A couple of years ago I kept my own potatoes over the winter to plant in the spring. By the time I pulled out the bag, the sprouts were at least a foot long. I knocked off all the shoots and planted them, and got a decent harvest - about 5lbs per lb planted (high density planting). I agree with bullthistle - get them in the ground this weekend and keep the shoots. Cheers, Tim

I am having a hard time finding info on less grown crops like black eyed peas lima beans sweet potaoes strawberries in the south (north texas) eggplant peanuts celeriac sunflowers shallots first companion ideas for the above would be helpful and good web sites or info on how to grow the above would be greatly appreciated Do sweet potaotes need something to climb on? If so, what do they like to clinb on? Do black eyed peas climb, or better left to sprawl? Are egg plants caged like tomatoes? I have read on strawberries and sweet potaoes, both have me stumped. I am having to learn so much already, maybe I will figure that stuff out later. I grew up on a strawberry farm in Vermont. But it was chemically grown, and vermont and texas two different creatures. We are hot hot hot here. 95-100 all summer. We do not have much of a spring or fall, so cool weather crops are tricky. Winters can freeze or be in the 80's. Hard to keep plants happy here I think. I am a brand new gardener and have no clue. Well no clues, beyond my mistakes I made last year with my only crop of squash, and what have read on-line. So many conflicting opinions. Plus most info is geared for the north or europe. I am planting the black eyed peas and limas in a three sisters garden with corn, squash, melons, cucumbers, green beans and radishes. Had trouble getting the radish to come up direct seeding, so I presprouted in a paper towel and that worked. So radishes are so small not to be of much help now. 4 beds, a different legume and differnet curcubit in each bed. It is an experiment at this point. So far I have had to pull the squash, all were full or evil borers. I replanted the squash. The corn is getting little tiny bugs in the stuff that is heading out at the top. And they are leaving a dust. Either it is too hot for the corn, it might be a northern variety (I have golden bantam, and country gentalman) or maybe soil fertility is not great yet. I am a no til gardener, so it will take a while for things to get just right. I have hilled the soil, but mised a hill and they fell over. I have those staked, and I put in pole there to help the beans climb, since the corn is weak. I wonder if any will produce despite the problems. Beans are not appreciating the shade of the corn, and neither are the black eyed peas. Melons are taking forever to sprout, so I am trying presprouting. Taking forever that way too. The pack was free with the order. Maybe they were old seeds. The cucumber pack was also a free with order thing. They are slow to sprout too. I am behind in my planting due to a bad case of poison oak I got on may 2 and I still itch. Almost gone, thank the lord. I am no longer doing any spring gardening. I have bad tree alergies in feb and march. So I can sart the corn in april and be ok. The spring veggies did not do well anyway. Too hot. I have nice sized tomato plants, only two small tomatoes now though. I think since it is upper ninties the fruit is not setting. I have in the same bed as the tomatoes, beets, scallions (not too happy in the heat), basil, borage, a 6" sunflower plant, chives, garlic. The chives and garlic are under the tomatoes someplace. They were not under there when I planted them. I had no clue tomatoes spread so. I wish I had paid the slightest bit of attension when my grandma gardened. I am just planting the remaining presprouts: beets, scallions, radish, borage, basil, cukes, melons. I know the cool veggies are a long shot. I just kept trying to get them to sprout, outside, and now that they have, inside, it is too late in the season. I directed planted them outside two or three times. By the time I got the idea to paper towel them, it was april or was it may? too hot. All those guys are mear babies, not even true leaves yet. I know to avoid the cool spring stuff now. I know I do not have enough humus from the mulch breaking down, for all that I am trying to grow yet, but I just wanted to get started. I do not buy compost and or manure from the store as most of theat stuff at the garden store is watse from the toxic factory farm industry. Some compost is now made from human sludge. They also pasturize all the good microbs out of it too. I find the idea of companion planting neat, but do wonder if it works. One can only experiment with it I guess. Have to try to grow with the companion plant and without to be sure the combo helps at all. I like the way the garden looks interplanted though. I do not have too many of the same kind of plant in any one place. I need to go on over to texas gardening to see how to get strawberries, sweet potaoes, and peanuts to work here. Celeriac is probably not going to do well here. I just want to try everything to find out for myself

To me I tend to go for total plant volume over strictly counting eyes, but it sort of depends on the particular plant. In this case two larger eyes would be the winner to me over any number of small eyes. Sometimes when a hosta is stressed out it will overcompensate and put out a ton of eyes. On a large hosta like Blue Hawaii it should be multiplying fairly slowly, with the eyes getting fatter and fatter before putting out new ones. If one has a bunch of eyes I bet there is something going on with the crown, either some kind of rot or some other kind of damage that happened to it along the way. In time the larger eyes will multiply naturally on their own over a bunch of small ones and will often be the larger and more robust and mature looking plant quicker than a bunch of small ones. I think of it as quality vs quantity. On the other hand if it is a fast multiplying plant then more eyes would be the way to go over a couple larger ones as they will catch up to the larger ones quick enough. The other question I get asked sometimes is if you have nothing but single eye plants and some are flowering but others are not, which one do you pick? The flowering one will appear to put lots of energy into the flower and won't send up any more leaves from that eye but the one that isn't flowering will continue to flush out new leaves so may seem the better choice. To me, however, I would take the flowering one because after it flowers it will work on setting new dormant buds which become more eyes next year. It won't do much this summer but next year it will be larger than the singles that didn't flower this year. Just my take on it :) Chris

I had been wanting to move them (and 4 others for about 4 years or so, so that is why I dug the whole thing. I didn't really see any way of just digging off a clump, knowing how bad the top looked. Would 4 eyed (multiple eyes per piece) up woody pieces and 4 nice healty roots make for a nice start? do you think? Should I send more? Maybe the fairest trade would be a flate rate box with a 'bunch' of each. I know when you buy a potted red one at a big box store, that it doesn't have much foliage, thus not many eyes, and they aren't cheap.