Sheri, It is hard to assign a size to my garden because it isn't a square or rectangle. It has about 8 sides (no two the same length) because it is squeezed into a clearing next to the woodland with heavy forest to its north about 10' away, light forest to its west, the driveway to its south and a retention pond and berm to its east. So it meanders and curves and is roughly 80' x 80' in the main area with a large extension jutting off the NE corner. When we put up the taller fence, it took us right at 400' feet of fencing, so if it were perfectly squared, I guess it would be roughly 100' x 100'. That's the main garden. Then there's the Peter Rabbit Garden next to my garden shed, and I think it is about 15' wide by about 60' long, and the 'auxiliary' area in our narrow band of sandy soil where I'm growing melons this year. It is about 12' x 30'. And, if I can get Tim out behind the barn with the rototiller next week, I want to plant field corn, amaranth and sunflowers in an area behind the barn that is roughly 40' x 20'. That's likely to happen if it doesn't rain. If it rains a lot on Friday-Sunday like they are saying it will, it might be too muddy to rototill. I'd rototill it myself today before the rain arrives, but it is very dense red clay and you have to use the big tiller which is too much tiller for me to handle. I don't think my little Mantis cultivator could handle that heavy red clay. I also have about 80 containers, including a 4' diameter galvanized metal stock tank (with the rusted out bottom that allows great drainage) and about 6 or 8 molasses feed tubs they are roughly the size of a whiskey half-barrel) plus lots of smaller containers. The joke around here is that you can't set down any sort of container like a large iced tea glass, or I'll drill holes in it and plant something into it. My newest container is a cattle feed trough that is about 8 or 10' long and about 20" wide and 10" deep. It was a Christmas gift from my DH because I've long complained that every wild critter in the world eats our lettuce and I wanted to get it out of the ground. He drilled numerous drainage holes in it and I filled it with Miracle Grow Moisture Control Soil and planted about 20 or 25 lettuce varieties in it. We've been harvesting lettuce from it since late March. Slowly the lettuce varieties are bolting one by one, at which time I pull them out and feed the bolting lettuce to the chickens. Once all the lettuce is done, I'll replant something else in it, probably bush beans, true dwarf tomatoes or southern peas for the summer months and will replant it with winter lettuce in the fall. The lettuce from our trough has been absolutely perfect with no pests on it whatsoever whereas the lettuce in the ground in the garden has had a minor bout with aphids and also some pillbugs (I didn't put Slug-Go out around it or they wouldn't be there) and grasshoppers. We also had something, likely field mice or voles, eat about half the young in-ground lettuce plants the first few weeks after I planted them there. They can't easily reach the cattle trough lettuce since it is a couple of feet above the ground and I don't think they can climb its metal legs. So far this year, I only have a few tomatoes in the largest containers and Laura Bush petunias in all the rest. Normally I grow peppers and tomatoes in a lot of the smaller containers, but due to the ongoing drought, I stuck those veggies in the veggie garden (hence, more crowding to squeeze in all of them) and planted more drought-tolerant flowers in the smaller containers, which mostly are 4 to 10 gallons in size. All that really works for me with squash bugs and squash vine borers is to raise them totally under floating row cover and to take off the cover briefly every morning to hand-pollinate them. I just get so tired of fighting them otherwise. It is supposed to be a big locust hatch this year, but I don't know if they'll come our way. I need to do some research and see what they are saying about this year's hatch. With locusts as with adult grasshoppers, there's not a lot you can do as most pesticides, whether organic or synthetic in nature, don't kill them in the adult stage. You have to do your best to repel them (Garlic Barrier or Surround WP might be effective). I avoid praying mantids because they will eat all your other beneficial insects. In fact, the praying mantids eat each other. We still have a few around every year, but I certainly don't buy and release them. I'd rather have all the other many types of beneficial insects that control many other insects. With adult grasshoppers, I have had some success with placing quart canning jars half-filled with a mixture of water/molasses around the garden. The hoppers fly in to get a drink of the sweet water and drown. It might work with locusts. I've never had a bad problem here with true locusts, but we do fight adult grasshopppers by the hundreds and thousands every summer. For young hopper nymphs in the spring, I put out Semaspore, which contains Nosema locuste, a biological control that only targets members of the locust family. However, it is most effective only in April's and May's cooler temperatures and only on the earliest instars when the hoppers are roughly 1/4" to 1/2" in length. I've been putting it out in my garden weekly for about a month now. It is good you are seeing a lot of ladybugs. They are terrific garden helpers. I see them scattered around here and there in my garden and assume they're working on controlling aphids, mites, etc. My best garden helper so far this year has been the Spined Soldier Bugs, which are somewhat rare. Some years I see one or