We’re going to Tommy’s for Thanksgiving and drew the straw that said bring the green bean casserole. We’ve been picking beans since early this month and went out this AM to get a nice fresh batch for the casserole. I planted both green and yellow beans this year so the casserole will be biracial; more yellow than green actually. I planted one 15′ row, 3′ wide and trust me, we’ve had beans, beans, beans. Since there are two families picking from the row I have no solid idea on the yield but I would guess we’ve picked about 15 pounds ourselves. The yellow beans were a variety called Rodcor and they yielded maybe double the green variety. The casserole will reflect that ratio. To be honest when they’re cooked, if I were blindfolded I couldn’t tell the difference. I was thinking about telling everybody that I just left them on the vine too long but some people might actually believe me and avoid the dish. Or how about, gosh, they were all green when we started the casserole but something must have happened on the way to the table. One thing for sure, nobody will have a fresher casserole.

Added a little new technology to my veggie growing. The weakest part of my game has been a rigorous, consistent approach to starting seeds and then nursing them up to the point of transplant in the garden. Since seeds are cheap my modus operandi has been to plant more than I need and have spares ready to handle the attrition. No more. I bought a mini greenhouse for starting seeds. Maybe micro is more accurate than mini. It’s a domed enclosure, 10” x 14” by 7”H. Under the dome is a removable block with 60 1” diameter through holes. Into each hole you insert a tapered, cylindrical sponge that has been impregnated with peat or some other starter medium. You soak the sponges in water than place them in the holes in the block. The sponges have been pre-drilled for seed placement. I’ve been eyeing this system for a while and finally pulled the trigger when I found out that Nancy’s Ott lamp, a quilting lamp, can be used as a grow light.

In the past what I’ve done is sprinkle seeds on various containers loaded with starting soil and keep them outside. It’s been difficult keeping them all properly watered, protected from temp extremes and most importantly, with the proper amount of light. With all that, I still get enough seeds started to get the job done with spares. I then have to transplant the small starts into individual containers or larger flats with individual compartments. That transplant process results in some attrition. Eventually, those that have survived the first transplant are moved to the garden – a process that generally disturbs the roots and results in additional losses. With this new system, you pop out the plant in the sponge and move it directly to the garden, roots intact. According to the brochure, I should expect 100% success from start to finish – seed to plant in the garden.

I commandeered the Ott light and started my first batch on Nov 15 with 30 sponges. Nancy was willing to part with the lamp because this whole process promises to be much neater and eliminate having pots and flats scattered around the screen porch or moved indoors on newspaper when the weather dictated a change. I started Nov 15 with 10 each lettuce, cabbage, and cauliflower and had germination within 2 days on all the cabbage plants; germination of the cauliflower in 3 days; buttercrunch lettuce 5 days. On day 3 all the cabbages had 2 distinct leaves. So far so good.

Another factoid for your garden encyclopedia. Bugs don’t attack all the members of a common set of veggies. In other words, you can have a row of 8-10 cabbages and only one or two will be attacked in a big way. I wonder if those particular plants are putting out just a bit different oder or have a slightly different taste. This is not the first time I’ve noticed it and it lets me rationalize that we’re “sharing”. In one row I planted 2 different varieties of Swiss Chard. One variety has thick, robust leaves and deeply colored stems. The other was promoted as having a more delicate flavored, light textured leaf. No question the bugs prefer delicate flavor. I planted them in an alternating pattern so every other chard plant is getting chewed to pieces while the others remain virtually untouched.

Tangerines and Grapefruit finally sweetened up. Much smaller than last year but will make decent juice. I think this year I’ll try a tangerine-grapefruit juice mix – since my oranges were nailed in the last freeze of 2009.

