How about parsnips? I grow Cobham Improved which is a very nice variety. I know that Sandhill Preservation Center sells the seed. Though, there have to be other companies as well.

George
Tahlequah, OK

George,
That's a great idea! I didn't realize they were a cool weather crop. I love parsnips but rarely buy them because they are so expensive in the store. One of my favorite ways to use them is to chop or grind them, then put them in a stew. They break down and act as a thickener while adding a subtle depth of flavor that no one can quite put their finger on. Roasted is good too. I'm assuming I can store them in the basement for a while anyway?

Thanks!

Aw, wonderful parsnips! Roasting them brings out the sweetness. And I love putting chunks of them in beef stew, along with turnips, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, green pepper, leeks, and potatos, toward the end of cooking time, after you've already added carrots, onions, and celery. It's an amazingly delicious, healthy winter stew. ( I knew I couldn't last forever as a vegan, lol!)

George, are you saying one can plant parsnip seeds in the fall? If so, I have seeds I saved from when I allowed a row of parsnip to flower and go to seed, mostly for the benefit of the beneficials. They were all over those lovely flowers!

Seedmama, I think parsnips are so expensive because of their long growing season, and possibly slow germination time.

Cheers,
Barbara

Seedmama,

The key term of 'sure fire' is a tricky one because there are not necessarily a lot of cool-season crops that are 100% or even 90% consistent here since our cool season weather can fluctuate wildly. However, there are some varieties that are pretty consistent as long as we don't have either extra, extra cold weather after they're planted or a spell of extra-early hot weather that induces bolting before a plant can produce.

So, here's my most reliable varieties, though I hate to use the term surefire for some of them.

SOURCES:

BC = Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds
P = Pinetree
SESE = Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
W = Willhite Seed Company
JSS = Johnny's Selected Seeds
V = Victory Seed

BEETS:
Chioggia BC, SESE, V (JSS has improved version Chioggia Guardsmark)
Cylindra BC, JSS, P, V
Burpee's Golden P, V

BROCCOLI:
Packman (W)
Small Miracle (Park Seed)

BRUSSELS SPROUTS: (Fall only as Spring gets too hot too early)
Long Island Improved BC, P, W, V, SESE

CABBAGE:
Early Dutch Flat SESE
Caraflex JSS
Gonzalez JSS, P
Early Jersey Wakefield BC, P, SESE, V, W
Red Acre SESE, V, W

CARROTS:
Red-Cored Chantenay P, SESE, V, W
Little Finger BC, P, V, W
Danvers 126 BC, SESE, V, W
Amarillo BC
Cosmic Purple BC, V
Short-N-Sweet (Burpee seedrack at local stores)
Scarlet Nantes JSS, SESE, W

CAULIFLOWER:
Early Snowball BC, P, SESE, V, W

COLLARD GREENS:
Georgia Southern BC, SESE, V, W
Vates P, SESE, V, W

KALE:
Dwarf Blue Curled Scotch BC, P, V, W
Red Russian BC, JSS, SESE, V, W

KOHLRABI:
Early Purple Vienna BC, P, SESE, V
Early White Vienna BC, P, V, W

LETTUCE:
Black-Seeded Simpson P, JSS, SESE, V
Simpson Elie P
Buttercrunch JSS, SESE, V, W
Little Gem BC, V
Jericho JSS, SESE
Paris Island Cos BC, JSS, SESE, V, W
Red Sails JSS, P, SESE
Red Salad Bowl JSS, SESE, V

LEEKS:
Lancelot (Dixondale)

MUSTARD GREENS:
Southern Giant Curled BC, SESE, W, V
Tendergreen V

ONIONS: (all from Dixondale, although 1015Y also is found everywhere locally)
Texas 1015Y (aka as Texas Supersweet)
Candy
Contessa
Southern Red Belle
Superstar

PEAS:
Little Marvel BC, SESE, V, W
Wando BC, SESE, V, W
Sugar Snap BC, JSS, SESE
Super Sugar Snap JSS, P
Mammouth Melting Sugar Pea BC, SESE, V, W

