bragu, I think beets are one of those things that you like or you don't. I love beets but don't like pickles so much. Other family members like pickles and not beets, LOL. Some like both and every year I can pickled beets, either red or golden, depending on what's available when I have time to do them. I use Grandma's old recipe for some family members and the one with pickling spice for others. I did win a Grand Champion ribbon at the fair a couple of years before COVID with the pickled golden beets, but they are much milder than the red ones and the pickling process seems to take away most of the earthy flavor. Annie

She also worked for our local extension office for years and she is a bug about proper and I mean proper)canning methods. Well as any one here can tell you I just LOVE people who are "bugs about proper canning methods". But I got to tell you that this isn't one of them - proper method I mean. She may have worked for the extension for years but she hasn't kept current with the changes since retiring so I'm guessing this wasn't a certified canning class? Ask her about listeria - it's the main problem with refrigerator pickle recipes - and the current extension position on them is do not make them. Botulism is only a problem with pickles if too little vinegar (less than 50:50) is used. I'd strongly recommend you dump these but it is your choice. Without seeing the recipe we have no way to tell if it is safe to use or not. Dave

I'm looking at that recipe right now. I think if you complete the day 6 brine with the vinegar and sugar, let the cucumbers cool and then refrigerate, you should be fine to pick up where you left off when you return from your weekend. The worst that "might" happen is the pickles could be a bit less crisp, but if you stop at day six and can at that point they aren't going to be as sweet or taste as good. I'd take the risk of a slight diminution of crispness over that. I might also delay adding the pickling spice until Day "7" when you return just in case it would get too strong with longer sitting. I see from the recipe the spices are removed before processing. Carol

