Larisa Walk

Thanks for taking time to reply to my query. I took the plunge and bought seed of Wildfire so we'll see how it does here in Minnesota. Our upper midwest climate has always been challenging, but even more so in recent years especially with a roller coaster of excessive rains or droughts. Our clay/loam soil does help with some of these fluctuations. And of course we still have the usual ups and downs of temperatures. So short season strategy for everything is working better than ever to get crops to maturity with fewer days of exposure to the harsh extremes. "Normal" is no longer in play. Hope you have a great growing season!

We have loads of cast iron, but recently bought a wok that is made from spun iron. We love it, all of the benefits of using cast iron but much lighter and quicker to heat up. The cake pan you've pictured should perform much like an old steel pan that we once had. Gives a nice browning to the exterior surfaces.

I've never harvested the greens in the fall although we've grown them for over 40 years in Wisconsin/Minnesota. We use them for early spring onions and also dehydrate them then when we lift the clumps to divide and refresh the bed. But to illustrate how tough they are we used to harvest the topsests to feed to our sheep each year to keep them from "walking" all over the garden. One year I forgot about a bucket of the topsets and left them sitting in an open-sided shed without cover. In the spring they were greening up and ready to grow.

Bags of leaves around the foundation - like bales of straw but free and can use them on garden in the spring. We once knew someone in Wisconsin who insulated a cold dairy barn with many layers of flattened cardboard boxes stapled onto the walls (there was hay in the loft so the top was already insulated). With the cows inside it felt cozy.  Bubblewrap can be applied to windows by misting the glass with water, then press the bubblewrap's smooth side against the glass and it will stay in place until you peel it off in the spring, no tape or adhesives needed.  And yes, you should try to insulate a smaller space in the structure and concentrate the heat there rather than trying to keep the whole space warm. Wear lots of layers of wool, silk, or other animal fibers. Fingerless gloves and hats are useful indoors as well as out.

Anyone here growing the Wildfire Dent Corn that is sold by Adaptive Seeds? Looking for a review - does it lodge easily, can it also handle wetter weather like the upper Midwest, have you cooked with it?

Still looking for info on Oaxacan Green dent corn (Ernest Strubbes Green, from Minnesota) in the immature stage as a sweet corn. Any new info out there?

We produce slips in a similar way but use vermiculite instead of soil. In the fall when we select out the roots for propagation, we store them in a tray/container of vermiculite. In the spring (mid April here in Zone 4) we bring the container into indirect light and start watering it. When the slips form we cut them from the mother root and put each into a quart pot of potting soil. The slips get a little bit leggy with reduced light but that makes it easier to plant them quite deep so more roots will form around the stem. It takes about a week to ease their transition into full light. We plant them out around June 1st here in hills under Remay, if the weather cooperates.

Ground Ivy makes a good ground cover amongst raspberries and asparagus, as well as general garden paths. It can be a bit agressive but is easily pulled back and/or mowed. Bumblebees like the flowers in the spring when not much else is blooming.

We've been using Humanure since 1980, before the book on the subject was written. We let it compost in bins for at least 1 year, then use it on corn in our garden rotation, both sweet corn and grain corn. We spread the composted poo (nice coffee ground consistency) when the corn in nearing 1 foot tall, in between 2 rows of plants. Then we hill up the rows which mostly covers the poo. We've been doing this for over 40 years with no problems. I would never use it on fruit trees as it's too high in nitrogen for perennial trees.