I have picked beets in November and stored in gallon ziplock bags in my refrigerator until early March. I find the flavor is good thru January then they seem to loose their flavor the longer I store them after that. My solution was to grow less of them as I had way too many beets and carrots in the fridge. The space used up got to be an issue too. We only own one refrigerator. Wish we had another to store all the apples, beets, carrots ect. Always easy to find friends willing to take the excess.

"Unfort smelling green bean juice again. So I guess I am losing liquid aain in the raw pack green beans. DANG. The instruction booklet is poor for the American.... So I have underlined stuff in it. It says jigging 1 to 4 times per minute, NO WAY. if do so guage goes down past the 10 lb mark on the dial...... DUH>>>" Yet another example of why it is often said here to never use your canner manual for directions for canning. Use it for cooking instructions only. Rather use the current existing directions found at NCHFP. You are losing liquid from the jars not only because you are using raw pack but primarily because you are adjusting the heat while the processing is in progress. That should be avoided at all costs. Trying to get a weight to jiggle just right by playing around with the heat source will always cause liquid to siphon out of the jars. It is far better to allow higher pressure and more frequent jiggling than it is to adjust the heat setting once processing has begun. With a bit of experimenting we can each determine where our heat should be set for uniform processing so no further adjusting is needed. Dave

I started with the spray in the sink, when it was only 2 plants to worry about. I expect that works better outdoors because apparently the aphids are more susceptible to predators once dislodged. Indoors I wonder if it just gave them the motivation they needed to go find my seedlings. Apparently they are much more mobile than I had originally given them credit for. When they are hunkered in attached to the plant they seem barely able to move. I'm going to be out of the country for a couple of weeks. I'm curious to see what my brother will do and what state I'll find them in when I get back. He has a degree in horticulture, so hopefully he will use good sense :)

Are you using the really small cans of wet food, or the bigger ones?? I'd assume the smaller ones would be gone in 4-5 days. Unless you're giving quite small spoonfuls, then I suppose it would take much longer than that. If you don't want to freeze them (which btw, I also think is a great idea) you could still give her a little more wet food than just the spoonful, and decrease her dry a touch, just for duration of being medicated. You wouldn't have to switch her completely, just cut back the dry a bit, and give her a bit more of the wet stuff, to make it go faster. Or if a can is on the verge of going bad and you have more than a spoonful left, I'm sure you could mix it with her dry for a bit of a treat for her.