Donna Lynn

Chance Lunceford wrote:

Donna Lynn wrote: Wonderful idea!  My container strawberries are currently being assaulted by chipmunks, who rarely eat a whole berry but also rarely leave a whole berry for me. 😠  I can take what's left of a chipmunk snack and slice a side off that still has seeds, and plant that into a container to start some new plants.  I'll do that today with a partial berry I saw this morning that was still attached to its stem, and see how it goes.  Thanks for the idea!

Keep us posted

It's been about two weeks, and nothing has sprouted yet.  I keep the soil consistently moist, and the container is outside in dappled shade/sun in zone 5.  There is a slight possibility a chipmunk dug it up and ate it, but I don't see any obvious soil disturbance like I normally do when they dig in my plants.  I'll keep watching...

My fave is a lot like others already posted.  Boil macaroni, mini shells or rotini; make a roux with butter, flour and whole milk; slowly add plenty of shredded sharp cheddar until melted in; add grated or shredded parmesan cheese, about a third as much quantity as the cheddar; combine in large baking dish with drained pasta, broccoli and cauliflower florets, plenty of garlic salt or powder, black pepper and some cayenne if you like a kick, and if I'm feeling ambitious, diced onions sauteed in bacon fat.  You can also add crab or lobster bits, or other protein if desired, but heavier proteins can change the flavor profile.  Top with bread crumbs or not, bake about an hour.  

To deal with the prep time issue, I make a large pan or two and freeze it in single serving portions.  That makes it quick and easy for members of the family who are not inclined to spend time in the kitchen.  I won't have a microwave in my house, but my guy who cannot stand for long with out back pain can just pull out a glass dish of frozen food (or thawed if he plans a day ahead,) replace the plastic lid with foil, heat it up in the toaster oven, and have a filling meal if I'm not there to make him something.  Easy Peasy, and he's not eating highly processed conventional stuff out of a box.  Plus I get a few no-fuss meals out of it as well.

Well, that explains why, when I first started my little food forest with young fruit trees surrounded by garlic or onion bulbs and different types of legumes planted to vine up the wire cages around the saplings, the legumes never took off.  I had assumed some critter or other ate them as they emerged, but the close proximity to the garlic and onion may actually have been the issue.  🤦‍♀️

Are there any time lapse videos of Simon doing his snow art?  I'm skeptical since they look so perfect...

But now that we live on a small lake that freezes over enough for people to ice fish, I may just have to go out this coming winter and try my hand -- er, feet -- at making some cool patterns in the snow cover over the ice!  Maybe I'll even sneak out on a fullish moon night and do designs around some poor dude's ice fishing tent 😁.

May Lotito wrote:Ginseng grows in similar soil condition where you can find abundant mayapple and trillium as understory species in hardwood forest. Do you have those indicators in your woods?

I need to do some more detailed exploring once we're unpacked, but I do believe I saw some mayapple not too far off the long driveway that goes through the wooded area.  I'll keep my eyes open for trillium now too, thanks!  Our soil is quite sandy, but there's a decent duff layer in the woods, so I have hope...

I planted some ginseng and golden seal several years ago in our small wooded area in zone 6, but none of it took.  It was a swampy woods, with more softwoods than hard, so probably not the best environment, but I wanted to try anyway.  I planted them on what little north facing slopes I could find, sheltered behind trees, not too far from the creek.

We've just moved to a zone 5 hardwood forested area, so I will try again this fall.  We do have a north facing slope here and lots of ferns, so hopefully this time will be better.  

Chance Lunceford wrote:As an alternative look at strawberry propagation, consider that seed grown strawberries aren't too hard either.

Lots of different methods, but if you cut a thin slice of strawberry, close to the surface so you have seeds all across one side of the slice, and bury it in good potting soil with the seeds facing upwards (and you should barely cover the top of the seeds with soil), then keep it moist for the next week (you can use the plastic over the pot trick, but don't let it get too hot or the seeds will rot), you'll see a bunch of little strawberry seedlings growing. You can keep them growing for awhile and then loosen the soil and pull them apart, or break the clump into a couple-few small pieces, plant in pots and thin down to a single plant (my preference). You can get ≈ 4-8 slices out of any strawberry that isn't a virginiana (in which case just use the whole berry), so you can get quite a few seedlings going from a single strawberry.

In this way, you can clone using stolons (runners) but freshen genetics+develop locally adapted cultivars with the seedlings.

Wonderful idea!  My container strawberries are currently being assaulted by chipmunks, who rarely eat a whole berry but also rarely leave a whole berry for me. 😠  I can take what's left of a chipmunk snack and slice a side off that still has seeds, and plant that into a container to start some new plants.  I'll do that today with a partial berry I saw this morning that was still attached to its stem, and see how it goes.  Thanks for the idea!

Anne Miller wrote:What about using a pop-up gazebo?

Amazon says they are called canopy tents, some with walls.some without:

https://www.amazon.com/GDY-10x10FT-Pop-Up-Canopy-Tent/dp/B0H1R4996Y/

We bought one of these (without walls) to shelter our turkey poults from the hot sun when they first outgrew the brooder and ventured outside.  The first heavy rain pooled in the top and the weight bent the frame, rendering it even more susceptible to subsequent rains, which eventually tore the top.  It was good for a couple months before it was damaged beyond usefulness, but those things just don't do well as longer term cover from my experience.  You also need to secure them really well from high winds.

Donna Herrmann-Vogel wrote:Any suggestions on a good camera?

I'd love to know of a good trail camera system that does not require a cellular connection, wifi, bluetooth, or any other hackable or "outside" connections to function.  it would be nice if it could transmit to a home-based computer or recorder, but only wired or "local" radio frequencies.  I've only done basic searches, but all the ones I've seen require some kind of outside connections that would be either outside my control or hackable by others.  I'm not electronically gifted, or I'd just design and build my own.

Houseplants are great for cleaning the air, plus they just look nice and make the house feel more natural during the colder months when the trees are barren outside.  I have maybe a dozen houseplants, but I also grow tropical fruiting plants in pots indoors during winter and outside during summer.  I harvested 13 delicious mandarin oranges off my small (not even 3' tall yet) potted tree late last fall!  Unfortunately during our recent move, the furnace went out during the coldest time and the tree died back quite a bit, but it did survive and hopefully will recover enough to produce fruit again next year.  

The main problem with bringing them indoors is scale insects and spider mites.  The tropical citrus seem to attract both of those pests, which don't do much damage while the plants are outside, but once they are indoors, after a month or two they mushroom into infestations, and spraying large plants indoors is quite messy.  Of course, so are scale drippings...

The next significant problem is light levels indoors during winter.  I've had to use grow lights to keep the plants going through the winter.  In our new home, we have a small sun room off the master bedroom with 3 skylights and a south-ish facing wall of windows, which of course became my dedicated winter plant room, LOL!  The plants that survived the furnace fiasco seemed to really come back to life under the better lighting of that sun room once the days started getting longer.  I have yet to install the grow lights in the spaces between the skylights, but will hopefully get to that while the plants are outside this summer.  

I even put some of the houseplants outside for some or all of the summer, mostly in dappled shade, just to revitalize them a bit and let the rain rinse the dust off.  Most of them seem to appreciate it, although some don't care for the rain and wind and prefer to stay indoors.  Just like some people 😁.