Larisa Walk

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.

Besides syrup and heating wood for our masonry stove, they can make nice shade trees if given enough space and no competition. Squirrels love the seeds, and some folks make beautiful things like turned bowls out of the wood that has been infected with a fungus? that turns the interior red. They are native to our area, and if you call them the Manitoba maple they might get more respect.

Does anyone know what color the seeds are for Spring Blush Snap Pea? I'm hoping that they may be dual use as a soup pea when mature.

I finally worked out an easy way to keep birds (cardinals) out of our pea patches.
You can see the photo of how they started to shred the peas. They started on the snow peas, which we covered in Remay. That did keep out the birds but made it very inconvenient to harvest fresh snow peas. So I left them to mature for seed/soup peas. Today I uncovered the row to begin the dry pod harvest and discovered that the Remay was perfect habitat for slugs and earwigs which were making little round holes in the pods. But not too bad damage overall.

Meanwhile, the birds had started in on the 3 rows of Amplissimo Viktoria and Rimpau's Green soup peas. Not enough Remay for all of them so I hung some CD's and bird tape, knowing that in the past that didn't work. I added in the DeWalt speaker and MP3 player with radio and tuned in WI Public Radio talk station and cranked the volume up to high. That mostly worked but what I really wanted was something with more erratic movement and sound. I have been looking at those fan inflated, tube guys like you see at businesses, but way too expensive and energy consuming. So instead I set up a couple of our oscillating table fans with bird scare tape clipped to the front grill and turned them on high. They are mounted on ladders, tied down to keep them from getting blown off the ladder. If it rains, we put plastic bushel baskets over them. It's easy to turn them on at 5:00am by hitting the breaker that powers the shed where they are plugged in (50'+40' and 100' extension cords reach). Each fan draws about 50 watts. The first fan has 3 streamers clipped to the grill. The second has 1 long strand threaded through the grill and clipped on with the same office binder clips as the first.  The streamers extend about 2 to 2.5' from the fan.  No more bird damage as long as we have the system on early enough in the morning and run it until dusk. There have been a few very low hanging pods that look to have been munched on by chipmunks, but even they seem to be put off by the crackling noise of the fan streamers.

We've used the radio in the past to discourage downy woodpeckers in our corn patches. By itself it's only moderately effective as they're not even put off entirely by actual humans. I think the fans will add in well to the radio sound system.

Today I did see that the price of the fan tube guys, called air dancers, has come down with a 6' 6" diameter version about $50 with the blower on Amazon. But that still costs over twice what the table fan and streamers go for. And the table fan can be used as a table fan!!! Or for drying piles of beans, etc. in the greenhouse.

I have a video of this in action but my file type .AVI doesn't work on this forum.  What's the best method to post it?

I love this old poem:

Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you, for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains

I pick nettles bare-handed. If you pluck firmly upward, you'll almost never get stung. But brush against it downward and you'lll soon know if it stings or not.