Around these parts, we use a machete to clear small brush and weeds from the fences, or we pull it out... the chainsaws are for actual trees! As we all know, pulling the stuff out by the roots will ensure it doesn't grow back for a while... until the next batch of weed seeds take over! About cocopeat... I noticed three distinct things about it when I used it... 1) it stayed soggy for quite some time... 2) it didn't absorb water evenly... 3) it collapsed fairly fast. Those three things made me rethink it as a bulb medium, and I'm glad I looked around for alternatives. By all means, if it works for you, use it... but for me, it's not conducive to good bulb health. I just can't wait until my seedlings from various crosses are mature enough to bloom! That will be an accomplishment, I think!

Mark, You're welcome. I can't say if the small habanero peppers on your plants are likely to ripen before frost because there's no way to know when your first frost will occur. In the 12 years we've lived in southern OK, our first frost has occurred as early as Sept. 29th (I think that was in either 1999 or 2000) and as late as December 17th or 18th around 2005 or so. However, the first frost is normally in early November for much of the state, so your peppers have a chance of maturing. There are a couple of ways to give the green habs a chance to mature if a frost or freeze is forecast for your area and you are pretty sure your plants are about to die: (1) You can pull up the plants, roots and all, and hang them upside down in a non-freezing location, like in a closet, a tornado shelter or a well-insulated outbuilding like a barn or garage. The plants likely will drop leaves, but the peppers often stay on the plant and color up/finish maturing over a period of several weeks. (This often works with tomato plants that have small bite-sized tomatoes too.) (2) You can harvest all the peppers, placing them in a single layer on a cookie sheet or small cardboard box (like the flat boxes cases of bottled water come in, for example) lined with newspaper. They can be very close to one another but not touching one another to allow good air flow. Place in a cool, dry location where humidity does not fluctuate wildly, and they often will mature and color up over a period of days, but generally won't last as long as peppers on a plant treated as described in item (1) above. (3) You can dig up the plants, place in a pot with a high-quality soilless potting mix and bring them inside the house or place them in a warm sunny location like a patio where they can continue to receive sunlight and heat during the day and can be carried inside at night to avoid freezing weather. With peppers, I've been doing a little experimentation with overwintering them in pots in my insulated but unheated garage to see if I get earlier production from plants that are more than 1 year old. So far, it seems I do. Last year, a potted red sweet bell pepper overwintered successfully despite dropping all its leaves following a night when the lows dropped into the single digits either in late Dec. or early January. It began leafing out again within a few days of the leaf drop, bloomed and had formed small fruit by latest January or earliest February. I began harvesting those red sweet bells beginning in late April, which I think is before I even had my new pepper plants in the ground. All I did was keep it in our large barn-style garage, dragging it out into the sunlight on warm days and leaving it inside the garage on cold days and cold nights. I pretty much took it inside on all nights even if they weren't forecast to drop down into freezing temps because I knew the deer would eat the potted pepper plants if I left them out at night. I have some pepper plants that are now 3 years old in pots and they produce very early harvests----generally producing mature peppers before Memorial Day. So far I've done this with ornamental peppers of all kinds, jalapeno peppers, fish pepper (a variegated hot pepper that's great for a fermented pepper sauce) and several kinds of sweet bell and non-bell peppers. This year I intend to overwinter some habanero peppers if I manage to dig them up and pot them up before our first frost. I am not sure why your habaneros were so slow to produce this year. I planted my orange habanero plants in May (I am sure it was not earlier than May because we had a temp of 39 degrees and patchy frost on May 3, 2010, for about the 3rd or 4th year in a row, so I no longer set out pepper plants before about May 5th thru 10th at the earliest) and was harvesting ripe, orange habaneros in July. I was, in fact, a little shocked that they matured so early, but suspect the beastly heat/drought/heat indices in June pushed them to mature quickly. You know what, as I was typing that I did have a thought on pepper production. Hot peppers are not affected negatively by high heat as sweet peppers often are, but they are negatively affected by high humidity. That could explain late pollination/fertilization/fruit set. If I were you and I wanted habs this year, I'd carefully dig up the plants soon, put them in pots with good soil and put them in a sunny location that stays hot. In my particular case, I'd put them on the concrete apron alongside the south-facing garage wall so they could soak up heat and light not only from the sun but also reflected heat/sunlight from the south-facing wall and the concrete apron. If cold threatens, carry them inside to protect them. Often, you know, we'll have a cold night or two in Oct. or Nov., and then it will be followed by another 4 to 6 weeks of decent gardening weather. You also could leave the plants in the ground and cover them up REALLY well anytime forecast lows are expected to drop below 40 degrees. When I want to cover up a plant under those conditions, I put a 5 gallon or larger bucket over it and then put a big sleeping bag or old comforter over the bucket. You have to remember to uncover them in the morning though, or they can roast in the heat once the sun comes up. Dawn

