Mark, I second Glenn's recommendation of Triple crown blackberry. They taste great, have no thorns and are highly productive and disease resistant -- probably the most productive fruit in my garden. Like Glenn's, mine have gone berserk with fruit this year. Blackberries need to be trellised and pruned. I have a twenty foot row, with two 4X4 end posts with two wires stretched between them, one a few feet above the ground, the other about 5-6 up. I then tie the canes to the wires as they grow. Some people get into weaving the canes horizontally along the wires as they grow or separating next year's canes from this year's fruiting ones, but this is all too much work for me. You definitely do not want to weave growing blackberries through a cage or mesh as you might do with tomatoes. You will also need to space your blackberries out a bit. Mine are probably a bit too close, but I would say 3' between plants would be a good minimal distance. They will send up new canes each year, on which next year's crop will be produced. You prune off the old canes after the harvest -- some do it in fall, some wait until winter or even early spring. I am less big on Fall gold raspberries. I have had them for three years now, and this will be their final year. They are pretty productive and very vigorous plants, which in the case of raspberries means they are very invasive. If you plant them in your raised bed, they will end up taking up the whole raised bed in a few years unless you work hard to prevent it. They are delicate and very sweet tasting raspberries -- some like this, others find them a bit cloying; I tend to the latter view. Their main advantage, I think, is that they produce in fall at a time the birds and insect pests are not interested so don't require netting. (I have to net my blackberries to keep off the birds.) I have not grown black raspberries, but I believe their culture is similar to that of blackberries. I'd check out from the library Stella Otto's book "The Backyard Berry grower" for more information or go to the Cornell University web site and find their on line book on fruit growing. Sorry, I don't have a link offhand.

Alright I guess I will be using the "Baggie Method" for germination. I also decided to pick up Perlite at the local Lowes store soon so that the seeds can firmly be planted into a growing medium once they sprout since rockwool isnt that compact. Everything I ordered has arrived and I am ready to start once my teacher accepts my proposal which should be tomorrow. I will likely begin the seed germination tomorrow and then build the apparatus today or soon. If I start seed germination tomorrow, hopefully they will sprout by wednesday. Then I can plant the sprouts into perlite and then they can just have their quick growth. I got the deep water culture ready with the nutrient solution and aeration is perfect. Then I will run strips of felt into the nutrient solution so rockwool and perlite stay moist. I will plant the sprouts into perlite and then nutrient water the netted pots so they are not dry at all. Then set it under light. I will check it daily for its water, pH, and "nutrient water" the netted pots every day to make sure they are happy with wet growing medium. ^^ thats the plan...anything wrong? Pictures should be in a few minutes. Here is a link that might be useful: Baggie Method.

So I seem to have been able to do all that I wanted to know how to do. Now for some comments... I like knowing how to change the font, but I agree, I would use it rarely. What I find myself wishing I could do on a fairly regular basis, is putting something in italics, underlining a book title, putting a word in bold. As for the color, something else I would rarely go to the trouble of using, but again, I would like to know how to for that rare occasion when I might. Such as in a Christmas greetings thread or something like that. Most of the time I would not take the time to do that. As a matter of fact, I use the firefox browser and if you notice when I tried to use the color tags, I thought it didn't work. That is because firefox limits html commands when using their browser and I didn't see any red words. I realized that you did and I went and used Internet Explorer and sure enough, I saw the word red in red ink. Strangely, I didn't see the other effects. That was confusing and I have no idea why. BUT, in the browser that I use every day, the commands I wanted to use work fine with the directions you gave me. So I am all set. The thing I wanted most to do and will probably use more frequently than the others, is posting a photo inside the post. I used to use Tinypic, but at some point something changed and I was pasting the command they were providing and it still wasn't working. So these directions worked for me. I compared the command you were suggesting to the command Tinypic provided and they were different. But I think I would still use the Tinypic site to upload the photo and then just change the command where needed. Finally, on Nan's concern about resizing the photos. I assume that the concern is the time it takes to open a thread for someone on dial up when one of the photos is oversized. So the photo I posted above, is oversized? If that is a problem, I will go back and review the directions for resizing. Hope that helps. :-)

Maria, I can't help you on vegetarian dishes, but I can offer this tidbit... Since I HATE to shop, I go to the grocery once a month, and shop like I am feeding an army. I stock my kitchen with canned goods, frozen veggies, crackers, cookies, etc. to last a month. I buy meats when they are on sale, and buy enough to keep the freezer full until the next time it goes on sale. Then the only things I have to go to the store for are bread and milk and cereal (which flies off the shelf here). Doing this, I can plan a meal day to day and not worry about having an item on hand. If the kids have ate a box of crackers, no problem, there is another box in the pantry (and they are pretty good at telling me when they have the last of something). Another thing about it is that if at the last minute, someone decides that they want something other than what I've decided to fix, the ingredients are already on hand (if I have laid out ground beef for hamburgers, and someone chimes in for meatloaf, for example). If you can swing it, it is best to do this stock up at the end of the month, when the stores aren't as busy. Although I am sure there are lots of things you can freeze, I mostly freeze soups and stews. I am willing to bet, though, that you can put together casseroles and put them in the freezer, so they can go directly from freezer to oven to save time. Just my two cents, Holly