[greeneyes]

That’s a pickle. Short of making stem cuttings and starting over, or digging up and transplanting, I don’t know what you could do.

My hubby made a garden plot, and it just happened to have a butternut tree on the s.west side. It was just a tiny thing. Now, years later it produces great nuts, but half the garden patch is worthless for regular produce. The only thing that grows there is polk.

Plus even the sunnier spots are limited because of the toxins made by the butternut. Can’t plant tomatoes or potatoes for example.

[Marcella]

There is a new book out on prepping and I saw mistakes in the book from a summary of the chapters. I won't be buying that book but it's okay for someone beginning to prep. He speaks of making beans and rice for protein using half rice and half beans. Your stores of rice and beans is vital enough that you need to know how much of each you actually need to produce protein and it's not half and half. You can save on beans if you know the proper amounts to use. I've copied parts of articles I did on prepping regarding beans and rice together and a way to cook dry beans using as little fuel as possible but getting the beans soft to eat. Note the proportions of beans and rice to use to produce protein:

BEANS AND RICE CHEMISTRY TO PRODUCE PROTEIN:
The chemistry part: Beans and rice do not have to be eaten in equal amounts in order for the body to break it down into complete protein. Denise Hansen, the dietitian tells us in, “Eating off the Grid” (you really need this book), that the ratio of 3 or 4 portions of grains (rice) to 1 of legumes (beans), is sufficient. Let's see, that's about 4 tablespoons of cooked rice (grain) and 1 tablespoon of cooked beans (legumes), or about 1/2 cup cooked rice and 1/8 cp. cooked beans, or 1 cup cooked rice and 1/4 cup cooked beans. Get the idea? Be sure to eat enough rice with the beans and be sure smaller children don't just eat one or the other. Said another way by Utah State University: “Dry beans average about 22% protein in the seed, the highest protein content of any seed crop. They contain all essential amino acids, except methionine. Methionine can be obtained from corn, rice, or meat.”

COOKING DRIED BEANS:
Dried beans are hard things that have to be made into soft, plumped up things. Cooking dried beans seems to mean a long time of boiling, boiling, boiling, using a lot of fuel - example: I have a bag of 15 bean soup mix, have to soak beans overnight, then simmer them two and a half hours. I also see recipes on the web saying simmer pinto beans for four hours. I'm not using that much fuel in an emergency situation. (In today's world, with power, when I do bean soup, I put it all in crock pot and let it do it's thing for about 5 hours.)

Rather than write the instructions for cooking beans in Cooking off the Grid, I'll just tell you what I did when I followed them, very simple. For this experiment, I used one cup of dried pinto beans. I rinsed them to remove any dirt. Put them in a pot with water to twice the depth of the beans. Brought them to a boil and boiled (don't simmer), for two minutes (just two minutes!). Removed them from heat and let them sit 1 hour. Poured off the dirty soak water. Covered with new water, added 1 tablespoon oil and 1/2 tsp salt as it said, boiled them 30 min. and they were totally done. Beans that will cook to soft in this thirty minute final cooking are black, white, red, pinto, kidney, garbanzo, etc. Lima beans, large or baby, need 45 min. final cooking time.

Some type beans do not need soaking/puffing up before cooking - lentils is one and they cook in 30 minutes. Others are split peas and black eyed peas.