POTATOES: I try to plant whatever I can find locally, but if you need to mail order, most of these are found at one of the big online seed potato companies: Ronninger's, Irish Eyes, or Wood Prairie Farm. SESE has seed potatoes also, although I think they get theirs from Wood Prairie Farm. Once I have a variety, I try to save the small potatoes to use as seed potatoes for the next crop. I generally replant the tiny seed potatoes immediately after I harvest but sometimes I store them in the root cellar and plant them in winter at the proper time.
Yukon Gold
Cobbler
All-Blue
All-Red
Adirondack Red
Adirondack Blue
Red Norland
Kennebec
Austrian Peanut
French Fingerling
Rose Finn Apple
Purple Peruvian

RADISH:
French Breakfast BC, P, V
Pink Beauty BC, JSS
Purple Plum BC, P, V
Scarlet Globe BC, V, W
White Hailstone BC, P, V
White IcicleBC, P, SESE, V, W

RUTABAGA:
American Purple Top BC, SESE, V

SPINACH:
Bloomsdale Longstanding P, SESE, V, W

SWISS CHARD: (all grow equally well for me)

Five-Color Silverbeet SESE, V (Bright Lights and Neon Lights are similar and usually on the Burpee seed rack in local stores)
Ruby Red JSS, V, W
Lucullus SESE, V
TURNIP:
For actual turnips: Purple Top White Globe BC, JSS, SESE, P, V

For turnip greens: Seven Top SESE, V, W

The above are available at many online sources, in seed catalogs, and often in local stores as well. I just listed the seed sources I use most often, and I haven't compared my list to the updated 2011 websites or catalogs but just based the list on where I normally find them.

Hope this helps,

Dawn

PS: If you want to grow fancy dandelions like OkieTim will be having this year, you can get the variety Dente de Leon from Seeds From Italy (www.growitalian.com). I believe JSS has the cultivated forms of dandelion too.

And for fall radishes, we love China Rose and Daikon from Baker's Creek. Also like to sow seed for my own Napa Cabbage. Baker's has Michili, a very long (tall) type and Park's had a nice compact hybrid that I've forgotten the name of but it should be easy to find. This year the grasshoppers ate all but 6 of the 30 I transplanted so bought 18 unnamed plants in nine packs from a local outlet. They are the compact type. I have 7 left under a cold frame and 5 in the garden that I will cut today as they are ready.

Baker's also has some good bok choy and pak choy seed. My baby bok choy did great this year, but has bolted in just the last couple weeks, some plants much earlier than others.

For years I raised only one broccoli, Early Emerald from Park's but they discontinued it in favor of Early Dividend, which is just a smidge earlier and a smidge smaller. Still a very good broccoli. Just don't try Calabrese in the spring. It doesn't mature soon enough to make a decent crop before the heat.

I think the most important thing to look for in cool season crops is a short day-to-maturity. For spring crops, the shorter the better. Not as critical for fall, especially if you have some way to protect plants through the first few frosts.

Barbara,
I agree with you about the pricing on parsnips. It's very much akin to why red ripened peppers cost more than green peppers. Economies of scale play a part too, in that high demand and high supply of the (somewhat) similar carrot (coupled with shorter maturity time) drive down the price of carrots. Parsnips are not the high volume vegetable that carrots are.

Dawn, I really should have said "reasonably reliable" for the exact reasons you stated, but the words wouldn't come. I was noticing the slow activity on the forum and attributing it to everyone preparing for the holiday. So wow! How did you find the time to write such a complete list. Thanks! And please tell us your house is dirty.

I'll let OkieTim keep my share of the dandelions, thanks. Really.