Had a great day yesterday. I was invited to join Tom and Simon on a trip to Gainesville to visit Florida and meet with a representative of the Ag and Life Sciences Dept. We were joined by Simon’s other grandfather so we overwhelmed the rep we met and her confederate in Admissions. They have built so much since the last time I was there that it was difficult to orient myself except for the old buildings in the immediate vicinity of my old dorm. The old cafeterias have been replaced with food courts with real world, great looking food. For a kid, it would be dying and waking up in a world of fast food places – wall to wall Wendy’s, Burger Kings, Starbucks and many familiar names. I talked to a girl who was an RA at my old dorm and learned, sadly, that they have to do their own linens and towels. That was how I earned my money on campus – in the dorm laundry room. Also the three person suites we endured are now set up for four. We also hit Florida Field and was blown away by how big it is relative to what I still had in my mind. The ROTC drill field is now a giant basketball arena and a parking lot for the stadium – nice improvement there. The pool hall where I earned a few dollars now and again has been replaced with some generic retail space. They’ve preserved enough of the green spaces and the big, old trees that it still has a nice elegant southern feel to it. We went by the band building to see what Simon was facing so far as a place in the Marching Band was concerned. I had some doubts as to whether someone other than a music major had a chance but was surprised to learn that maybe only 15% of the band members are music majors. Chris enlightened me that Music Majors don’t usually do the marching band!!! It sounded like Simon would most likely be able to join the band. But the thing that stuck in my mind the most was when we found gator pajama bottoms in the book store selling for $60. Nancy is wasting her time on quilts.

I can’t understand why everybody is getting so exercised about the Gov’t appointed medical panel saying that they don’t recommend mammograms for women under the age of 50. And not to teach women to self examine. This is exactly what happens in Europe under socialized medicine and what will start happening in this country as soon as the new health care plan is passed. A gov’t panel decides which plans and procedures are covered and for which particular group of people. It will be cold, hard statistics with cold, hard cut off lines drawn. The statistic that gets me on this one is the one that compares effectivity of mammograms for women in the 40-49 age group with women in the 50-59 group. In the younger group, the procedure saves 1 life in 1900; in the older group, 1 in 1300. If it’s linear, that would mean about 1:1600 at 45 – does it make sense to test there? So the panel arbitrarily or with some economic, actuarial accounting concludes that it makes sense to do older gals but not younger ones. If that makes sense to you, apply for a job on the panel.

And a few days later, another panel – or maybe it was a subcommittee of the same panel – recommends women cut back on PAP tests. Didn’t see any numbers on that except instead of annually, maybe every 3 years. What I’m getting from this is that women must be running up the costs of health care. I’m thinking this isn’t going to play politically – economists be damned. That became very clear when, after a few days of stewing, the gal who heads up Health and Human Services said not to pay any attention to the panel.

I also find it interesting that this particular conclusion is being so widely discussed when the one a month or so back that said men shouldn’t have prostate screening so early and so often was passed over with not much heat or light at all. Same deal – too many false positives given as the reason. In fact with prostate cancer they said that even if you have it, don’t worry about it or rush out and get it taken care of. It probably won’t kill you anyway. Anybody see the trend here. These are the biggest people killers via cancer and most interestingly, the death rates from both of these diseases has been dropping for years – coincident with the increased rate of screenings in the past decade. Get used to it!!!!

But not all these panels are bad. How ‘bout the one that just found that a couple of glasses of beer and/or wine every day are good for you and cut the chance of a heart attack by 50%. If the gals who are concerned about the mammogram or Pap smear take up the wine fix, they will eliminate the stress the first panels created. I guess it could exasperate the concerns though – if you know you won’t have a heart problem, then keeping the cancer demons away becomes more important. Really getting complex. And the move to medical marijuana even further reduces the sting.

Just in case you think that I am not qualified to comment on such a feminine issue as mammograms – wrong, I’ve had one. About 10 years or so back I had a lump in my breast and the doctor sent me to get a mammogram. It was quite an experience. The nurse who was going to administer the procedure asked me if it was OK if someone else observed since it was rare to do a male. A teaching experience. The next thing I knew there were a dozen or so female nurses all gathered around, giggling and pulling my chain. I didn’t have much to squeeze so she had a hard time getting it exactly right. Either that or she was enjoying putting me through the torture. I just smiled and joked with them and when it was over, said something like – “so is this what you guys are all jumpy about? Piece of cake, never felt a thing.” Got a lot of hoots from the gallery.

Interesting wildlife sighting. It was about 5:30 PM and I was trolling for spec’s. I was about 1000′ from my dock and heading directly toward it at a very low speed – the lowest setting on the electric motor. I had a good view of my dock and my neighbor May’s property. Her property is a treeless field with her trailer set up about 500′ from the lake. I noticed a flock of turkeys browsing around on her field, generally heading down to the lake and over to the side adjacent to our place. I counted 10 birds which is the most I’ve seen in one flock so far. I kept steady on course and wondered just how close I could get before they spooked. When I got about 250′ away, two of them got nervous and flew off into tall pine trees; two more left when I closed the distance in half; the balance let me get maybe 75′ closer before they bolted. I got close enough to see big white beards hanging down from a couple of them. I also noticed that when they were at the edge of the field and technically on my property, they were eating berries from wild bushes growing right on the property division. We call them beauty berries and I never knew what ate them. They’re small, purple berries and grow prolifically around here. So maybe these turkey’s would bleed purple and have built in cranberry like sauce. I’m always impressed by how big they are, what a gigantic wing span they have and how fast they gain altitude – I would estimate they get maybe 100′ within 50′ of takeoff. Wonder if they’re thinking Thanksgiving?

I got one spec, too small to keep, but it was just nice fishing without a gale blowing. The lake was like a sheet of glass.

Not happy about a development in the neighborhood. We’re mostly in the woods with an occasional clearing. There are lots of nurseries and. at one time, many were fern growers who grew their product in natural shade under oak trees. As you come to our place there has been a 5 acre unused, naturally shaded nursery for sale. It was bought recently by a guy from NY and he’s decided to pull out all the trees and start a palm nursery. You can’t imagine the heavy machinery on the property yanking out the trees and running them through a chipper. To give you some idea of the size of the chipper, according to the operator it consumes 60 gallons of diesel fuel per hour. He said the chips are worth $5,000. I’ve heard in the past they are used as fuel for power plants in Europe so maybe that’s where they’re headed. All I know is this guy has taken a beautiful piece of property and turned it into an empty lot. There’s also an adjacent 5 acre piece that was cleared and it looks like a house may be built there. We may end up living in some awful place like Orlando. Traffic and kids. Trick or treaters. yuk.

And while we were away eating well, the garden critters were eating well too. So we know for a fact that the recommended dosage of Malathion doesn’t slow them down. I mixed up a batch of triple strength diazinon so we’ll see how that works. My next attack is with Seven Dust. This must be like agent Orange since it’s an orange colored powder. After that I go to a tablespoon of each and every bug killing chemical I have and create a master blend. Deep down inside I’m guessing that the only thing that might work is a few nights in the upper 30’s and that’s out of my control. Aside from the caterpillars which I can see and pick by hand, the guys that get the cucumbers and squash are most more insidious. You have to look very closely and find a pin hole.

Made a big mistake this afternoon. We went to FFC for lunch. That was a given since on Friday the mussels are on special and Nancy goes whacko for them. When she’s eating them it’s as if she were listening to celestial music. She talked me into the fried shrimp luncheon special even though I’m not a fried shrimp guy. I think she wanted to try one but couldn’t give up the mussels. Now for sure I won’t be a fried shrimp guy. These were so totally better than any I’ve ever had that it would be punishing to order them elsewhere. First they were big – maybe in the 6-8 per pound range and they gave you 9. Most time you have fried shrimp you pick them up and bite down to the tail – one biters. These were three biters. Then they were dipped in something that was very light, very crisp, very tasty. After eating I went up to the cook and asked him what they were dipped in. The waiters all laughed – and said it was a secret but the base ingredient was potato flakes. But they said don’t bother trying to duplicate it at home that they all had and it just wasn’t possible. Aside from the ingredients they said it was a very special oil and at exactly the right temp for exactly the right amount of time.

One of the Monday specials is fish and chips. I think I’ll come over some Monday and try that for the same reason – I’ve never been much for fish and chips but before burying the concept, I probably need to try it FFC style.

Gave the surf one last try but it was once again big,big, big with an incredible rip tide. I think we must be catching the downside from Ida. It took 100% concentration to keep from ending up in the drink several times. I gave up since it was certainly only a matter of time before I’d screw up and find myself heading out to the gulf stream.

The wind is cutting me no slack at all. After 3 days of casting into 25 mph winds and into 10′ breakers, I’m worn down to a stump. What I need is a grease fitting on my rotator cuff. A combination of Bigeloil, Aleve, and Samuel Smith Organic Lager has things under control – but just barely. This morning I switched to lighter, inshore kind of tackle at low tide where long casts are not needed. It sure took the pressure off my body but is not quite right for casting in the surf – at least not this kind of surf. What I’m adding to my necessary tackle list is a new rod – a 7 1/2 or 8′ rod that is super lightweight but stiff enough to handle 2 oz lures. Probably an 18” butt so I can make two handed casts. I’ll know it when I find it.
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Thursday and it’s changed again. Yesterday the wind finally turned from East to SE and then from the west late in the day. That caused the waves to build up in height but would normally calm the surf overnight. No such luck. By this AM the wind had rotated and was coming out of the north big time. The strong rip currents that had been moving south to north reversed and, if anything, strengthened. And just to make it perfect, the temp dropped into the 50’s. So not only is it windy, it’s cold. With a big surf there is no way to fish without getting wet and occasionally knocked over so cold is not good. I’ve got a feeling today will not be a big fishing day. Which is probably ok with my body. Four days of Xtreme casting has my body aching pretty near everywhere. So not sure exactly what I’m going to do today – maybe head across the street and fish in the river instead of the surf.

As predicted, the eatin’ has been awesome. We’ve had breakfast at 3 different places now. Nancy still prefers the Java Joint for her Kahlua French Toast. I tend toward the NY deli in Palm coast and the Bialys. We’re working our way through the menu at the Flagler Fish Company. They have great luncheon specials so we hit it late in the afternoon – scheduled around the tides. Our new favorite is a bowl of fish chowder – I get the red, Nancy the white – and a fried calamari appetizer. One of the Friday lunch specials is a giant bowl of steamed mussels. Nancy starts to drool just thinking about it. To mix it up, we did JT’s Fish Shack too. If you like fresh seafood, this area is primo.

Nancy did an afternoon of bridge at the Palm Coast bridge club. Turns out we’re less than 10 minutes from the club and she knows a fair number of the people who play there regularly. She brings most of her quilting equipment with her so between cards and quilting, life is good for her and she could care less about the wind or riptides. What really makes her day is that here we have satellite TV and high speed internet. She’s in heaven and will go into withdrawal when we return to the woods.

First full day fishing report. Surf fishing is normally a fairly laid back experience. You typically cast your bait out a ways, stick your rod into a sand spike, pop an adult beverage, then sit back and relax. Most guys fish two rods at a time. You can get by with fairly junky tackle and I did for a year or so. This time around surf fishing is challenging. There’s a 25 mph wind blowing right in my face with an occasional rain squall and higher winds; Monster waves and lots of seaweed close in. If you don’t pay attention to the surf, you are likely to be knocked over and dragged into some serious stuff. Strong rip tides so no way to hold any bait stationary. The good news is that the water is nice and clean which means good visibility for a flashy spoon. It’s also warm so when I misjudge a wave or fall asleep and one breaks on me, I don’t fear hypothermia. So I decided the only way to fish it was with large spoons and long casts. I now have excellent tackle so even with the wind, I can cast 150′ or more with a 2 oz Krocodile spoon. I have a 12′ light weight rod and a light weight Quantum reel with a large spool. That combo lets me really get behind a cast and holds the line up above the wave tops and above the seaweed until the lure gets right in the surf suds. About an hour at a time is all I can handle before my back and arms turn into noodles but I have managed so far to catch two fair size – keepers – bluefish. I wondered whether or not I’d even feel them hit – not a problem. When something nearly jerks the rod out of your hand, it’s a blue. Bringing them in through the rough surf is something else. I’m lovin’ it but I’m thinking this is going to be more of an eating than fishing experience.

Another piece of good news – Nancy was sharp enough to bring the Bigeloil so my otherwise destroyed shoulder and arm muscles, are doing just fine. The fact that it’s dark by 6 PM probably saves me too. I’m guessing another couple hours would leave me crippled.

Nancy missed a promising career as a CSI investigator specializing on floor dirt analysis. Nancy can spot sand on the floor a mile away and immediately tell you who’s shoes it came from. Maybe it’s not too late since I’ve noticed that if anything, her keen sense of observation is sharpening. In fact, she’s able to spot microscopic traces now and tell if it’s fresh. I never see it and even after she points it out, I can’t distinguish yesterday’s from today’s or figure out exactly which shoes dropped it. That’s quite a bit more advanced than current CSI’s. They can analyze dirt and tell you where it came from but not who carried it in. Nancy can go right to the heart of the issue and identify the perp. One trick she has is to wear special CSI shoes that will not pick up any sand or dirt at all. That way she doesn’t contaminate the crime scene and can be 100% certain that the stuff on the floor didn’t come off her shoes. She won’t tell me whether she buys them that way or has them modified to her spec’s.

I put in the last of the garden starts today so at this point, the garden is 100% planted. I had been taking a kinder gentler approach to fighting garden insects up until this week. I have been spraying with something labeled as eco-friendly – but effective – says the label. Yesterday I decided to closely examine the Chinese cabbage which is rapidly maturing and spotted a small caterpillar munching away at the very heart of the cabbage. I removed him and moved on to each of the 10 cabbages and found a total of 15 enemy invaders. I squooshed them all and moved on to the bean row where I found 100’s of them feasting on my blood, sweat, and tears – not to mention fertilizer and eco friendly bug repellant. OK, no more Mr. Nice Guy. Dumped the wimp stuff and loaded up with Malathion, skull and crossbones on the label. I have about three other chemicals in reserve that have been banned on all continents but to the best of my knowledge, not in Barberville. I haven’t seen any signs by the garden saying not to use them so……………

Next week is our fall trip to the beach. We always love time at the beach but this year I’m especially anxious since the fishing has been so good in the surf and so dismal in the lake. Since we now have a laptop, we’ll be a bit better connected. Who knows, they might even have wi-fi. Looks like we’ll miss the first week of garden harvest since both the yellow squash and green beans will be ready to pick next week. They keep putting out produce for 3-4 weeks so no big deal. When we get back, it will be just about the normal starting time for the speckled perch in the lake.

I’ve been thinking about getting a slow cooker, as in smoker. To really do a brisket right, it’s almost a necessity. Not to mention slow cooked ribs or chicken. Turns out, I already have one. The Holland grill has a slow cooking method that I guess I knew about but had forgotten. It has a grease drip valve which I always keep open so that the grease that drips from meat, sloughs off into a grease bucket. You can also close the drip valve and pour a gallon or so of liquid onto the heating plate, creating a steamer that also holds the temp between 250 and 300 degrees. The Holland Grill people sent me an email – newsletter – that had a recipe for doing brisket and it reminded me that I’ve had a slow cooker all along. I’ll start experimenting when we get back from the beach.

Seems like every day’s another record day in the temp department. At least it doesn’t have to be extra hot to establish a record – 90’s enough this late in the season – and I’m ok with 90. It feels especially comfortable when I’m watching 3′ of snow falling in Denver. I’d kind of like it to hold in the mid to upper 80’s for another month. We have a week scheduled at the Beach starting Nov 7th and I much prefer plenty of heat there.

The garden seems to be liking these temps and with just a few exceptions, everything is thriving. It’s hard to appreciate that in about a month, two of the eight rows planted will be finished and replanted with a new crop. A couple of rows will hang on as long as it doesn’t freeze and continuously put out veggies so you really can’t plan on an end date for those. Last year I had a couple of pepper plants that made it more than a year and only crashed when we flooded in July. I have about 20 pepper plants growing but am thinking about pulling 8-10 because they are a hot variety that turned out to be more than I can handle. That will leave a mix of a dozen or so green bell peppers and Jalapeno plants. The onions are really looking good and my staggering strategy seems to be working, so far. Last year I bought sets at the appropriate time and we had way more onions that we could deal with all at one time. This year I shifted from sets to seeds which adds about 2 months to the process but lets me plant a couple dozen every month to spread out the crop.