Hey Equinox; Haven't been here in awhile. This darned internet, ever expanding - ever interesting; like the world's biggest library. Maybe if I'd just never learned to read, I would've been ok, Ah Well.. Yep, I'm one of those people who freezes and blenderizes. For those who don't know me, I have two large (16 Gal.) Rubbermaid-type plastic bins which I originally started in Nov. 2009 with EF's. Part of the problem, is that we produce a lot more waste than the worms can consume and even though the town where I now live has a city-wide organic waste recycling program, it just feels wrong to be tossing stuff that I know the worms (microbes) will enjoy. The freezing and thawing process really helps to break down cell structure, leaving a nice, soft mess. This then goes into my (not my wife's) food processor, to which I add composted rabbit poop, coffee grounds, powdered eggshells, etc. The resulting mash which usually tends to the wetter side, I mix with shredded cardboard and then feed on one side of the bin. It usually takes the microbes a week or so to start working on the food. Within two weeks the worms have migrated to the food, leaving the other side worm-free and making it easier to harvest the castings. As for air flow, I finally solved my problem. I drilled 1/2" holes all around the sides in the upper half of the bin. Sure, the worms could escape if they wanted to, but with ample moisture, plenty of food, good airflow and proper bedding; they just don't seem to want to leave. Of course when the weather is nasty, I'll always find a few gone exploring, but the majority seem to stay put. In the past I lined the inside of the bins with fine mosquito netting, hoping to keep out the fruit flies and fungus gnats while providing air flow through the netting, as well as keeping the worms from escaping and making it easier to harvest the castings (because all the castings are within the netting and not stuck to the walls of the bin). In reality it didn't quite work out that way. The flies and gnats got in regardless. I found the best thing is to hang sheets of yellow sticky fly paper above the bins and then to encourage the flies to join their friends at the big yellow picnic table. It usually works. When the mosquito netting got wet, it stopped the airflow rather than helped it, so that didn't work either. But here was the worst of it: when the worms hatched, they were so tiny that they could actually pass through the fine mesh of the mosquito netting into the space between the netting and the wall of the bin. Once there, they couldn't get back. Food particles and moisture would filter down through the netting and I always found worms there whenever I harvested out the main bin. Now, my bins are outside. I have a large porch/patio area, but no actual ground. The winter of 2011-2012 was particularly wet (in my area) and so I didn't really have a chance to harvest out the bins properly, until Mar.2012. In Dec. 2011 after about a week of constant rain, I had a major worm escape (though mostly from the worms living in that limbo place between the netting and the bin)and lost around 500 worms. After that experience, I tossed the mosquito netting and drilled large 1/2" holes all around. So far, even with heavy rains, they seem to stay put. Shaul

Seil - when I use the flash..it always makes everything look white...so if the flash pops up, I cover it with my hand. Maybe it's because the camera is too close to the bloom?? Merlena - thanks so much for trying again and again!!! Your pictures are wonderful!!! Your MEC and Royal Amethyst are my favorites...incredible!!! Neil Diamond is a big WOW!!! We almost have pictograms/hieroglphics ... if we standardized a system where R is always your Royal Amethyst, H could be Helen's Huntington Rose, S could be Seil's Sisters At Heart, T could be Straw's The Dark Lady, A could be my August Luise and E could be Joey's Ebb Tide....we could post pictures (which I can't copy from your posts) to spell the word HEARTS...so our own secret language. LOL Or not. :)