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Yup-- I've definitely turned a corner. Lol 😂

Several years ago a friend gave me a selection of homegrown lettuce seedlings for my birthday, and one plant in particular stood out. Its leaves were green with ragged edges, and it had dark purple blotches dotting its foliage. This was, in my view, a seriously unattractive lettuce. I...

If by 'updating' you mean editing a post that you wrote, I tend to use the 'edit' feature to just make changes to my original post. There is, however, a time limit for this function. Very old posts cannot be modified by the author-- but a request can still be sent to the moderator if something...

Congratulations on your newly acquired garden with the beautiful willow tree. And a warm welcome to the forum from British Columbia! 😊

We've been spoiled by several weeks of bright sunny weather, however later today the rain will return. Much warmer temperatures are in the forecast too, so what's left of the snow will finally melt away. Once it does I expect that the garlic will burst into fresh green growth.

Today we made a Greek salad using dried tomatoes, and we were very pleased with the results. I cut the tomatoes into pieces.

I've never tried straw so can't offer an opinion on that, but carrots do like loose or sandy soil. I would think that lifting the carrots from the ground using a garden fork could do the trick as well, as long as you stay far enough away so the carrots aren't impaled by accident.

We are finding dried tomatoes to be useful too! We dried some tomatoes a couple of years ago and they were so desiccated that they were almost like leather-- so this past summer we dried them a bit less. Then we froze them on a parchment-lined tray, and popped them in glass jars in the...

Sunny days and very cold nights will continue until the end of the week, which is spectacular. Seedlings go out each morning once it climbs above freezing, and then back in at night once it's good and chilly. With the sun reflecting off the snow it's so bright that I am having to shield the...

I moved my Purple Jean ranuncula corms to bins of potting mix yesterday. Only half of them had sprouted, and I had been watering them to try and wake them up. Well, it turns out that the ones that didn't sprout were sitting in pools of water, and they rotted. Hopefully I can remember this...

Still working on developing a more uniform approach to starting pepper seeds, and one point in particular is confounding me. There seems to be consensus that the pepper seeds benefit from heat at the beginning, which makes sense. Pepper growers also say that the pepper seeds should come off...

That is an incredible amount of tomatoes flowerbug! I have canned lots of jam over the years, but I have yet to muster the courage to try canning tomatoes. Do you add citric acid to each jar? And do you start by cooking up the tomatoes for a few minutes before packing them hot in jars?

Looks your container garden is well on its way. My dad always says 'by the time you finish a project, you have a pretty good idea of how it should have been done in the first place.' ;)

I hope that growing carrots will go well for you AMKuska. Here we have had the most success with growing them in large half barrel-sized containers, and also in a raised bed. Placing row cover over top for the first few weeks seems to help a lot too; it limits weeds, provides extra warmth, and...

I've never heard of Cimicifuga either-- will have to keep an eye out for these intriguing plants. Looks like a long stratification if propagating from seed; they say seeds can take up to one year to germinate. Wow. 😲

For several years we have done our best to grow fava beans, and while it has gone okay last year the plants were more or less destroyed by black flies. I was able to salvage some seeds, so I'm trying again. Starting them really early may be helpful, so on January 16th I got some seeds going...

A couple of weeks ago I forced myself to get out and pull weeds too, and now I am so happy that I did. There were so many buckets full that it filled an entire compost bin. Some of the dandelions and hairy bittercress were huge, and flowering. Shortly after that the weather turned cold. The...

Seriously long stretch of bitter cold here. If it were December or January it would not be noteworthy, however for February this is very odd for our area. I think we may have broke records for the overnight low of -9C(16F). We have lots of sunshine in the forecast at least; it's so nice to...

Good chance they want you to just pour hot water over the seeds, and then let them sit in the water for several hours after it cools. (110F for a long period could well kill them). Parsley volunteers generously around here, germinating well in our cool, moist climate.

That's a LOT of water. :eek: