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<\/a><\/p>\nReaders\u2019 questions:<\/p>\nFloating carrots
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\nCongrats on your new love. I have a question about pressure canning, I have had a canner for about a year but was very nervous to try it out, well yesterday I bit the bullet and canned up some plit pea soup, I followed all the directions to the letter. My question is when the pressure came down and I took the cans out all the carrots had floated to the top of the jars, and the soup itself was still
\nboiling. Is that normal?<\/em><\/p>\nCybele Connor
\nHammonton, New Jersey
\n<\/em>
\nYes.\u00a0 Many foods that are pressure canned continue boiling happily quite a while after you take them out of the canner.\u00a0 As for the floating carrots, don’t worry about that, either.\u00a0 When you heat the soup up\u00a0 to eat it, just stir the carrots back into the soup evenly.\u00a0 Congratulations on your first attempt.\u00a0 You’ve just opened the door to a whole lot of good eating and fun, too! — Jackie<\/p>\nSprouting spinach seed
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\nAfter I enjoy my spinach crop every year, it bolts and goes to seed.\u00a0 I can’t stand to let it go to waste so I harvest the seed and give it to friends and neighbors.\u00a0 Last year I had a bumper crop and still have a gallon of seed left!\u00a0 I was curious if this can be sprouted for salad and sandwiches?\u00a0 Is it good tasting and what is the safest way to sprout?<\/p>\nSandy Coates
\nIndian Valley, Idaho
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\nI’ve never sprouted spinach seed, but I don’t know why you couldn’t. Just put it in a plastic refrigerator container and wet it thoroughly. Then drain the water off and cover it.\u00a0 Rinse it each day with fresh water and drain it until it sprouts.\u00a0 You’ll just have to experiement. Micro greens, including spinach, are the latest fad.\u00a0 You “plant” the seeds in a container thickly and harvest the leaves when they are still very small.\u00a0 These are used in salads or on sandwiches, much as you’d use sprouts.\u00a0 I have tasted these baby “baby” spinach leaves and they are sweet and good. — Jackie<\/p>\n
Hail storm killed my garden
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\nHope you get out of the cold weather soon!<\/p>\nI’ve had a different weather problem, and I hope you have some advice, or even just some encouraging words. I just finished getting the warm-weather parts of my garden in yesterday (tomatoes, peppers, green beans, etc); the cold-weather parts were in a month ago and growing nicely.\u00a0 Last night we had TREMENDOUS storm come through – 1.5 inches of rain in 20 minutes, hail piling up like snowdrifts, and wind blowing it all horizontal.\u00a0 It scrubbed by garden clean down to the dirt – I’d have done less damage if I just mowed it.<\/p>\n
Should I write it off, and plan for my Fall garden (Zone 8 here), plan on replacing the warm-weather plants I just planted, or do you think the roots in the ground will come back and produce ok?<\/p>\n
Aaron Neal
\nFort Worth, Texas
\n<\/em>
\nI had the same thing happen when we lived in New Mexico; we had three feet of hail in little over half an hour!\u00a0 Yep, my garden was gone.\u00a0 I kind of waited to see if things might sprout again; no go.\u00a0 A few that did were way weak and not worth the effort.\u00a0 I’d plant again, if it was me. You can’t control the weather; we just have to do the best we can with what\u00a0 we get.\u00a0 Good luck. — Jackie<\/p>\n
Cooking beans in soaking water
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\nWhen you soak beans overnight do you drain off that water and add new water to cook or do you keep the soaking water to cook the beans in?<\/p>\nGail Erman
\nPalisade, Colorado
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\nUnless the beans were really dirty or you soak them on the counter in warm weather, You can just cook them in the soaking water.\u00a0 Otherwise, rinse them and use new water to cook them in.\u00a0 I like to keep any nutrients I can, whenever I can. — Jackie<\/p>\n
Transplanting blackberries
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\nI found some wild blackberries on my property and wanted to move them closer to my home, however my neighbors say that if I do that the plants will die. They say woodland types don’t transplant well. Are they right ?<\/p>\nEdward Jones Jr.
\nJasper, Georgia
\n<\/em>
\nI listen to my neighbors….to a point.\u00a0 Heck, I’d sure transplant the blackberries!\u00a0 What’s to lose?\u00a0 I’ve never had a problem with blackberries; they’re about a weed.\u00a0 Just put them somewhere that you
\ncan control them.\u00a0 I just planted two rows, but I didn’t put them in my garden.\u00a0 I had David bulldoze a new strip between the garden and the house for them.\u00a0 This way they won’t spread into my garden and become a pest.\u00a0 The driveway will contain them the other way.\u00a0 I can hardly wait till they produce. — Jackie<\/p>\n
Keeping cats out of the garden
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\nWhat is the best way to keep cats our of the garden?\u00a0 I have one cat that thinks the raised beds are his litter boxes. Is there a way to keep him out with out going through a whole lot of expense?\u00a0 hanks and we LOVE your magazine and books.<\/p>\nJulie Jaco
\nSenatobia, Mississippi
\n<\/em>
\nWhile there are repellant sprays, etc. for pets, the best way I’ve foundis to fence your garden.\u00a0 You can just use chicken wire, which is very inexpensive…or even that plastic garden fence that local stores carry, stapled onto wood stakes; it doesn’t take much to keep cats away from your garden area. You can “lure” the cats away from your raised beds by making one for them.\u00a0 Use sand and let them dig to their hearts content; just keep kids out of the kitty box as some parasites and diseases can spread from cats to kids through fecal contamination. — Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our last snow’s just about gone and the temperatures are up into the high fifties.\u00a0 Yes, we’re going nuts with joy!\u00a0 I started the big TroyBilt yesterday and tilled a few passes in the garden to get ready for the 25 red raspberry bushes that are due any day now and to plant the 6 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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