Tom and I hit the beach this week to check if the blues were still there. The wave of blues that George and I got into last week had moved on but we found another batch had taken their place. I could tell the difference because the ones last week were mostly in the 2# range whereas the ones this week were less than 1/2# – too small to keep. We had a good day and caught plenty of fish but nothing big enough for the pan. That was disappointing because we had some of the bigger ones for dinner the other night and they were great. Many people think blues are not good to eat – too strong, too fishy tasting. If you don’t clean them properly, I guess that’s true but the trick is to deal with them correctly as soon as you catch them. You have to cut them through under the gills to drain out the blood. If you don’t do that the flesh is dark and they do have a strong flavor. Bleed them, and they’re like mountain trout. Nancy wrapped them in foil along with a couple slices of lemon, butter, salt and pepper – grill ready. I put them on the grill for 20 minutes and they turned out perfectly.

People ask me how I can possibly get by with dial-up internet service. I got to thinking about it and there’s a couple of answers. First, I’m a patient guy. Second, about all I do is check my email, which is fairly efficient, check the market, and pull up my blog. With the mail, anything that has a picture or video attached or sends me off to another link or advises me to listen to something really sweet is trashed unless I really, really want to retrieve it. Which is why I take a book over to the computer with me. That way I am, in effect, killing two birds with one stone. I also open iTunes if I see a long download in my future and put on some soothing sounds. And then there’s a glass of Cab. What’s the rush?

The Gators looked a bit better against GA. Not good, but much better. Now I root for Tennessee to beat South Carolina tonight. That clinches the SEC East for Fla.

This has been social week for us. We had guests from Dallas, Luke and Mary Manies, early in the week; a dinner with some folks from my high school graduating class on Thursday; Senior (as in high school senior) night festivities in Lake Mary where Simon will be recognized for something or other on Friday, along with the Football game; and a reunion event for General Dynamics in Altamonte Springs on Saturday night. So I’m in a social overload mode.

Luke suffers from serious leg cramps in his calfs (or is it calves) which limits his ability to walk any distance at all. I suggested he try the Bigeloil remedy. Believe it or not, within a few minutes after application, his cramps disappeared. We headed off to the feed store to pick up a few more bottles. The proprietor was just opening a new shipment and said it would all be gone before he could even put it on the shelves. He said he bet we weren’t planning to use it on our horses so that must be the official use. I’m thinking maybe we should buy a large supply while the getting is good. Somewhere along the line somebody’s going to notice a jump in sales, do some investigating and find it’s being used by humans. At that point the FDA will jump into it and ……………..

We’re still ping ponging from record heat to record cold. So far this month we’ve had two spells of each. Crazy. But the good news is that I picked up the first spec of the year and the surf is loaded – and I mean loaded – with Bluefish. George and I caught about 25 yesterday in just 3 hours. They’re not giants but not those tiny chicken blues either – maybe 1-2 pounders on average with an occasional line breaker. The spec was fairly large and surprisingly full of roe. Since we only got one, we let it go but this is maybe a month before I usually start finding them. I need to do a little public service research on bass to see if they’ve started biting again. Our hot, hot summer put them out of service basically all summer long. Maybe these touches of cold have stirred them into action. My friend Lou tells me they’ve all of a sudden turned on big time further south and that’s a good sign.

In the garden, the bush beans are starting to blossom. That means beans in maybe 3 weeks. An interesting factoid: I planted a row of green beans alongside a row of yellow ones. The foliage on both varieties is identical but the blossoms are totally different. The yellow beans have purple flowers; the green beans have white flowers. Unless something bad happens, we’re going to have a bumper crop. Enough that we’re going to pick up one of those sealer systems for freezing whatever we don’t eat.

And other than a few losses to grasshoppers, everything seems to be growing right on schedule. I haven’t put in any of the really delicate things like lettuce due to the prolonged hot weather but that has to be happening soon, soon. That will fill the few empty spaces
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Way to go Obama. The two teacher’s unions backed off and are willing to accept merit pay and testing. I figured in the end they would have to do what was offered – where would they go, vote for Republicans??? I don’t think so. What I really thought was that in the end, Obama would back off but this guy Arne Duncan (Secretary of Education) is for real. I’d be ok with this admin if that’s all they ever accomplished. To me it’s a given that our taxes and insurance will jump – you have to expect a bear to go after honey. So you just live with it until the next Rep admin comes along and drops taxes again. Insurance will go up no matter who’s running the ship.

