I found this interesting: Bill P. Back to Story - Help Arctic vault takes shape for world food crops By John Acher Thu Sep 20, 2:36 AM ET In a cavern under a remote Arctic mountain, Norway will soon begin squirreling away the world's crop seeds in case of disaster. Dynamited out of a mountainside on Spitsbergen island around 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole, the store has been called a doomsday vault or a Noah's Ark of the plant kingdom. It is the brainchild of a soft-spoken academic from Tennessee who is passionate about securing food for the masses, and will back up seed stores around the world that are vulnerable to loss through war or disaster. A 20-metre (66-foot) long concrete entrance, still under scaffolding, juts out of the snow-dusted mountain above the coal-mining town of Longyearbyen. It is reached by a switchback road rising to 120 meters above sea level, offering spectacular views of the fjord below and snow-capped Arctic mountains beyond. Visitors descend through the mouth of a gently sloping 40-metre steel tube into the frosty cavern which smells of new cement and is dotted with portable lamps as work progresses for February's opening. "There aren't going to be any better storage conditions than what we will provide here," founder Cary Fowler told reporters during a recent visit to the site in the Svalbard archipelago off northern Norway. "This is a safety deposit box, like in a bank, where you put your valuables." Although this is one of the world's most northerly settlements, an electric freezer will be used to keep the seeds in the three-chambered concrete-lined vault at minus 18 degrees Celsius (minus 0.4 Fahrenheit). If the power fails, permafrost will still keep them frozen, but not as deeply. The project is at the heart of an effort by Fowler's foundation, the Global Crop Diversity Trust, to safeguard strains of 21 essential crops, such as wheat, barley and rice. Rice alone exists in about 120,000 different varieties. Ultimately, it is part of the world battle against hunger, as crop insecurity mainly hurts poor nations. "Crops important to the poorest of the poor have really been neglected," said Roy Steiner, an official at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has provided financial support. "Millet and crops like cow pea receive so little attention." Fowler calls such varieties "orphan crops" because they have no one to take care of them. DIVERSITY FOR EVOLUTION The aim is to preserve genetic diversity, needed by plant breeders in the future to produce varieties able to adapt to challenges like climate change. Crops consist of numerous species, some as different from each other as a "Dachshund from a Great Dane," Fowler said. If such a store had existed 10 years ago, he said, the seeds would have been needed about once a year as seed collections have been wiped out -- for instance by a typhoon in the Philippines and war in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I'm sorry to say we will be using it a lot," Fowler said. Eventually, the vault will have capacity for around 4.5 million bar-coded seed samples and it hopes in its first year to collect half a million. Not all seeds can be stored by freezing. Banana, the world's fourth or fifth most valuable crop, is one example. "The longest viability under these conditions would be that of sorghum -- about 19,500 years," Fowler said. Other varieties will need to be replaced more frequently. "We're trying to capture the diversity not just between different species but within different species -- that's the basis for evolution," said Fowler, an official of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization but his own boss at the Trust. "Extinction happens when a species loses the ability to evolve." SEED PACKETS Norway is contributing some 50 million crowns ($8.6 million) to build the cavern, a sum which Development Aid Minister Erik Solheim said was a pittance for what is gained. "I consider it a development issue ... Poor African countries have fewer resources to protect their genetic heritage than rich countries," he told Reuters at the site. The Gates Foundation, the philanthropic giant created by the founder of Microsoft, has given a $30 million grant to Fowler's effort, including money for packaging seeds in their countries of origin and shipping them to the vault. Some of Gates' money has gone to develop a new style of seed packet, a small silver-colored pouch made of a special foil and layers of other advanced materials to keep seeds dry and frozen -- the "Rolls Royce of seed packets," Fowler said. The Gates Foundation is also helping develop two software systems, one to help manage seed banks and another to link them globally so that plant breeders can find what is available. "Seeds are almost the software of the natural world that has taken millions of years to develop, and we don't know how we will need them in the future," the foundation's Steiner said.