Hi, Tom After I scanned your article, the first thing I did was follow the link to the OSU research you cited. As I read through it, I didn't see anything different than what is contained in an article I wrote back in '94. The wording and discussion is actually so close to what I wrote, that I tried to find out whether that article was written after mine. I think that initially, adding a small fraction of perlite pumice, Turface, things that you usually consider as drainage material to a large fraction of peat, increases drainage, but only until the peat compacts/nests around the 'drainage' material. Perlite is normally included in commercially packaged soils at less than 10% of the whole. Doubling its presence isn't going to increase drainage or reduce the ht of the PWT, though it will reduce the total volume of water the medium is capable of holding. Illustration: start with 10 parts of fine sand that supports a 4" PWT. Add 1 part of BBs. Does the flow through rate change? How about the ht of the PWT or volume of air in the medium? Technically, on a per volume basis, there is a decrease in the % of air in the sand/BB mix compared to only the sand w/o BBs. All that changes is the 'volume' of water in the PWT. Peat may be slightly different because it's interlocking fibers may not compact to the degree that sand will, but remember that the fiberosity exhibits the same properties whether or not there is drainage material present. If peat compacts when there is no drainage material, it will still compact when there is. In order for drainage material to improve flow-through rates, it has to affect gravitational flow potential. In order to do that, it must great pockets where water molecules can adhere to themselves, increasing their collective mass. These large droplets then depend on cohesion to keep them together as gravity acts to move them down and out of the container. If drainage material can't create 'puddles and channels' within the media, it's not going to be effective. I want to comment on some of the things you mentioned as though we're conversing, so I'll make your offerings bold and my reply will be in default type: Drainage though is a bit of a false goal, or a goal based on an assumption. What we really want is to partially dry out the core of the mix at intervals between watering, which prevents that sour core-rot where roots won't live. My focus has always been on aeration, though I recognize the direct/converse relationship between drainage and aeration. The soils I build and suggest are based on the assurance that they will retain ample volumes of air for extended periods - that they are structurally sound. Of course, drainage automatically comes along for the ride. I don't think I would say "What we really want is to partially dry out the core of the mix at intervals between watering". My view is that there is no 'core' to speak of, because water that is not tightly bound to or in media particles moves down to occupy the PWT, which is actually the bane of most commercially prepared container media. Moisture locked in and on soil particles situated above water in the PWT moves quite freely through media by diffusion, so there is never a saturated 'core', only the PWT if the medium supports one. What we really want, is for the PWT to disappear as fast as possible, so a favorable volume of air can return to the soil ASAP. Roots in soggy media begin to die very quickly, often within a few hours or less at temperatures above 60-65*, so PWTs are a decidedly bad thing. Remember please, that here we are looking at media from the plant's perspective. I acknowledge that a PWT can be a necessity to accommodate our ability or our prioritization in terms of how often we can water, but that doesn't change the fact that media that do not support a PWT and need more frequent watering offer greater opportunity, within the limits of other cultural factors, for plants to grow to their genetic potential. That's an important consideration, because if we knowingly use a soil that supports a PWT because it's more convenient, we are sacrificing some degree of growth and vitality on the altar of that convenience. I try to build my soils to maximize water retention and still have no (or very little) perched water. The cyclic death and regeneration of fine rootage exposed to the anaerobic conditions of media that support PWTs is very expensive from the perspective of energy outlay. Energy that might have gone into blooms, fruit, foliage, or just increasing biomass, must be directed to root regeneration subsequent to each time we dare allow our planting to be irrigated to container capacity. Surely drainage helps and is good generally, but you are assuming it is the only way. I think you can see from my offerings that how I approach container media is more complex than only a single narrow perspective would allow. Al I've seen in your other posts where you refer to capillary action of soils as a negative. I couldn't disagree more. Capillary action is the savior of a soil mix; it's the vehicle that brings wet core water & water from the perched water table you described up to the drying surface, and balances moisture throughout the pot. It eliminates the perched water table. Peat has it and bark doesn't. I've never referred to capillary action as a negative. It just is what it is - the product of adhesion + cohesion - no more friend or foe than gravity or diffusion, which is something you didn't consider. Plants absorb water a molecule at a time, and water readily diffuses in media of large particles due to superior gas exchange. Here again, it's kind of a personal choice. You may prefer a soil with good wicking capabilities, but along with that comes the fact that the better they wick the more perched water they support. I, on the other hand, prefer a soil with good gas exchange (diffusion) and no PWT. The price I'm willing to pay is a strengthened watering can arm. ;o) Bark and peat feel dry to the touch when they reach about 40% moisture content, but plants can still extract water from media particles down to about 30-25%, so 'feels dry' isn't necessarily dry. There's a cush there. I understand what's required for wicking SWCs and how water retention in wick-irrigated media varies from media watered from the top, so we can save that talk for another time. Water starts to perch in containers when the soil particles are something just a little larger than .1". As particle size decreases, the ht of the PWT increases inversely. Whether or not bark holds perched water depends on it's size. Obviously, bark the size of Sugar Pops will hold no perched water, but bark ground to the consistency of peat will. Peat may initially hold more air and water than composted bark, but we all know that compaction is a considerable issue for peat; and conifer bark breaks down at roughly 1/4-1/5 the rate of peat, all cultural influences equal. I point to the fact that I always suggest partially composted or uncomposted bark in the soils I use, in sizes up to 3/8" to ensure no or minimal perched water. The grower can then add finer particulates as he/she sees fit to adjust the water retention of the media. When you start with fine particulates, it's very difficult to amend them to increase drainage/aeration, though as noted above, you CAN add materials like perlite that decrease the volume of water the soil can hold. It just makes more sense to me to approach this from the perspective of building a soil that holds no perched water, but is capable of holding an adequate volume of water in micro-pores, leaving macro-pores largely open, than it is to adopt a soil that, at container capacity, always has a significant fraction of available macroporosity clogged with water. Again, it has much to do with trade offs and what we are willing to do insofar as watering frequency (convenience), but the more highly aerated soil with better gas exchange, which occurs partially because we need to irrigate more frequently, offers better potential. I've grown extensively in both, and if the results weren't significantly better, I'd probably still be growing in a peat or compost-based soil. As always, YMMV. Good talking to you Tom. Al