Here, in Alamogordo, New Mexico, the high heat and winds makes it impossible to grow delicious lettuce and most varieties of spinach. I found a spinach variety that does amazingly well here. It's called "Harmony Spinach" from Burpee Seeds. Go, as quick as you can, and buy a couple packets from Lowes Hardware or Home Depot... you'll love it!!! This spinach is heat tolerant and deliciously mild with no biterness. I have one of those "perpetually picky" husbands who hates spinach. I put Harmony Spinach on sandwiches and made entire salads from it last summer. I literally resorted to trickery and told him it was lettuce... he never new the difference. :) Your weather in Austin is actually better than ours in Alamogordo, so I think you will have fantastic results! Give Spigariello Liscia a try, too... if you like cooked greens. Chard is too "earthy" for my tastes and I get tired of it quickly. Tuscan Kale is delish, but it takes second place to Spigariello Liscia. The Tuscan Kale will grow year-around for you in Austin, though. Cooked greens are "off the menu" for my hubby, but I eat giant platefuls of them. Both the Spiariello Liscia and Tuscan kale are very heat tolerant for members the kale family. You are welcome to contact me via my member page if you have trouble finding either seed... happy gardening!

I was thinking of asking my dad to take the kale (white russian is really getting big, though started same time as others), broccoli, spinach to his house and put in sunroom - gets pretty warm there during day (too warm?) but would get more sun and would be cooler (too cool?) at night than in my family room, but be more sheltered than moving outside. Would also give me more room under grow lights for my tomatoes and peppers (1 flat off cool weather stuff isn't even under light, it's 1 shelf below and gets some light from the (wire) shelf above and from the window, if I'm careful to keep the flat fo tomatoes pushed back a little. I've got to buy at least 1 more clamp-on lamp. I have 1, works with regular bulb but it blew out a CFL last year and I don't want to put it on a timer with another CFL. Funny how we're in the same zone but frost dates are different? I'm going by 90% LFD, 50% is end of April but not anywhere near next week. Like I said, it's going to be mid-30's at night this w/e, warming up to lows in 40's next week but averages are 36-38 for the rest of the month and last April we had 3 hard freezes the last week, after unseasonably warm weather in March and earlier in April. Like they say, "If you don't like the weather in New England, just wait a little bit - it'll change!"

Bon, The answer with most pests generally is no. If you don't have their most favorite plant available to eat, they'll just find something else. This is especially true if there are other gardens (or farms) fairly close by with plants that will attract them or if you're in a rural area where some native plants are very attractive to some specific pests. Every now and then I have a year in which I don't see a single squash bug or squash vine borer (usually in separate years, so that even if I don't have one, I still have the other), but there isn't any rhyme or reason to it---I cannot say I've ever found a connection between the weather or anything else and the absence of a specific pest in a specific year. Once the squash pests have found your garden, they're pretty much a constant problem, which is so unfortunate. I've never had them on roses or heard of them being on roses, but you never know....if they get hungry enough they might eat some odd things. Amy, There are bindweed mites that eat/damage bindweed. I know that at least one insectary (Palisade) sells them, or did sell them in the past. I have no idea how effective they are. And, just to remind us all that a weed is just a plant that is in the wrong place.....even though field bindweed makes us crazy, there is at least one major anti-cancer drug that includes some component made of or derived from bindweed. That brings to mind another old saying "one man's trash is another man's treasure". Dawn

Bon, Home-made seed tapes work just fine. You can find instructions all over the internet. Just be sure you let them dry thoroughly before you put them up to await the day you plant them. If you put them up wet, the flour/water paste can turn moldy. You can use newsprint (not the glossy inserts), paper towels cut in strips, toilet paper, etc. Rodney, It is nice to have you visit us from the land of ice and snow. I hope our endless conversations about the early arrival of warm weather (it arrives every week, stays a few days, and then turns cold again) doesn't make you too crazy. Spring may arrive early here sometimes, especially compared to how late it arrives there for you, but then the cold nights keeps coming back and coming back and coming back. I'll had the temperature go down to freezing when tomato plants were knee-high to waist-high and covered in fruit. Last year, we harvested our first tomatoes on the last day of April (from plants protected on cold nights with frost blanket type row covers), sliced up that tomato, made BLTs and enjoyed every bite. That night or maybe the next night, we had our last freezing temperature of the year. By then, I had tomato plants that were 4' tall and loaded with fruit. C'mon now, is that normal? Nope, but we have to deal with whatever wild, crazy ride the OK weather brings us in any given year. So, while we talk of planting early, we also have to protect plants relatively late. What a terrific grow list you have! I would have thought you'd have idea conditions for the brassicas and for potatoes. Even here, potatoes do well most years, but if we fail to harvest them in time, the heat and humidity can make them collapse into a soggy, rotted mess some years (not necessarily all). Bon, I agree with Rodney. To my taste buds, garlic tastes like garlic. I like it all and never have had any I haven't liked. Today's weather-related surprise (Rodney, you should skip this little announcement of mine if you love asparagus and if the thought of us harvesting it now is going to make you crazy): this afternoon, while working in the garden, in 70-something-degree heat, I harvested the first asparagus spear. I washed it off, pinched off the tip that had been in the ground, broke it in half, and Tim and I stood there and ate that tender, yummy taste of spring. We both were shocked. I am pretty sure we've never harvested asparagus in early February before. I'm not even sure if we've ever had any to harvest in late February. March is more typical. This needs its own thread, and maybe it will get one later, but here goes. Today, at the Wal-Mart in Gainesville, TX, across the Red River from us, they had all kinds of veggies. All kinds. Including tomato plants and a handful of pepper plants. It is far too early for tomato plants--even Gainesville's average last freeze date surely cannot be much earlier than mine (March 28th) and far, far, far too early for pepper plants. So, what's a gardener to do? Especially when their own tomato plants are just tiny sprouts? Yep, I did it. I bought one of each variety they had: Big Beef, Early Girl, Celebrity and Sweet 100. They were in small (maybe 3 or 4") round peat pots. I repotted them into gallon pots and they are sitting on a shelf in my mudroom. I was going to put them in the unheated greenhouse but we're headed for a low in the 30s tonight more than likely, and I had left the doors open all day until sunset so there was no build-up of heat to keep them warm. It is likely that the first tomato we harvest in April will come from one of these plants. I hope the folks at that store remember to cover up the plants this weekend when we're expected to get pretty close to freezing. And for anyone in my neck of the woods wondering if the Wal-Mart in Ardmore has any tomato plants in the store, they did not, as of yesterday. Usually Gainesville gets them at least a week or two before Ardmore does. Oh, and we had to go across the road to the Gainesville Home Depot to get something Tim needed. I made a beeline straight to the garden center and they had the exact same tomato plants and pepper plants that Wal-Mart had, as well as all the cold-season veggies and herbs and tons of flowers. After he found what he came for, he had to come drag me out of the garden center because I was going to stay out there with all those plants all day.