Animals like some of the strangest things. My daughters cat loves olives of all things. If you give it one, it rolls around on the floor with it like it is in love before it eats it!!!

No gardening here, the ground is frozen, most of the snow cover we had melted last Saturday. The only garden activity I'll have is brousing the catalogs. I do have my iris seeds in the fridge, and they should be ready to plant in January.

I've never heard of an animal liking olives that's crazy Karen!

My cat loves brussel sprouts.

Cookies4kids said:Animals like some of the strangest things. My daughters cat loves olives of all things. If you give it one, it rolls around on the floor with it like it is in love before it eats it!!!

Silly Kitty! I guess it doesn't know cats are not supposed to like olives.

Cat's love brussel sprouts? I can't even get my husband to eat those and I can't get myself to eat olives! Crazy lol

It would be my guess that its the roll around factor that attracts the cats.

I used to have a stallion that loved dill pickles. When I was showing him, If we were traveling across country and stop at a micky d's he knew and would nicker for the dill pickles off my hamberger.

I was able to pick some leaf lettuce the other day. My fava beans are looking really good. And my teeny, tiny broccoli, purple sprouting got transplanted (I direct sowed). Another week of mild weather so I have the row cover off. Oh, some parsnips did come up but not sure if they will make it to maturity. Maybe if I could even let them go to seed so I could collect seed...

I guess I can almost see a horse eating a dill pickle... because of the salt; but cats eating olives and brussel sprouts?? I agree with SCurtis, those 2 things are marginal in my book, at best.

Arlene, do you plant parsnips in the fall there? That's something I'm planning to try next year, and I think I've read that (here) they should be left in the ground all winter, then harvested as early as possible in the spring. I'm assuming that if you leave them longer they will go to seed -- ?

I checked things out in my hoophouse today and surprisingly there hasn't been much of any damage to anything from the cold temps we have been having (regularly going below 10F at night and not up to 32F in the day, not much sun to warm things up either.) Only a few of the lettuce leaves have been frozen... but unfortunately there is really a lot of slug damage to the plants -- they are apparently enjoying the extension of their season! I'll definitely have to put some Sluggo in that area in the spring, there will probably be a slug population explosion. Still, I'm really encouraged that everything is surviving so well; I didn't start the turnips and kohlrabi and cabbage soon enough, and some other things are pretty trashed by the slugs, but overall a pretty good result for this experimental year.

If Tom has a horse that eats pickles, my daughters cat eating an olive is pretty believable, lol. Anyway, who would fib at Christmas??

We've always had dogs that love fruits and veggies. Our dogs have eaten pretty much everything except lettuce. They get veggies or fruit every night with their kibble for dinner. Our last golden retriever lived to be 16.5 years old....apparently the diet agreed with her.

Our dogs have all LOVED tomatoes. They quickly learn to find a tomato plant they can reach to start picking them off...and they very quickly learn how to target the ripe ones (except our basset hound who loved green tomatoes, and would get stuck behind the fence from eating too many--he'd howl until we came and rescued him).

Getting ready to start some new seeds for my hydroponics unit. Going to do basil, lettuce, bok choy and a mini tomato plant.

Sandy, my dad planted his parsnips in like June or something, grew them all summer and left them in over winter. He was in the Traverse City area. I should have planted mine much sooner but life got in the way and I'm always trying anyway. Sometimes I get lucky.

Not sure if DE will work for slugs or not? And being covered, rain wouldn't affect it. It's fun pushing the season though, well worth the effort even if all doesn't work out.

Arlene, planting in June makes sense -- considering our soil is frozen until, oh, May or so (not really, but it sure seems like it! and most things do get planted around the first of June) And I totally understand that "life getting in the way" thing...

Actually, yes -- I think the DE would work; kind of forgot about it for a moment there! The experimentation with the hoophouse this time of year is interesting... but my main expectation is being able to plant some things earlier than I would otherwise be able to. And, something to do while I can't "really" garden... Totally loving the Piggy seed swap, though; probably wouldn't have needed the distraction of the HH if I had known I was going to get myself into that!

Only 18 more days until the winter solstice -- then the days can start getting longer again!

I haven't had parsnips for a couple years, but they get nice and sweet if left in the ground over winter and dug in the spring. It's nice to have something to harvest in the spring when the ground thaws. I have to make sure to plant them next year. I do plant them as early as possible to give them time to grow large enough.

I was never fond of parsnips growing up but now I roast them with other root veggies and they are so good! Trouble for me this year is the voles kept eating all my root veggies! Now the garden is mowed so not so many hiding places, AND, little Shockley (rat terrier puppy) has figured out what he is supposed to do! Yay!

Sandy, the HH will be wonderful for you to start some things early! I seem to always over do and try to do too large an area. I have set up some raised beds at my house instead of the farm and I'm going to try early crops here since I will be able to monitor them better. Lately I have only been going to the farm once or twice a week and that doesn't work very well when you have plastic with no venting, especially since we still are getting high 60s in temps!

Tom, you have your tree up already !!

Yes, I'm late this year, ususally put it up the day after TG, but I wanted to shampoo the carpets first, so it took me a while.

Beautiful tree, Tom. All of our decorations inside and out, go up on Thanksgiving weekend. The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas goes way too fast for me, so I stretch that time to look at the lights as far as I can!!!

tveguy3 said:Yes, I'm late this year, ususally put it up the day after TG, but I wanted to shampoo the carpets first, so it took me a while.

As long as it's not BEFORE Thanksgiving!!