Posted on by Information Seekers

Random Stuff – Cutting Rocks, Shepherd's Purse & Finishing the Big Giant Spoon

Just the usual monthly collection of stuff that didn’t make it into standalone videos.

Referenced in this episode:
Spring Nature Walk (on this channel): https://youtu.be/LX2iwfbwYuc
Michigan Rocks Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/MichiganRocks
Lapping an urchin fossil by hand (on this channel): https://youtu.be/oWMpdShZx4A

18 Replies to “Random Stuff – Cutting Rocks, Shepherd's Purse & Finishing the Big Giant Spoon”

  2. What I find really remarkable about beaches like that is the variety, which have obvious come from different places and different depth layers.

  3. Just love the look of that spoon. For me nothing beats any gift that's homemade and wooden items to me they are the best gifts. Stay safe everyone and especially @Atomic Shrimp

  4. The rocks were fun! The plant you pointed out grow wild here in the US and I know them as spice plants. I used to love to snack on them while foraging and added them to salads and many dishes for nutrition and flavor. Sorry that your project didn't work out. I wonder if you could make a mustard paste out of the seeds?

  6. I love all the safety comments after a crafting session with tools! It’s almost like you are a small boy 😂

  9. I wonder what you could do with "kvanne" (Angelica archangelica, wild celery (I think)), it was very popular long ago, and is still used in alcoholic things (some asinths par example, as they say in France). How would you use it?

  10. Hmmm … that spoon looks like an embryonic banjo to me. Not that I'm trying to sow a seed for a future project, you understand – dear me, no. 🙂

  12. Reminds me a bit of some of the round pebbly beaches of Lake Superior in the US.

    Only been on the Minnesota side though in the past 30 years, but will be visiting the Michigan side later this year.

  15. In Australia we have a tree, the Banksia, who's seeds need a fire to pop open and then fall to the ground, or are already on the ground but won't open till they have been through a fire…. hence bushfires actually help these to grow. The original people who live here did controlled burns,.

  16. You talking about seed germination strategies reminded me of the first time I tried to grow tomatoes from seeds collected from a supermarket tomato. I had grown tomatoes before from a purchased packet of dry seeds, and these had always worked well. But with the freshly harvested seeds? I tried several types of tomato, and all of them failed – no germination at all, even after months in damp compost.
    So then I went looking in some literature to find out what I was doing wrong. It turns out that tomatoes have a compound present in their juice which inhibits germination of the seeds, and so they won't germinate at all unless this is all gone. One way of removing this is to eat the tomatoes – our digestion destroys it but the seeds pass through us intact, which is why tomato plants can often be found growing near sewage outflow pipes, or on railway lines in parts of the country where train toilets still empty directly onto the tracks.

    But I discovered a better and easier way: Collect the seeds in a sieve and rinse most of the pulp and juice off. Then spread them onto a piece of kitchen roll or tissue paper and fold it over to trap them. Let this dry out completely – either on a sunny windowsill, or in a food dehydrator, or in a sealed jam jar with some calcium chloride crystals in the bottom. The drying process seems to destroy the germination inhibitor compound completely. There is no need to separate the seeds from the paper either – just rip it into pieces and poke the bits with seeds stuck to them into a pot of damp compost and they will germinate in a week, or two weeks at the most. This method has worked every time – and tomato plants grow FAST!

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