Today the heat is scheduled to break and we’ll leave a record string of 90 degree weather way down to the upper/middle 80’s. I enjoyed seeing the weather report this morning to see that College Station PA was buried in 6” of snow and experiencing the coldest weather and earliest snow in recorded history. Nancy experienced some 28 degree temps in Utah so she’s lovin’ this warm-up for her.

I got out to the garden early so I could get a few things planted before it rains this afternoon and to take advantage of the overcast and cooler temps. Put in a couple rows of celery that I had started from seed about 2 months ago and another row of onions, seeded about a month ago. The big job was thinning beets. For those who haven’t grown beets from seed, let me explain. With most veggies the seeds are singular – that is, one seed, one plant. With beets, the seed is actually a cluster of seedlets and it’s quite common that 3 or 4 plants sprout up exactly in the same location. The instructions are to just pull out the weaker members of the family. But I’ve found that if I’m extremely careful and work the cluster with a tiny instrument – such as a tooth pick – I can wheedle out the individual beet plants and set them back in a new location. I get about 75% recovery so one 8′ row of seeds gets me 3 x 8′ rows after thinning. Beet seeds are cheap so it doesn’t really make any sense to spend so much time bent over the bed, thinning and replanting, but I kind of like doing it and the challenge of making it work.

It also becomes obvious that beets and swiss chard are related. Aside from the fact that both have red stems when they germinate, chard seed are also cluster pods and sprout the same way as beets. If you just look at the first couple of leaves, you can’t tell the difference between them. I thin these guys too. So if I plant just 3 chard seeds, I can end up with 8-10 plants – which is more chard that you can deal with from an eating standpoint. You don’t pull out the plant but just cut off the leaves as you need them so it’s a continuous crop. Of course with beets, it’s one pull. A packet of chard seeds has about a 100 seeds so one packet gets you two lifetime’s of greens. For $3. Beet greens are edible but if you grow chard, why bother. The seed catalog designates some beet varieties as “grow for greens”. Maybe that’s where the line blurs between chard and beets in their evolution.

Not sure what the deal is on the grapefruit this year. They are mostly yellow at this point which is a month or more early. I haven’t cut one open yet but am not expecting them to be really good. It’s pretty well known here that you need a few cold snaps to sweeten the fruit but unless things get really weird, we’re a couple of months from a deep enough cold to sweeten the fruit. And they’re smaller than past years. My guess is that either the really hot summer or the really wet summer has changed the normal cycle

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Found another place I’m ok with Obama so far. This one’s important since it involves forestry and my grandson, Simon, who is considering a major in forestry. There are two theories about running forests. One is to just let them do whatever it is that nature intends. Leave them alone, No harvesting, no thinning, no forest fire reduction activities, no beetle fighting, no roads, no people. Up until now that has seemed to be the position of each Dem administration since Jimmy Carter. The other guys believe in managing forests. That means allowing harvests, controlling and fighting fires, fighting bugs, fungus etc etc. So each time we’ve had an admin change, the forest policy has changed accordingly. But the early rumblings are that this administration may leave the Bush policy in place.

I was always a let nature do what it will kind of guy until the great Yellowstone fires and the Pine beetle infestation took hold out west. I used to spend lots of time in the wilderness when we lived in Utah and never ceased to marvel at the beauty and extent of the forests there. Then came the pines beetles and in the course of just a year or two, hundreds of thousands of acres of lodgepole pine were dead. And if that wasn’t bad enough, fires hit yellowstone. And the theory was to just let it burn. 10 years later and it still looked completely devastated. It just was never the same and never will be in my lifetime. So I jumped over into the managed forest camp and am fine with controlled logging, controlled burning – so long as it can be controlled – and bug and disease control. Obama, being a Chicago city boy, may be ok with Republican style forest policy.