danab_z9_la (Dan) - I hope this information from a homemaker will make your research day for you. You will find USDA (United Stated Department of Agriculture) information at the link below on preparation of fruits (including figs) for dehydrating, and it may help answer your other questions - so read it carefully and take notes. Maybe you haven't studied this yet, but storage time of all food, including home-dehydrated foods, depends on several things: 1.) Heat 2.) Light 3.) Moisture 4.) Oxygen Shelf-life of storage foods are usually calculated at an "average temperature", often called "room temperature" which is usually 70-degrees F. To maximize the shelf-life the optimum storage temperature would be between 40-60-degrees F. for "room-temperature" storage. Zero-degrees F or colder for even longer storage time, and the food will also maintain more nutritional value at freezer temperatures. If you are going to freeze the food, you may want to use a method called DEHYDROFREEZING which is a combination of partially dehydrating the food and then freezing it. Fruit will normally have 80% of the moisture removed during dehydrating (you can weigh your food before drying, and then post-drying to determine how much moisture has been removed - Figs contain about 78% water before drying - you do the math...). When you use dehydrofreezing you dehydrate 70% of the moisture BUT the food MUST be stored in the freezer to avoid bacteria growth. Benefits of dehydrofreezing: the fruit will have good flavor and color and they reconstitute in about one-half the time it takes for traditionally dried foods. Information you can easily find in books at your local library on the subject, or on-line, will show most dried fruit can be stored in an air-tight container (NOT vacuum-sealed or with an oxygen absorber) for one year at 60-degrees F, or six months at 80-degrees F. Vegetables have about half the shelf-life of fruits because fruits contain sugar and sugar extends shelf-life. Extend that time to double normal storage time by vacuum-sealing (oxygen-free). Extend it even longer by vacuum-sealing AND storing in the freezer. Information from "How To Dry Foods" by Deanna DeLong (a book commonly found in libraries, or available through Inter-Library Loan - or purchase it through Amazon.com): Figs are excellent for drying. Storage time for best quality at 34-degrees F - 18-24-months or 5-8-years at 0-degrees F. Three pounds of fresh figs makes 1-pound dried. Fifty-five percent of the weight of dried figs is natural sugar. Check out the book for more information including: -varieties best for drying -which fruit to select -water content before drying -how to prepare figs -pretreatment (if any) -drying temperature -dryness test -how to use Oddly enough, I pulled all this information from my home library and information I teach in home-dehydrating classes I give. No big Government Research Grant funding this - just a nice person who took my personal time to enlighten someone doing (ah hem) "research". -Grainlady Here is a link that might be useful: Drying Fruits

"QUOTE>The best way to save money is to... NOT spend it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you don't spend it, you save it. Don't think too hard about it. Putting it under your mattress gives a better return than spending it!"QUOTE> As a single person with no children I sort of agree with this. I'm not big on investing. Perhaps once I'm done with school (returning adult changing careers). I have direct deposit and don't really pay attention to my money. I pay my rent, credit card bill, phone bill, food bill, car payment and ins. Those checks go out every month.(except car ins. I pay that in a lump sum every three or four months, I don't pay attention) As a recovering shopaholic I don't purchase much of anything. I'm too busy anyway with work and school. So I basically ignore my money. I find that when I do finally look into my bank account I end up with so much just sitting around. Last year I looked and to my suprise I had six grand just sitting there. It accumulated over a few months. I finally did open a online account and put it in there and now it sits there being ignored again. I transfered my credit cards to my credit union, my car loan to the credit union and pay my tuition out of pocket so no bill once I'm done. All that extra income will be all mine. I just spent about six grand on new furniture but I'm paying it off monthly (union cc special super low rate until its paid :)) and letting that suprise six grand that accumulated just sit in that online account. When it reaches nine thousand I will pay off my car. Then pay off the credit cards with the extra from the no longer car payment and lower ins. extra cash. Shouldn't take long. I pay way more than the minimum now anyway. Then once again with the ignoring and we will see how much I accumulate. That will go towards a house down payment. If you have no outside responsibility other than yourself. Ignore your money and stay out of the malls. Don't look at your account for a few months. ( I didn't do this on purpose I'm just real lazy when it comes to balancing a check book and if I didn't have direct deposit I would walk around for weeks with a live check because I always forget) When you see the extra in the account you tend to spend it. I know I have enough to cover the checks I write so I don't think about what's left over. I ignore it and then one day take a peak and suprise large sum looking back at me. I don't recommend this to everyone because it obviously won't work for all. Keeps me in line though. I see money that has no obligation tied to it and mall here I come!

Louise, First, you might want to start a new thread for this. You have jumped in on the tail end of a three year old thread, and a lot of folks may just be looking over it. I'm located in the center part of South Carolina, USA and have very little experience with potting in sphagnum (in this part of the world we tend to prefer the fir bark mixes), so I'll leave potting mix preferences to someone else to comment on. Generally speaking the orchid plants sold in the "big box" stores and florist shops in the USA come double potted. the plant and potting mix are growing in a clear slotted plastic pot that is nested inside the heavy ceramic un-drained outer pot. This is the reason most new growers loose their first few orchid plants. It sounds like your plant was actually planed in the heavy non draining pot, and you have taken all the necessary steps to give it the best chance of survival. If your new plastic pot only has one or two holes in the bottom, consider cutting additional openings in the side of the pot for additional ventilation. Enclosing the pot and plant in a plastic bag increases the humidity around the plant, and this is good. You may also want to consider putting a few holes in the top and bottom of the outer bag to increase air flow. You want to enclose this plant in an atmosphere that has lots of humidity and warmth, and a bit less light than normal until the plant begins to grow. It also needs air flow to prevent any standing water from accumulating around the roots. The roots need to be moist in the potting mix, but not wet. Epiphytic orchids grow in the jungles attached to trees and rocks that are covered with moss, lichens, and other plants. When it rains, they get soaked, but as soon as it stops raining they begin to dry off. You need to duplicate this for your other orchids, but for this one plant that is already having problems, increasing humidity, temperature, and air flow without allowing standing water to collect around the roots is the proper method to deal with it.. This process is slow, and does not always produce the desired results, but when it does, it produces a great deal of satisfaction for a new grower, not to mention the knowledge and experience you have gained from the experience. Good luck. Bill