Johanna Sol

I think Brad Lancaster should be included.

Thanks to all of you who commented and shared your beet experiences!

The mother beet just started to bolt and I decided to see whether she was still edible rather than saving the seed so I:

chopped off all her leaves (put most of them in containers with water but some were left as chop and drop)
dug her up
cut off the nubs and roots (I counted at least 32 spots that sprouted 4 or more leaves each)
weighed her
sliced her open

She wasn't too difficult to slice, so I figured she hadn't turned woody yet. I cooked a section and found that it is edible - hooray!

Now it's just a matter of figuring out the ways to process all this bounty as this is a lot of beet for two people... Tonight it will be roasted beet, and
tomorrow borscht with sauteed beet leaves. After that I will most likely boil then grate and freeze the root and turn the leaves into frozen cubes...

Just thought I'd share about this amazing plant that I call the "mother beet."

She was transplanted last April or May from a seedling, struggled through the summer until we added shade cloth (many days over 95 degrees F) but then slowly started growing and producing beautiful big leaves.

Since we do not care for Swiss chard and beets are in the same family, I began picking the leaves every few days, using them fresh chopped and sauteed. However, there were so many I ended up blending a bunch of them with water and freezing the mixture in ice cube trays. On days when I was short on time, I would pop a frozen cube or three into soups or stews at the last minute - no cooking time needed, just thawing, so good preservation of nutrients.

This harvesting of leaves continued all the way through January, with mama beet expanding her girth all the while.

Then temperatures dropped, often down to 25 degrees F, and it snowed a few feet and mama beet was buried. The leaves didn't look so great once the snow melted, but a month later, they're coming back to life. Just measured her and her diameter is 7" - I plan to keep harvesting leaves until she tells me she is done, and then we'll see whether the root is still edible and how much she weighs... stay tuned!

Perhaps your soil is a little too heavy or acidic - gojis prefer slightly alkaline soil and light loam, from what I have read.

Went to check on the brussel sprouts this morning after a period of snow and then rain. There were a few good sized sprouts, but still a lot of small ones. From what I've read, the plants had too many leaves on them and the energy has not been going into growing the sprouts.

So here are all the functions that were stacked:

1. Several rows of leaves harvested off of 6 plants, leaving only a top crown (blue bucket in photo was full to the brim).

2. Leaves were stripped of stalks, stalks were chopped into 1" lengths or so, then blended with water to a slurry to put back on the soil for a fast version of chop-and-drop.

3. Leaves with deep green color and without blemishes were put in the blender with de-chlorinated water to make as thick a slurry as possible and then put in ice cube trays. I call these "frozen green cubes" and add 1 or more of them to soups, stews, casserole dishes, refried beans, etc. (You can do this with any edible greens. Using water rather than oil makes cleanup much easier). The greens really don't need any cooking time - just add them at the last minute to that and heat up for maximum nutritional value.

4. Older leaves and those with spots or too much dirt or aphids were put in my compost bucket under the sink to add nitrogen. They could also be blended with the stalks and put back on top of the soil.

Even though all the snow melted away, strong gusts of wind and heavy rain didn't phase the panels at all. I snugged them up tight against each other and stuff plastic bags in any cracks and blocked off the ends, so those things likely helped.

We have had a few warm, dry days in between the showers, so I opened up the ends. Our cat figured out it was THE place to be!

Nicole - the winged seeds from the photo are what I used - I only remember them being one-sided though so they must have split apart before they reached the ground. They were quite large - about 3" long...

Re the teeter totter - a taller one can be made from a 55-gallon drum and board...

So great to see your kids playing with natural materials!

So far so good. Have been clearing snow off the upper parts every morning, leaving some at the base to
help with stability. The weather is going to be warmer starting tomorrow so we are in for some rounds of rain as well as gusty winds. Jay, appreciate the heads up about the potential for the panes to take flight- not sure a rope would do it but have plenty of additional snow I could pack around the ends and base - will be monitoring closely.

I had a lot of gallon milk jugs to recycle and decided to try an idea I saw somewhere on the internet (forgot to record where). I cut the milk jugs almost all the way through at the level of the base of the handles so that each one was hinged and could be opened up. I added drain holes near the bottom, and then filled each one with a moistened homemade potting soil mix and planted my seeds. I flipped the tops back over so they almost looked like whole jugs again.

The person who posted the idea for these mini greenhouses said you could just duct tape the parts back together, leaving the tops uncapped, and put the jugs outside during all kinds of weather.  I decided to leave them indoors instead since the seeds I planted were supposed to take a long time to germinate and the weather was pretty cold. However, after less than a week, it looked like many were popping up!

With no grow light big enough for the dozen milk jugs and my regular cold frame buried in two feet of snow, I decided to set up a temporary cold frame with some old windows against the south side of the house. I took the jugs and taped them together (masking tape worked better than the duct tape we had on hand), then placed them up against the wall after clearing out the snow. After the windows were angled over them, I stuffed any cracks with plastic bags.

Since it is supposed to snow at least another foot or two this week and get down around 28 degrees at night, I am going to let the snow insulate things for a few days. It should be easy to shed the snow by standing the panes upright when things clear up. Having the jugs will protect the plants from accidental injury, I hope.

Inspiring thread!
We have some downed eucalyptus and oak skeletons that we plan to leave in place for our granddaughters to climb on as they get older. Some of the branches are springy (we call them bouncy trees - used to look for them when hiking with our kids). We seatand hold our toddler grandchild on one and bounce her up and down. She also loves wheelbarrow and garden cart rides.

Something I used to do as a kid (and sometimes still do when camping) is to take patch of dirt and draw outlines of things, and then fill in the lines with rocks, small sticks or pine needles. I also once collected pieces of driftwood at a beach campground, used cardboard from a box of crackers, and a paste made of flour and water to make something resembling a prancing horse - it lifted my spirits to see it hanging on the wall when the weather was forbidding and was a good memento of that trip.

After immigrating to the U.S., I was fascinated with some of the large winged seeds to be found in the fall and collected a bunch. I found you could make great pictures with them by gluing them onto scrap cardboard - the owl and sailing ship came out the best. Wish I had photos...

When we homesteaded the first time in the 1980s we lived on a property that had been logged over. Hubby piled up a bunch of logs and scrounged a smooth piece of metal - it made a great slide! He also made a baby swing out of branches and a board or two - just a box frame she couldn't fall out of.