You've saved the day for Thanksgiving tomorrow. I'll be attending my 200+ family gathering and bring turkey and dressing. I didn't get the cornbread and biscuits made in time to dry naturally, but I wasn't worried about it. I knew my oven would dehydrated them. In fact, the bread is in one oven right now while the turkey is in the other. To the point, I might never have figured out my oven had a dehydrate feature if you hadn't mentioned yours. I am a bit disappointed to learn I can run the dehydrate feature on either the upper or lower, but not on both at the same time. Any ideas? I think I'll need to write to KitchenAid.

Mulberryknob,
I agree that the key is short DTM. It's really tough here, where we might warm up permanently anywhere between mid April to late June. Sigh.

Dawn, You could have made you list from my seed box, I think. You did add a few extra tho. Tell me about Mammouth Melting Sugar since I have a quarter pound of seed and have never planted them before. It was not what I ordered, but was the sub they sent instead. I got them in the summer but didn't get them planted in the fall. Do they grow tall like Sugar Snap? I normally grow sugar Snap on a trellis. This year I planted something else that I can't remember right now and I wasn't very happy with it.

Seedmama, You are welcome. Well, my house is about average-clean, although I do need to vacuum. : ) Note that it is NOT company-clean, but it is family-clean. I've been baking for tomorrow and for this weekend, so while a pie is in the oven, or while I wait for the cinnamon roll dough to rise or whatever (you get the picture, I'm sure), I sit down at my laptop and type. We're going to someone else's house to eat tomorrow, so my house doesn't have to be spotless. (And it isn't spotless either....)

Oh, wow, that's a huge family gathering! I cannot imagine that many people together in one place. There will be 20 or 30 of us and that seems like a lot to me.

I'm glad learning about the dehydration capability of your oven has come in handy and no, I have no idea why you can't run it on the upper and lower at the same time. Do you have a double oven? Mine is a single oven, but with three racks so I can dehydrate a lot at once. If you have a double oven, I suspect it has to do with the blower or fan that moves the air, but I'm not sure. When you find out, I hope you'll let us all know so we can remember it for the next time someone has a similar question.

I agree with you and Dorothy about short DTMs for our cool season crops in spring. Also, planting on time is very important because every day really does count. I plant a week or two early if the weather permits since that gives the plants a head start in case the heat arrives too early. I think some people wait too long to thin root crops too....I thin them while they're still teeny-tiny so that staying crowded won't slow them down and delay the yield. (I know you know those things...I'm saying them for the benefit of others who read this thread.) When someone tells me their radish roots don't form radishes but just remain long, narrow roots, I know they didn't thin early enough.

When it comes to warm-season crops, I also prefer tomatoes with shorter DTMs so that they'll have a chance to get really good fruitset before the heat arrives. For tomato DTMs, I prefer those with a DTM of 80 days or less, and 70 days or less is even better. The tomato varieties with 85 or 90 or longer DTMs usually won't produce much for me until fall, and in fall we're always rushing to beat the first freeze.

Carol, Well of course you and I grow practically the same things. We are twins who were separated at birth! Mammouth Melting Sugar Pea is a very old variety of flat-podded snow pea with excellent flavor. For me, the plants get 4' to 5' tall and spread out about 6 or 7 or 8" in width. The pea pods themselves are pretty long---probably 4 or 5" inches and they hold on the vine a long time before they develop strings. Did I mention that their flavor is superb? Just be sure to pick them while the peas are flat....you don't let them swell and get big like you do with Sugar Snaps. They don't seem quite as heat-tolerant in my garden as Sugar Snap and Super Sugar Snap. I think their DTM is about 65-68-70 days here. If I fail to plant Mammoth Melting Sugar early enough, I won't get a good yield or, if I plant on time and it gets too hot too early I won't get a good yield. In the years when I plant on time and the weather cooperates, they're superb. I only grow tall peas and not the shorter ones that get only 2 or 3 feet tall.....that's a choice I make so I can get the greatest yield per square foot.

I grow mine on the same type of 6' tall trellis I used for snap peas and pole beans....it is woven wire fencing attached to green metal fence posts with zip ties. Every year I rotate the pea and bean trellises to new beds as a form of crop rotation.

Dawn

Thanks Dawn. So they are best as 'snow pea' type. I may plant both because I really like Sugar Snap.

Carol,

You're welcome. Yes, they're best as a snow pea type.

I am going to plant a lot of peas, weather permitting, because they did so well last year and they're one of the few crops I can harvest before hordes of grasshoppers arrive.

Despite cold weather I'm still seeing grasshopppers, and mostly small ones, which tells me some have hatched out fairly recently. That can't be a good thing.

Dawn

Back to parsnips... no, I would not recommend planting them in the fall, at least not in my location. They would bolt in the spring. I plant them any time after the new year, and they start growing when conditions are right. They grow into the middle of summer, and then, basically stop. By now, it's hard to see where they are planted. Then, after a good freeze, I'll start digging them to eat. I consider them cool season because they only really grow well before the heat comes on.

George

I was going through the seeds I purchased this summer on closeout and came across Burpee's Green Goliath broccolli. It claims 53 days to maturity. No comment on flavor, but I'm going to grow it to find out.

I thought I'd tack my question on to an older thread that covered cool weather crops.

Has anyone grown 'Early Sprouting Purple Broccoli'? I'm very confused about the DTM. Depending on which commercial website you visit, they list anywhere from 60 days to "plant in fall, overwinter and harvest in spring". So.... what's a girl to do? I'm also interested in trying to grow (one more time) a Packman type broccoli. Will this do okay if started early (indoors) from seed perhaps mid-Feb for an early April transplant date?

Re: Macmex's comment on parsnips above. It sounds like now would be the planting time for this long DTM variety. Does anyone have experience with Cobham Improved specifically? I've never grown parsnips before. Lots of things could fall in that "I've never grown..." category.

Thanks!
Lynn

Packman should be planted in mid to late Feb here in z6b to be planted out the first week of April. For me Memorial Day weekend is broccoli freezing time and those are the dates I use. Figure 6 weeks from seeding to transplanting and 55-60 days to harvest. Park's lists it as 57 days.

I am glad you resurrected this thread - seed catalog time. I have never tasted a parsnip. What vegetable comes closest?

Helen,

I just recently had my first sample. It was baked in a gruyere cheese-topped casserole made strictly from root veggies. It was quite tasty but what isn't when smothered in gruyere. This was at a cooking class and when they passed around each root crop, the parsnip smelled like a peppery carrot to me. Maybe someone who has tasted them as a stand alone dish could give you a better description.

During that same class, I tasted roasted beets for the first time. I always thought I didn't like those either since I'd only tried those nasty, pickled ones from the grocery store. After tasting a 'real' roasted one, I've decided to grow those as well.

Lynn

Lynn,
You obviously eat well. Will you be seedmama's mimi too?

Absolutely! We're up to two bambino's now but I guess it's too late to change my GW name to carson & chael's mimi?

The texture of a parsnip is softer than most carrots when cooked and sweeter. Reminds me of a sweet potato-turnip-carrot mix. I usually serve them at Thanksgiving, glazed with allspice and cinnamon.

Dale, OKC

I've even had them deep fried. I had a friend from Australia and she said they fried everything.

We grill loads of carrots and the roasting process really brings out the sugars and a wonderful caramelization occurs. Talk about delicious! I plan to try grilling the parsnips as well (providing I can actually get them to grow).

Lynn

You know, out of all the things I've grilled and cooked and smoked and broiled and boiled and baked I've never grilled a parsnip. Please let me know how it is.

Dale, OKC

When I make a beef stew, I grate one or two parsnips into the liquid. It adds a depth of flavor that noone can quite put their finger on.

I have never planted winter radishes. I see a mixture of them sold at Sand Hill. How are they different from spring radishes. It says they should be planted after the middle of July. Are they used the same way as spring radishes? Is the taste the same?

I am kind of perplexed after reading Dr. Peter's book on "Eat Right for Your Type". I quickly glanced at the food types for my type blood group (O positive). For O group, Meat is preferred over agrarian produce, unfortunately I am vegetation. Its also list some vegetable types are highly beneficial than others... that's put me in confused state of mind in selecting vegetable varieties for gardening. Do you ever had such consequences? Please share your views about food types vs. blood types.

Thank you -Chandra

Chandra - I have known some men who were 'vegetation' but I have seen your garden, so I don't think you are one of them. LOL English is a strange language, but don't you mean vegetarian? I had to laugh a little because we have travelled a lot and haven't learned nearly as much about other languages as we should but have made some serious mistakes. I would say more in hand gestures than in words.

When my youngest son was attending OSU he had a friend who was a bit older than the normal college student at that time, and he had come from Japan to improve his English because of a training school that he needed to attend in his airline career. He came home with my son for the Christmas break, and his first trip to town he asked my son to take hime to Braums where he bought Rocky Road ice cream. When he gave it to me, he said he loved it because it had 'mushrooms'. My son very gently said, "I think you mean marshmallows". He laughed at himself so hard that I am sure I will never see another carton of Rocky Road ice cream without thinking of him. English just has some weird words.

When I was an exchange student in Japan I was talking on my host family's phone to another American when call waiting beeped in. I wasn't sure what to do or say, so I yelled "phone" in Japanese down the stairs. My host mother arrived with a fly swatter and a can of Raid. Apparently I had actually yelled "Roach!!"

Then there was the time the Swedish exchange student in our home asked my 11 year old brother if he could borrow a rubber. We'd already gotten calls from the parents of girls at school, so my brother was paralyzed at what to do. It turns out our student was doing his homework and was requesting the British English word for eraser.

Biradarcm, I don't think blood type has anything to do with what you should eat. If you hadn't asked, I would not comment. There are many chemicals in your body and blood type is only one tiny part of you. I think you should eat a balanced diet. A vegetarian diet can be very healthy if you are careful to get all the nutrients you need. I think you have to be careful when reading some of the diet advice. A variety of vegetables will be good for you what ever your blood type.

Carol and Seedmama, That is funny LOL. I should have been more specific "vegan, food of non-animal origin" I know lot of confusion over word "Vegetation"...different meaning in different parts of the world.

helenh-thank you. I agree, as my regular diet contain lot of wheat, but not have any problem so far (except extra tummy). Book asks O-type to avoid Eggplant, Potatoes, Alfalfa sprouts, mushrooms, Fermented olives, Corn, Avocado... how is that possible?

I have a friend in Denver who served as a missionary in New Zealand. You don't dare say napkin at her table, because that is still a diaper to her.

She still parks her car in the 'gar-edge', and calls the trunk of her car something else too, but I can't remember right now.

After two years in Bolivia, and speaking nothing but Spanish, our son would throw in a Spanish word everytime you talked to him, and not even realize it. He is still fluent in both languages, but he has them separated now.

seedmama - Japanese is a tough language. Did you learn it?

All your funny tales of language woes made me laugh until I cried.

I am still trying to master the English language. I grew up in Fort Worth, so what I actually speak is Texan, which may or may not bear any similarity to English.

Carol, For the trunk of the car, does you friend call it a boot?

ahha LOL, I started laughing myself after remembering term for the trunk of the car, its called "diggy" in rural areas.

I also have "extra tummy" sounds cute doesn't it?

Yep 'boot' it is.

I am happy to hear this, I thought parsnips could only be over wintered here. Yea!! I am going to plant some now....

Dumb question: what is DTM?

I was learning Mandarin there for a while, and one the place cards to my wedding my husbands pet name for me had been spelled to come out like the mandarin word for "pelvis". LOL

Ezzirah,

Gardening has its own acronyms and DTMs is one of the most commonly used ones.
DTM means "Days To Maturity" so it tells you, more or less, how many days it will take your seeds to start producing a harvest.

Now, it couldn't possibly be that simple, right?

Right.

With seeds that normally are direct-sown in the ground, like carrots, beets or corn, the DTM tells you approximately how many days it will take for the plant to take from the time the seedling sprouts to the time you can make your first harvest. So, if a carrot seed packet says 70 days, expect mature carrots about 70 days after the first little sprouts pop out of the ground.

With plants that normally are started from seeds indoors and transplanted out, the DTM indicates the days to maturity from the time the seedling is transplanted out into the ground. So, say you want plant Sungold tomato seeds. You start them indoors about 6 to 8 weeks (or more) before your targeted transplant date. When the weather is in the right temperature range and no freezing weather is expected, you transplant your 6 to 8 to 10 week old seeding into the ground or its permanent outside container. That's when the DTM countdown for it begins.

DTMs are rough estimates only and you may or may not find they apply in your area.

At our house, in the springtime, it seems like some of the cool-season crops take longer to produce than their DTM estimates they will, but with some warm-season crops like tomatoes I sometimies get mature fruit in less time than the DTM indicates.

Every now and then (though rarely) you may run across a seed company whose DTMs are much longer than everyone else's. When this occurs it usually is from a cold region where plants grow and produce much more slowly due to cooler temperatures and less intense sunlight, or the company may be giving you DTMs that count the time from when the seed is sown to when it produces whether it is started indoors or out.

So, I'd use DTMs only for planning purposes because plant performance will vary somewhat.

Dawn

Days to Maturity. That is generally accepted as time from when it goes into the ground until time when you can pick it, although there are lots of variations, especially when you use transplants.

Just got around to this thread again and saw Chandra's comment on the blood type book. Since I was the one who first mentioned it when someone asked if it was possible to eat too many tomatoes, thought I would throw in my two cents. I am from a cattle raising family. My 84 year old father still raises cattle and so my family eats grass-fed beef and has for over 40 years. I married a man from a hunting family and tried for a brief time to at least limit his consumption of red meat. "Three days a week is enough," I said. "No, we need it every day." he answered and meant "sometimes twice a day." So when friends loaned us the book 15 years ago, I knew I'd been beat. "See," he said, "We're supposed to eat a lot of red meat." I still insist on one chicken day a week--homegrown chickens--and one or two fish meals a week--being Norwegian, he loves Kippers and Sardines and I love Salmon having been raised near Seattle. I also make sure to fix a lot of salads and of course we do raise a BIG garden and he eats a lot more veggies now than he was raised on. I went through a period where I blood tested "allergic" to wheat so dropped it from my diet completely for 2 years--along with eggs and milk. (Hardest thing I ever did.) At the end of the two years my Dr gave me the go ahead to replace those foods carefully and I now eat all three but in much less quantity than before. Being an okie, I don't think I could give up cornbread, and especially now that George has introduced me to homegrown meal corn. (DH prefers wheat bread, both yeast raised and biscuits.)

And like Chandra DH and I are blood type O so all four children are too.

I have read after two or three DRs who follow the blood type system and for a while thought I would too, but just couldn't keep it up. One thing I did notice for what it is worth though. He says lentils are very bad for Os. Whether that is why I can't eat them I'm not sure. But every time I have tried, they make me feel really bad, very sluggish and sleepy and headachy. Green/raw onions do the same thing but I can't remember if they're supposed to be bad.

For my family, I find it hard enough to just put a healthy diet on the table, limiting sugar, processed foods, additives etc without worrying too much about the blood type diet.

Last week's rain made me think I could and should start some cool weather crops. My reasoning was that I could grow them under lights in the basement until it was cool enough outside. I'll have them in the hoophouses for an extended growing season so I wasn't terribly concerned about getting them out late. Most had sprouted by this morning so I marched them down to the basement. What I hadn't factored in was the 85 degree temps in the basement. Good grief! I can't imagine I'll be able to ward off damping off. It was a nice dream while it lasted.

