I find this very interesting. I am a novice at both gardening and the art of season extension. I had never even read the packaging on a solar panel until last summer so I am floundering with this technology - but it is so much fun. This is like tinker toys for adults! I have a small 6 x 8 palram polycarbonate greenhouse. It sits on a deck. I created a trough inside the greenhouse using 2 x 6's, a rubber liner and then topped it with leftover ceramic tiles that I had so that this square footage was still usable for plant placement. I then made myself a solar water heater with pop cans, paint, pvc, plastic, wood and which originally worked using thermosyphoning but I considered that too slow a movement so I added a small water fountain pumps run by a solar panel. It is direct connected - no sun, no heat, no movement. Sun out, the water circulates to heat up the trough. It is not a huge gain, but I don't pay for any energy to run this spring throughout the fall. I have bought a deep cell battery and have additional solar panels set up in preparation to store energy for after sundown use - not to operate the pump, but for lighting or to run an ozone generator from time to time. I did try to insulate some for the later fall season using Johnny seeds bubble stuff but there wasn't much use to this. I do have a natural gas heater but shut it down for February and most of March because my GH is too leaky and I see no reason to pay to heat the outdoors. I will take you advice and do a better job of sealing the GH this year. I am also building a cold frame and will be making bases for two small pre-fab cold frames. I plan to have these completed by the end of next week. Our ground is still frozen so I won't be able to properly prepare the area for these to fit over for maybe another few weeks. I am champing at the bit. Come on thaw! Thanks for sharing your ideas with us. I will be looking forward to your posts.

Fascinating! I only ever thought of barley as an old world crop, the kind essential to brewing beer ;). In fact the only cereal grain I had ever heard about coming from the Americas was corn. How very interesting! You could probably throw sunflowers into that mix as well. Though, the reading I have done follows yours in that many of the plants such as sunflowers and goosefoot (chenopodium, which would fall in the amaranth family), weren't necessarily "cultivated" but sort of "followed" human habitation and agriculture. Kind of an Indian version of "weed cuisine" haha. I also was reading an interesting article on peppers from NSS a little while back. While chilies were gathered and used frequently by the Indians in places like Mexico, further north, in areas like the Four Corners region, they never really caught on. The Indians there preferring a more "bland" diet.

I'm going to give this a bump. Barb

Rocky Mountain Conifer Group Meeting Saturday March 5, 2016 (1:00 pm to 4:00 pm) The next meeting of the Rocky Mountain Conifer Group will be on Saturday, March 5, 2016 at 1:00 pm at the Denver Botanic Gardens in the Plant Society House. Come join us for a fun afternoon of light refreshments, virtual tours of the DBG conifers accessed via Gardens Navigator presented by Ann Frazier, information from Dave Olszyk on hosting the 2017 American Conifer Society Annual meeting, a plaque presentation designating DBG as an ACS Reference Garden, a Tour of the DBG conifers presented by Mike Kintgen, and more! Please RSVP to Barb Inman at beinman@earthlink.net if you will be attending.