Larisa Walk

I've never cleaned squash in over 40 years of gardening, other than to brush off any clumps of dirt. I do "cure" the squash for up to a week in a warm, DRY greenhouse before storing on wire shelves in a cool, dark, DRY pantry.  It's very important to have adequate air circulation around each fruit so no piling them up. Temperatures in the pantry run 50-60*F. Butternut squash can keep until the next harvest but are best within the first 8 months.

Another consideration, if you have heavy snow cover, forking in the spring will help to "fluff" the soil back after being weighted down for months. You can split the garden up and fork beds now that you'll be planting very early in the spring and leave the other beds that will be planted later until spring. Your experiences and your soil will tell you which season broad forking is best for you. Have fun experimenting!

Back when I worked as an animal control officer in Wisconsin we used canned catfood. No need to use the whole can. Live traps that are boxes are safer to use than the wire Have-a Heart style - if you catch a skunk instead of the woodchuck they won't spray in the trap (you'll have to peek inside to see what you trapped - any domestic cats should be released). A tarp over a wire trap can help in this regard. A covered trap helps to keep the animal calm while you relocate it.

Looking for a smaller but yet still tasty version of Matt's Wild Cherry tomato. Came across Candyland but discovered that it was an F1 hybrid. So I wondered if anyone is working on making this into a stable, o.p. variety. I know that folks are trying to accomplish that with Sungold cherry tomatoes, but we prefer the more acidic bite of the Matt's Wild Cherry to most any other cherry tomato, even if its 12'+ vines threaten to take over the garden. Maybe Candyland fits that flavor profile but on a more well behaved plant?

I forgot to mention using the dryer that most Americans already own - the car. Park the car with the largest window facing the equator, roll down the windows about an inch, and put trays of food on the seats or dash, cover with a dark piece of cotton fabric (even a bandana will work). This fabric will keep direct light off the food to avoid blanching out vitamins and will help generate heat.  You just need to come up with trays, if not homemade then either repurposed from a commercial dryer, cookie sheets for really wet stuff, even cardboard or bamboo trays will work for leafy greens. Even if you have to buy a piece of fabric this is a pretty cheap and very workable dryer.  A greenhouse space will also work using this basic method.

What you want does not exist. A dryer like the Excalibur will draw in the neighborhood of 1000 watts, which would require a solar PV panel of approximately 5'x10' in size to run the electricity. The solar panel would need to be outdoors and depending on cloud cover would put out less than that on average and would only work during the day. Or are you talking about using a solar thermal panel to generate heat passively which would then be piped indoors. I don't know of any serious solar food dryers that you can buy and use outdoors, much less for an indoor location.

Burning any paper product that has been bleached (like office paper and envelopes) produces dioxins, creating toxic, cancer causing smoke and ashes (not usable on the garden). That said, we have a masonry stove and burn lots of "junk" like cardboard scraps and small sticks for kindling, and for wood primarily boxelder. One firing a day during all but the coldest days Minnesota can dish out, when we fire it a second time. Burns a hot, clean fire and the heat is stored in the masonry. The other risk with burning lots of cardboard I encountered one winter many years ago when I burned about 50% cardboard with 50% scrap wood pallets. The 1/4" thick steel stove got so hot it turned red. Lucky we didn't burn the place down.

Larisa Walk wrote:Get a few people to help you drive it out. Each person should have 5-6' "arm extenders" in the form of sticks or plastic pipe that can be waved around. Open your gate and drive the rabbit out. It helps if the gate is near a corner. Last year we used the waving arms method to drive out a small bunny with just my husband and me, both vintage gardeners. The same bunny came back at least 8 times and got quite used to the routine. Eventually it grew big enough that it couldn't squeeze through the 2"x4" mesh to return. When I was much younger I chased a trespassing bunny until it was tired, got it cornered, and grabbed it, giving it a toss over the fence. Not doing that again at age 70+.

Be careful what you post as it might materialize! Today we found a very young rabbit in our garden. We attempted to trap in under a pail but it got away. A few hours later we were watering and saw it once again. We chased it into a corner where it got stuck between 2 fence layers. I was able to get my hands on it, carefully work it between the fence layers, up and over the outer bunny fence, and it jumped free and ran off. I told it to never come back. We'll see if that worked ;>).

There are 2 things for winter greenhouses that need to be taken into account:
1. heat
2. light
Although solar gain will do well enough on its own on a sunny day, it will take much more energy to make heat at night and cloudy days than it takes to provide lights.  Another factor for northern greenhouses in winter is snow load and the structure needed to support that weight. While the snow does insulate, it blocks any available light from reaching the plants and so will need to be removed. After more than 45 years of living and gardening in Wisconsin and Minnesota, I've come too the conclusion that a greenhouse in midwinter isn't worth the effort. Instead we've taken advantage of the large south-facing windows in our house, a space that is already being heated, and rigged up shelves and lights to get through from November to early March, and use a very small non-heated greenhouse to cover the "shoulder" seasons. Greenhouses with vertical glazing (glass) don't have to worry about snow load, plastics degrading, and are easier to keep warm with insulated roofs and walls and a simple, 2 layer curtain over the glass at night (ours is a cotton painter's tarp). Supplemental lighting helps here as well. The crops for the indoor window garden and greenhouse spring and fall are primarily leafy greens (lettuce, non-heading napa, spinach, bok choy, celery, etc.). In the fall, as the light starts to fade, crops need to be started early enough that they are "mature" by Halloween and will hold until harvest over the next few weeks, with greenhouse crops picked out first before serious cold sets in. After the Solstice, the indoor plantings will have been picked out and it's time to switch to trays of microgreens until new plantings in about mid January start to produce harvests. As weather begins to warm in March, plantings can be established once again in the greenhouse.

Most importantly, there are no fruiting crops to harvest in winter greenhouses in the upper midwest. Eating seasonally is the biggests hurdle in one's thinking of how to approach a year-round, nutritious menu. Fresh greens go a long way in adding to a root-cellar and preserved foods based diet.

Get a few people to help you drive it out. Each person should have 5-6' "arm extenders" in the form of sticks or plastic pipe that can be waved around. Open your gate and drive the rabbit out. It helps if the gate is near a corner. Last year we used the waving arms method to drive out a small bunny with just my husband and me, both vintage gardeners. The same bunny came back at least 8 times and got quite used to the routine. Eventually it grew big enough that it couldn't squeeze through the 2"x4" mesh to return. When I was much younger I chased a trespassing bunny until it was tired, got it cornered, and grabbed it, giving it a toss over the fence. Not doing that again at age 70+.