keepitlow, at first I thought the thing about keeping shoes in your fridge was a joke taken out of context or something like that, but there was a link to the full article and... oh my gosh! You know, when I was in college and lived in a 300 square foot apartment I STILL tried to cook in my tiny kitchen. I had lived in the dorm the year before and was so sick of other people cooking for me and not having that control over my own food. I can't imagine just unplugging your fridge and eating take out all the time. I mean, yes, I do get take out sometimes, and go to restaurants, but if I lived on it... it's so fattening and so expensive! *** macky77, "'My soil won't grow anything and I can't afford or don't have time to build raised beds and buy all the special ingredients you NEED to make super soil.' The most common situations they cite are either living in rental properties with neglected yards or new developments where the topsoil was not replaced after construction." Well, as other people have said, yes, new developments can have awful soil. Bermudagrass sod doesn't take much. I live in a rental house with a neglected yard (at least until I got here). Actually it's kind of interesting to see what's hanging on in a yard where nature has been allowed to take over. I used to have scarlet sage growing in the front (hummingbirds LOVE that stuff) until the Lawn Police ordered us to mow it down, and in the back I have pigeonberry, black-eyed susan, wild sunflowers, and rain lillies growing, along with some other wildflowers I have yet to identify. I betcha the land is actually better off for it rather than being maintained as a Bermudagrass monoculture soaked in herbicides. But anyway, back to having good soil, this goes back to my idea that maybe people think growing veggies is harder than it really is. I live in south-central Texas. The soil here is clay with limestone rocks, and I'm growing stuff right in it. Didn't build any raised beds (don't want to build any permanent structures at a rental house). Potatoes didn't seem to like it, but tomatoes, beans, peppers, squash, etc. don't seem to mind one bit. Digging in it is a big of hard work, but it's better than gonig to the gym. I wonder if the garden media has anything to do with this. You know, TV shows with perfect looking gardens, soil you can dig with your bare hands, etc. I wonder if people actually think that veggies NEED perfect soil to grow. Sure they might grow better in perfect soil, but they can make do with what they've got. You don't have to be Martha Stewart. I see gardening as a partnership between me, the plants, and Nature. That means that I don't have to do ALL the work. Lots of plants grow just fine with no human help at all. Veggie plants have evolved alongside us for a while and now need some help, but I still feel like I'm letting them and Nature do most of the work. When people say they can't grow plants here because it's too hot or dry or we have bad soil or something, I always think of the Hopi and related tribes that lived off their gardens with no modern technology in the DESERT. I don't live in the desert, and I do have modern technology, and I do have the farmer's market and grocery store as a backup, so I think I have it EASY. Actually, it reminds me of something from Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden where she talks about how white people don't know how to plant things right. I forgot specifically what it was she was talking about, but I only wonder what she'd think if she saw our gardens today.

Where are you? Have you identified what you think you may have? Heck, Early Blight seems like a blessing in comparison!!!! hahaha! YES, doom & gloom is upon many of us! For some great LATE BLIGHT pics, see this link below. If yours don't look like that, breathe a short sigh of relief, unless you live in NY, PA, OH, CT, RI, MA, VT, NH, DE, ME, ONT, QUE, VA, WV, MD............did I miss any? Here is a link that might be useful: Great LATE BLIGHT Pics

There's not anything that I can think of that I liked as a child but don't like now. But there are a few things that I ate for days on end than now would not be tolerable!!.I drank an egg nog every day for breakfast for years...no cereal, no toast, no egg....just an egg nog and a small glass of orange juice. And I ate ham and cheese sandwiches for years for school lunch. I was a picky PICKY eater my mother said....didn't like most vegetables nor any fruit with much texture. No citrus but for strained juice, no grapes unless they had no seeds and you peeled it. But I loved liverwurst, head cheese, ll kinds of salami, olives, pickles, pumpernickle bread with butter and raw onion, but no squash of any sort, no broccoli, no cauliflower and no green beans....but creamed wax beans were oK...go figure. I like all that stuff now....but although I haven't tried any in many many years I probably would still like a Hostess Snowball and a Hostess Cupcake...but not sure about those brightly colored "twin" sickles" sort of frozen thing.. There are lots of things I used to love....that I can't stand any more...not because I have changed but because the product has...like Swanson's frozen pot pies, frozen breaded fish...used to be real fish...now some of it is like "fish hamburger" formed...ugh! Pot pies no longer have much in them but "gravy"....and frozen pizzas make a big deal of they contain some "real" cheese.

This came up in another thread recently, but it's important to understand the relationship between dew point and freezing. If the air temperature is above freezing, but the dew point is below freezing, wind CAN cause water to freeze, AND kill frost sensitive plants. As long as the dew point is above freezing, you really have nothing to worry about. The temperature is always above the dew point. The dew point is closer to the temperature if the humidity is high. There are a zillion online weather stations, and most of them will read off dew point (which is a function of temperature and humidity). Just go online and find one nearby. To sum up, air temperatures above freezing CAN kill frost sensitive plants, if there is wind. So if the temperature is low but above freezing, checking the dew point might be smart to preserve frost sensitive plants. Last night, my temperature went down to 37F, and the dew point was 33F. So my tomatoes and squash were safe. Temps close to freezing, dew point well below that (low humidity) and wind are a recipe for problems.