The red lettuces make pretty edible borders. Pepper plants stay compact and look good until frost. Pole beans on a tee pee creates a nice feature and also screens things. I love the Kwintus from Park Seed. What kind of squash? I have never battered them before; sounds delicious. I usually just use cornmeal or saute them with onions and tomatoes and peppers as a side dish.

Since we're on the topic of squash, I'm going to (pardon me please) do a mini hijack. I'm growing pie pumpkins and Table Queen acorn squash. I've NEVER had one grow! I get tons of gorgeous, dish sized blooms, then nothing. SO, I'm assuming it's a pollination issue?? I've decided to hand pollinate in case that's the problem but I see that squash have worms..ugh. Well, figs have wasps, lol. So, if I actually coax a squash out, should I put it in a nylon stocking? I buy them all the time for tying plants, so I have several. I'd planned on trellising anything that vines in my southern raised bed because it'll stop getting enough sun by Dec. I use the stockings as slings for any fruits that need them. I love squash, but I'm the only one that eats them, so I'm only planting a few but would hate to lose the one's I do get. I'm in Central Fl, just north of Orlando...any suggestions as I undertake my first winter squash venture?

The reason glasses etch is the alkalinity of the water they are washed in. Dishwashing detergent is alkaline as is some water. The stuff in the dishwasher detergent that makes it alkaline, is what also cleans the dishes. Food residue on dishes neutralizes some of the alkaline stuff. the amount recommended by the detergent people is a crap shoot because they don't know how well you rinse nor if you have hard water of soft water. The better you rinse your dishes, the less detergent you should use. The softer the water you have, the less detergent you should use. Vinegar in the rinse dispenser will reduce the chance of etching, but also reduce the cleaning power of your detergent. Etching is not the same as lime build up. Etching is actually damage to the glass and nothing will remove it. There is no magic formula to perfectly sparkling glassware ( but for hand washing and drying!)...you have to experiment with your detergent, method of washing and water. I worked in the testing department of a "major appliance maker" for several years.

Hazel, I grow as much of our food as I can, and that means spending tons of time preserving the harvest (via canning, dehydrating, blanching/freezing and root cellar type storage) so we'll have home-grown produce year-round. I buy a mixture of organic/non-organic food from the grocery store. I'd love to buy only organic food but we have a budget to live within and it does not allow for only organic food. I do not know if non-organic foods are less healthy and will leave that debate to the food scientists. What I do know is that I'd rather eat food that was grown in the most natural way possible. For me, eating as much naturally-grown food as possible is a personal choice. I am a 16-year cancer survivor and as soon as I was diagnosed with cancer, I began eating only an organic vegan diet. The vegan part was really hard for me because I grew up in Texas and love meat, especially beef. My family wasn't crazy about a vegan diet, but put up with it (at least when they ate at home) for me. After about 6 months, I began adding meat and dairy back to our diet. We still eat healthier that we used to but not as healthy as we did during those six months. When the National Organic Standards Board was developing the standards to be used by certified organic growers, there was much debate and compromise. Some organic food advocates felt the standards were watered down and weren't completely happy with the standards as written and implemented. Some organic advocates were disappointed and felt the organic standards were too lax and were quite vocal about that. I watched the debate with interest. For me, though, I'd rather eat organically-grown food even if the standards under which it is grown are somewhat less than perfect. One reason I grow as much of our produce as I can is because that is the only way I know exactly what was or wasn't sprayed on it. If the choice is between a strawberry grown in our garden with no chemicals sprayed on it versus a conventionally-raised strawberry that may have been sprayed with various synthetic products from 1 to 3 times a week, guess which one I'd rather be eating? Just because a pesticide, herbicide or fungicide is organic in origin does not necessarily mean it is safer than a pesticide, herbicide or fungicide that is synthetic in origin. There are some organic products I've never used and never will use. I'm planting my 18th spring garden right now (my first was planted a year before we broke ground for the house), and I have used a synthetic pesticide once (last year, to save the garden from huge hordes of grasshoppers) and it almost killed me. I won't say I'll never use a synthetic pesticide again but I hope it will be another 18 years before I feel like that is the only option left to save my garden. I even use organic pesticides sparingly and, in fact, most years I don't use them at all. I use them very selectively and only for the worst of pests. Sometimes I'll spray neem oil, for example, on one specific plant that has a pest issue but won't spray the whole garden or even that whole row. I'd rather hand-pick and use other methods to remove the pests. I never spray Spinosad because it is a broad-spectrum pesticide that can harm some beneficial insects, but I'll use it in a granular product (Slug-Go Plus) that I sprinkle on the ground to kill pill bugs and sow bugs. I also use a granular organic fire any product that contains Spinosad. Other than neem and Spinosad, I sometimes use a product containing Bt 'kurstaki' on brassicas and that's about it. I mostly rely on our population of beneficial insects to help keep the pest levels low, and on hand-picking bugs or using floating row covers to exclude them from crops. I think that produce grown in the most natural way possible tastes better, and we all know that produce fresh from the garden is the best-tasting, healthiest food around. I like being able to harvest in the morning and then use some or all of that harvest in the meals we eat that day. And, on the list of what really matters, the use of synthetic pesticides bothers me the most. I have less of an issue with synthetic fungicides or fertilizers. I think every gardener has the right to grow their plants, whether ornamental or edible, in whatever manner they choose. I just choose to grow mine as naturally as I can. When I first transitioned from conventional gardening to organic gardening in the 1990s, I essentially kept gardening exactly as I always had with the only change being that I was substituting products that were organic in origin for those that were synthetic in origin. After moving here, I began to take steps to go beyond that and that was the beginning of my progression to go sort of beyond merely growing organicallyand focus more on gardening in the most natural and sustainable way. Whether you will be pleased with the winter squash/pumpkins you chose as fall decorations depends on whether you think all autumn pumpkin displays must include big orange pumpkins. I love all the C. moschatas for fall decorations because I like their various shades from buff-colored Seminole to the almost brownish-buff color of Musquee de Provence. For 7 or 8 years before the squash vine borers found us here, I always grew huge numbers of winter squash and pumpkins in all colors---including orange, yellow, white, buff, green and some that were speckled, splotched, striped or warted. It was fun while it lasted and they made great autumn displays, but the SVBs have made it impossible for me to have that wide variety of colors now, so I am content with the colors of the C. moschata group, which mostly are in a range of buff-colored shades. Having become used to what I have now in terms of sizes and colors, I am content with pumpkins that aren't traditional jack-o-lantern types. And, sometimes I want a big orange pumpkin in the fall and plop it down in the middle of the display with my home-grown ones. Dawn