Mulberry, I had to laugh about your comments when you said your husband wanted to eat a lot of meat. I spent most of my prior years either in NorCal or in WA State, with a lot of veggies and fish. I'm really big on salads, and we'd often have an entire summer meal of chef's salad. I love things like gazpacho if we have fresh garden produce to make it. My DH was from MO and LA. He used to always say I was trying to feed him 'weeds'.
Well, actually he called my flower garden 'weeds' also, but it was all a joke with him. He just liked to say 'my wife and her weeds!'

I don't know anything at all about the different blood types and what a person should or should not eat. Maybe I should find out. I and several of my family members are all B+ and we are certainly prone to digestive problems. Mostly they are reactions to certain foods or spices that we've learned to avoid.

I noticed that someone mentioned kohlrabi as a cool season crop. Really? We used to grow it in the summer in inland WA. It takes up so much space for so little yield that I haven't planted it for a while, but I really do like them.

Pat

Pat,

About the kohlrabi, yes, really. In our climate, kohlrabi is a cool-season hardy crop that you plant at the same time as other hardy crops. The OSU-recommended spring planting date for kohlrabi is Feb. 15-March 10.

Here's the classification of veggie crops and their weather tolerance as descriped by OSU:

Hardy crops: may be planted before last killing frost and includes asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, onions, green (English or sugar snap) peas, radishes, rhubarb, spinach and turnips.

Semi-Hardy Crops: will be injured by a hard frost but otherwise will grow well in cool weather and will tolerate light frosts. This category includes: beets, carrots, cauliflower, Swiss chard, lettuce, and Irish potatoes.

Tender Crops: will be injured or killed by even a light frost but otherwise will withstand cool weather. This group includes tomatoes, peppers, beans, okra, southern peas, pumpkins and sweet corn.

Very Tender Crops: will be injured by cool weather. This includes cantaloupes and other melons, watermelons, cucumbers, eggplant, summer and winter squash and sweet potatoes.

One of the hardest things about gardening here is that our erratic spring weather can be very hard on hardy and semi-hardy plants because often it warms up more quickly than they'd like and they burn up before they can produce. Conversely, we go from 'too cold' to 'too hot' in about one day and that can be hard on tender and very tender plants because the heat can shut them down before they get a chance to produce much.

Dawn

Bump

This thread was funnier to me this time than it was the first time around. I do not agree with the blood type diets but know of someone who follows it. She is a middle age woman who just remarried and she insists on eating steak every day, but doesn't prepare them for the rest of her family because they are 'not good for their type'. She eats all of this good food in front of her husband and if he asks for a bite she says, "Well OK, one bite, but it's not good for your type."

He is such a creep, so I am entertained by this. Sorry, but you are now seeing my revenge side showing. LOL

I love grain type foods and if I couldn't have those, I would really be lost. It tells me (Type A+) that I should be vegetarian, avoid gluten, and whole fat dairy, and peppers and tomatoes. Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha. Not in this lifetime.

Carol, I, too, was amused by this thread.

To those of you who grow carrots, do you ever find Black Swallowtail caterpillars on the tops? Just curious since it is in the same family as Dill, Fennel, and parsley. BSTs don't use every plant in the Apiaceae family, but I've never heard mention of any cats on Carrots.

Susan

Susan,

I've never had BST cats on carrot foliage, but often have them on dill and parsley. It could be the timing of the carrot plantings that makes a difference. I usually plant them in March and they usually are done before June begins or in very earliest June. I do see lots of BSTs in the flower, herb and veggies beds in spring, but don't see many cats till summer.

However, we are surrounded by thousands of acres of land left mostly in its native state, so there's oodles of wild plants they like and that large food source area might be the reason I never see them on my carrots.

If I was trying to grow carrots in the hot summer months, they might be visited by the BST cats, but since carrots need to mature while the weather is still cool in order to have the best flavor, I don't have any of them growing in the hot months.

Dawn

I got a chuckle out of this thread also. My blood type is AB+, I doubt that it has changed but my reaction to different foods sure has.

Larry