two, but this year I have about 4 or 5 in the potato patch each day. They eat Colorado Potato Beetles so they've really helped a lot this year. I have hand-picked and drowned a couple dozen CPBs, but last year I had hundreds and hundreds, so the spined soldier bugs clearly are making a huge difference. We had adult grasshoppers show up here at our house in March! I believe they migrated from Texas which was burning like mad with huge wildfires in many places. It drove me crazy to have those hoppers flying around my yard and garden all day. In a bad year like last year they can strip every plant of every fruit, flower and leaf, but they normally don't show up here in those numbers until July or so. Having them in March was very discouraging. I already have made up my mind that it is "war" if they show up in those numbers this year, and I think I'll buy and use EcoBran to control them, if I can find any. It is a bran product laced with a very small amount (2%) of Sevin. Normally I avoid the use of all chemicals, but I lost the entire Peter Rabbit Garden to the hoppers last July and al my big garden's bean plants as well, so I am determined to win the grasshopper war this year. The EcoBran would only hurt criters that physically eat the bran and ingest it, so it shouldn't harm beneficial insects the way Sevin dust or liquid would. Dawn

Poor little plants. I had picked out the "5 most wanted" that I didn't have in the garden and had them in a flat on the back sidwalk. DH brought me some straw and had it in the wheelbarrow and couldn't see where he was going and ran over the flat. I picked them up and could only see one damaged cup. It had the growing tip bent over and I thought it was doomed. I found a place to put the others, but decided that one probably wasn't worth the effort. It didn't look half bad today. I managed to squeeze in a few small determinate's also, but it is also just 'taking a chance' because they don't get many hours of sunshine in that location. I had forgotten about the 'red' Tumbling Tom, so I guess I will have a few red cherries. I noticed you planted Sprite. I only planted it once and the skins were so tough that neither of us would eat them. It just kind of became a spitter for us. We have had some thunder and very light rain tonight and it looks like we could get it several more times tonight. I have been concerned about hail, and I have watched the map off and on all evening (after we finally got internet service restored). It looked like the largest hail was down near Gainsville, but I could see some in the Ada and McAlester area also. At the moment it looks like Okmulgee may be getting some hail too. Tomorrow's forecast is for strong tunderstorms so that could mean severe weather. I'm afraid that I would cry if my garden got hail at this point because I have sure worked hard on it this year. I am not sure that I could take care of all the plants that you have. You are a 'Super Woman'. I think I have 17 plants in containers and I still have to solve the caging problem as well. I think the edge of my yard (not fenced) is going to get cattle panels for the summer for those potted toms. We have another little building project for later in the summer so I am trying to stay out of the way, but sun is at a premium in my yard. I have more plants and more containers, but I have already done one large raised bed, 17 containers, and two of those huge tree pots. I am kind of tired of buying amendments and mixing them up. I have melons in one large one and cukes in the other. One still has some greens in it, one of the Asian ones. I think I am down to a couple of bags of manure and peat and one bag of pine fines and I don't want to buy anything else. I still have to buy cattle panels and t-posts, so I'm trying to cool it a little on the other. LOL We will not be figuring 'price per pound' on my garden this year. LOL A lot of what I am doing is a one time expense tho.

dakini, Here are a few fantastic books that really help explain the climate we have here in Charleston. H. Rehder's books discuss gardening on the North Carolina coast- very similar to Charleston except for some frost dates/minimum temps.. Barbara Sullivan's book is the best new book on perennials for the coastal climate. Both authors discuss some of the difficulties of gardening in this region (sandy soil, humidity, fungus, pests, etc.) and provide plants that thrive despite them. GROWING A BEAUTIFUL GARDEN A Landscape Guide for the Coastal Carolinas by Henry Rehder (Discusses individual plants and their care/pests/problems) CREATING A BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPE Henry Rehder's Daily Guide by Henry Rehder (Tells you what you need to do and when- awesome!) GARDEN PERENNIALS FOR THE COASTAL SOUTH by Barbara Sullivan (Be sure to check out the section: "Perennials to avoid: Don't even think of growing these plants here") GARDEN GUIDE TO THE LOWER SOUTH by Trustees Garden Club Savanah, Georgia All of these should be at the Main Library downtown to review and at the West Ashley Barnes and Noble to purchase. The Charleston Horticultural Society is a great organization to join to get connected with other local gardeners. They have regular tours of some of the great private gardens in the Lowcountry. I own a landscaping bussiness here and still can't believe folks pay me to work in their gardens. It may seem like a challenge to garden here now, but with a little studying and elbow rubbing w/ other local gardeners, you'll do just fine. Bob ps. Grow a ginger lilly (super easy), enjoy its incredible aroma in late Summer-Fall, and I believe you'll have a change of heart!

