and added it on top to fully submerge the batch after discarding the large cabbage leaf that was growing mold.

Thanks for the great advice. Is it typical to have the liquid level drop quite a bit after going into the refrigerator?

I made a batch of sauerkraut (pictured) over a period of a few weeks and it seemed to be going along really well. I never saw much bubbling but the liquid level definitely rose a little bit as it was fermenting as some brine got into my airlock a few times. I followed the recipe from Sandor Katz' Wild Fermentation but didn't measure my salt amount or the mass of the cabbage (have since remedied this with the purchase of a kitchen scale). However, I used the amount of salt meant for about a whole cabbage and only used a half, so I think that my salt level is definitely high enough to ward off most bad stuff. I threw in a few cloves of garlic and a handful of caraway seeds as well. During fermentation under my counter for about three weeks, the kraut was always submerged fully under the brine and I used a glass weight to maintain that state.

Before leaving for a 9-day trip last week, I put it into the fridge as it smelled pretty good by then and was ready to end the main fermentation. The liquid level was covering the kraut and most of the glass weight upon placing it into the fridge. However, checking it today, I noticed that the liquid level has dropped quite a bit, exposing the glass weight and about the top half inch of kraut. The big leaf I had covering the shredded cabbage has what appear to be white mold spots and there's some blue discoloration in the middle of the jar (although this area was covered by brine when I checked it).

Any thoughts on if I'm ok to just discard the molded leaf and remove the blue discoloration? Or do I need to restart? It currently smells absolutely wonderful for what it's worth. I'm just waiting to get some feedback before eating it in case there's something clearly wrong.

paul wheaton wrote:
  - rmh in the yoga yurt
  - more with the hot tub
           o probably add in a hypocaust
  - upgrade rmh in fph
  - an indoor rocket oven in the outdoor kitchen
  - finish bun warmer
  - something for kai's cob cottage

These are the projects I’d be interested in. As October is a long way off and I’m not sure how work will look then, are these tickets transferrable here on Permies? It’d be great if I could sell my ticket for $500 and eat an ~$200 loss if need be.

I'm a few weeks later with the seedlings and they're doing ok. We've had daytime temps in the 70s with full sun and nighttime temps in the 50s so I've started hardening them off outside for a few hours a day. The stems on all the seedlings are pretty weak, but I assume this is due to the low-quality light they've been getting inside the house. Maybe some actual sunlight in the next few weeks will help them strengthen and grow faster. I would flip the seed tray by 180 degrees every few days to "flip" the direction the plants were leaning to, and maybe that is also a culprit for the thin stems.

The lettuces look good in color but can barely stand upright on their own. In a few of them, the small leaves towards the bottom have yellowed and died, and I'm not sure what's causing that. I mix a capful of kelp fertilizer with about 3 cups of water and feed that once a week. Could they be getting too much nitrogen? The soil is pretty much always damp and I'm on top of watering generally (besides a few days where I left for an extended weekend and had to "overwater" a bit so that they wouldn't dry out).

The seedlings have seemed to calmed down a little bit and look a little bit normal. I wonder if they were particularly nutrient-hungry in the first few days. I don't think there's been any big changes in light quality or amount since the folding phenomenon--if anything, it's been cloudier. I'll keep updated on how the other seedling species perform in these sub-optimal conditions. Maybe I should make a new more general thread: "Starting seedlings in natural winter light for cold frame transplant" or something similarly named

It's a Bibb lettuce variety from Southern Exposure (so hopefully well-suited for the hot weather in 8a).

Thanks for the welcome Samantha. Glad to hear that they don't look too bad. I've been honestly fairly impressed how quickly they've grown in about 2 weeks under these conditions. I am also supplementing with a very diluted organic kelp fertilizer every few days to add some extra nutrition.

I will look into adding an additional mirror as well although I would like to see how they do in sub-optimal "natural" conditions (although they are getting a heating pad underneath).

Would you recommend thinning to one plant per cube around now?

I've got a pretty basic (and likely suboptimal) seed starting setup going on and have some lettuces started in a seed flat bin (with a heating pad underneath) along with chives, basil, and jalapenos. As you can see in the picture, they're leaning a little bit towards the direction of sunlight (expected due to low amount of daylight currently) but they're also closing up and folding inwards on themselves (that's the best way I can describe it). Any ideas what would cause this kind of behavior out of a seedling?

I'm in USDA 8a in the U.S. South and hoping to push the start of the growing season by transplanting into cold frames in a month or two. I know that I may run into some issues with the amount of light available this time of year but I really don't want to have to buy grow lights so this is a little bit of an experiment to see how these seedlings do so early in the season with only natural sunlight. They sit in front of a south-facing window and I'd estimate they're getting about 7-8 hours of direct sunlight right now.