Michelle, The book is great. At one point it was out of print and impossible to find and the used copies you could find online were considered rare books and priced accordingly (in the hundreds of dollars) It later was reprinted, and Dr. Cotner himself said that given how many pages the book was (around 400 I believe) and all the photos it contained, it was so expensive to print that he himself didn't blame the publisher for not wanting to put it back into production because it was very expensive to produce "nowadays". He also said at that time that it would be impossible to write/publish a book like that nowadays because of the cost, but you know, the demand for it was so high that additional printings did happen well after he said that. That was likely in the late 1990s or early 2000s when he said that, and I guess publishing costs had soared since it was first published. Kim, If I was gardening in place that was windy like that and it was a permanent place where I was going to be long-term, I'd plant a windbreak around the garden, but 15-20' from the garden so it didn't shade out too much of the garden ground. Windbreaks can be lifesavers when gardening on flat, windy land. If it wasn't a permanent place where investing in lots of large evergreen shrubs or trees was possible, I'd grow a triple row, densely planted, of some sort of large annual plant that would at least provide some windbreak....maybe some of the tall grain-type amaranths (harvest the flowers before they go to seed or you'll have 1,000,001 amaranth plants each year forever after), or some of the more densely-branched tall sunflowers or a thick, dense planting of field corn (its stalks are sturdier than sweet corn), ornamental corn or sorghum. I have used broom corn interpanted with hyacinth beans as a wind break by my yard is somewhat sheltered by woodland on three sides, so the 12' tall broom corn stalks didn't break. Because they get so tall, I do not know if they would work in your windier area. I think the wind might break the stalks or cause them to lodge. If the two of you do not read the local Texas gardening magazines (Neil Sperry's "Gardens" (now only available, I believe, as a digital online publication) at his website, and "Texas Gardener" (believe it is based in central TX but covers the whole state), I recommend them highly. Texas Gardener has a stronger focus on veggies, but does cover other topics as well, and everything Neil Sperry writes and publishes is pure gold for Texas gardeners. The last time I bought a new copy of Dr. Cotner's "The Vegetable Book", I purchased it directly from Texas Gardener Press, one of my favorite sources for books about gardening in this region. Here's a link to their book page: Bookstore at Texas Gardener Press I am out in the garden for a large portion of every day that the weather allows it at this time of the year. Once the real heat sets in and the temperatures are in the 90s and above every day, I spend much less time out there, mostly only harvesting fruits, veggies and herbs, watering, or cutting flowers for bouquets. By then I hopefully have enough mulch on the beds that weeding is not need as often, because you're not going to find me outside weeding once it gets really hot. I do try to keep the garden well-weeded through at least the end of June. After that, when we mow weekly, I dump more grass clipping mulch on top of the existing mulch and that's about it. If we get a rare, cool and maybe misty or drizzly day in the middle of the summer, I'm out in the garden in a heartbeat weeding. We had a great garden year in 2012 and I had tons of tomato plants. Know what that meant? It meant I could spend up to 8 to 10 hours a day in June and July mostly just harvesting. I blame the Principe' Borghese tomatoes for that harvesting fiasco. I had a lot of them that year (for sun-dried tomatoes) and could spend a whole day just harvesting those 12 plants because each one would have hundreds of bite-sized tomatoes ripe and ready to pick and dry. I've stopped growing it now because that was just too much time spent harvesting small tomatoes and also have cut back on how many cherry tomato plants I grow for exactly the same reason. If I ever grow Principe Borghese again, I'll just pull up the plants by their roots when they are heavily loaded with ripe tomatoes and hang them in the garage to dry. (This can work well in a dry climate in a dry summer, but in a more humid year, the tomatoes may rot before they dry.) I had my fill that summer of slaving away in the garden, harvesting all day in 90-100+ degree weather. I'm trying to garden smarter, not harder, these days because I'm not getting any younger and spending all day every day out in the summer heat no longer is an option for me. Evern since the summer of 2011, when I got a mild case of heat exhaustion at least 3 separate times when we were out on fires in 112-116 degree heat, I just cannot tolerate the heat like I once could, and I have to be really careful in the summer because of that. Planting tomatoes as early as possible helps because I'd rather be harvesting and canning the main tomato crop in May and June than in June and July. There's plenty to harvest as it is in the summer months, so getting most of the tomatoes done early means fewer hours out in the hot sun. I also bought a beach-type sun umbrella a few years ago and will carry it out to the garden and stick it in the soil and work in its shade. This works better if I am doing something that keeps me in a relatively small area for a while rather than moving around every 5 minutes. If y'all have too much summer wind, this might not work for you if the wind keeps blowing the umbrella away. Dawn