Vicky, Boy, we are much alike. Funny you should ask about sleeping schedule! I wrote my post right before going to bed a couple of nights ago. Went to bed -- then got up 2.5 hours later! I did get some more sleep later yesterday, and did some more catching up last night, so I think I'm back on schedule. I had a bout of insomnia for most of this year that was fairly resolved when we went on vacation. Anymore, I don't even consider one bad night of sleep per week as insomnia, compared to those long bouts. I've really been taken with alternative containers, especially since I can get them free while trash picking or keeping up with our local Freecycle Network. (People ask for or offer items that would otherwise simply be trashed, but still have some life in them. To find your area's site check out this link -- http://www.freecycle.org ) Granted, some times I do pay for the containers, but, if you know where to go (we just hit our local Goodwill Stores for the first time last week, looking for containers and found two -- a beatiful ceramic one for our small bay leaf and a cheapo plastic wagon that will only last a year or two), you can get the 5-6 gallon containers, for free or for $.50-$4 each. Below is the link to one page of one of my websites that gives a long list of unusual containers, and where you can find those 5-6 gallon containers, although I forgot to mention that my Dad gets his by buying kits to make wine, and gives many of them to me, afterwards. (I may not have kids, but I still enjoy playing and thinking young. LOL) Of course, once you get into containers, soil can get expensive. I've been buying much of my soil in the fall, when the leftover potting soil is on sale. I also supplement it with last year's dead annuals and the stuff that just blows into the yard -- leaves, buttonwood fuzz, and soil that leaches out of the bottom of containers, each time I water. (Last one is only doable if you have concrete for a yard, so you can tell the soil from the ground. LOL) My compost is left in five gallon containers with a multitude of holes on the bottom and lower sides, so the pill bugs can find it and enjoy making it into true compost during the winter. Add to that, I buy sandbox sand, which is more sterilized then builder's sand, a big bag of peat moss, and a couple of bags of perilite, to stretch out the bought potting soil more and mix it in with used soil and new compost. "Don't plant more then you can do," is my biggest problem! Eight years later, and I still can't figure out how much I can do. LOL Fortunately, I must be one of the world's worse seed sower, since only about a quarter of the seeds I start actually sprout AND grow to maturity. LOL (Yes, I use seed starte soil and containers, so it's not a problem with Damp Off.) This year, I'm even having trouble growing lettuce from seed! Last year, it grew quickly and easily. Well, good thing I read some good advice given to an advice columnist, when she brought home a whole pick-up truck full of annuals, and then realized how much time would be required to plant them all. She just sat in the midst of them, feeling overwhelmed, when her next door neighbor found her. The neighbor picked up a single container, handed it to her, and simply said, "plant one at a time!" Duh, now! LOL I guess that is part of the secret, realizing that we'll never get any of it done, unless we just set our minds to dealing with just one at a time! But, you are right. I do feel badly that hubby became disabled, but I'm sure glad I get to see more of him then I used to. I generally don't have to worry about dinner. He's a great cook and does most of it with great enjoyment and great results (as demonstrated by our great girths now, too. LOL) One thing I have learned in the last 8 years, that only other people in our situation truly understand -- the house will not fall down, if all the housework cannot be completed. LOL Sounds like something else we have in common -- a reduced sense of what absolutely has to be done for daily chores. ;) I sure hope your daughter can visit occasionally, so the two of you can sit in the garden and simply enjoy what you have so far! That's part of why I love gardening -- the amount of time hubby and I sit back there in the summer through September and just watch the tomatos fruit, the birds enjoying the bath and seeds, and the variety of herbs and flowers, as we just take it all in silently together. Lynn Here is a link that might be useful: Young Buds in the Garden

I've 'discovered' (in quotes because I'm surely not the first to do this, but I couldn't find it previously mentioned here in the forums) another solution to the tomato soup problem. I made the roasted tomato garlic soup last year, but for some reasom my husband didn't care for it, and the flavor profile of the spiced soup isn't quite what I'm looking for. So I've been looking for another recipe this year. I just canned some tomato sauce and had a little leftover, so tested out the idea: added powdered garlic, chile pepper powder, dried basil, some black pepper, salt. All dried, and hence all things that could be added to the tomato sauce standard recipe, right? Stirred in some cream. It was just what I was looking for. Any reason not to can quarts of tomato sauce and to each pint add 1 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp chile powder, a crumble of dried basil, salt and pepper to taste (plus the citric acid, of course)? Call it tomato soup concentrate (or "Joanna's Quick Bisque") and add cream and chicken stock when you open it to finish the soup.

My Yukon Golds and Norkotah (hope I spelled that right) didn't do well, but Kennebec did great. Red Pontiac did great. If I'd planted so Adirondack Blue or All-Blue, we could have had red, white and blue potato salad for the 4th of July. I worked in the garden a little early in the day, but then discovered pickling cucumbers on the vines, and dropped everything to run to the store and get pickling spices because the ones in my pantry are a couple of years old. In Gainesville, the Wal-Mart was sold out of all pickling spices, even the Mrs. Wage's mixes, but I found the spices at the Wal-Mart in Ardmore, and I really stocked up on them too. However, I was not a glutton and I did not buy all the jars of pickling spices. I left one jar for the next person. Once back home, I went out after lunch and started picking tomatoes again. I didn't get to finish because the rain got here sooner than I expected. I did get 6 bowls of tomatoes picked, to go along with the 2 on the kitchen counter left over from Saturday's picking, so I have 8 bowls of tomatoes to eat, dehydrate and preserve. If the rain hadn't rolled in so quickly, I likely could have picked 2 or 3 more bowls of tomatoes and then I would have had almost as many as I had on Saturday. We had a thunderstorm warning for high winds and possible hail up to dime-size, but the first wave of the storm blew through here without hailing. I understand some hail fell east of us. The best part was the temperature dropped from 88 degrees at our house to 69 in about an hour or so. It would be wonderful to be out there working in that kind of termperature, but there's lightning so I won't do it, and I'm already hearing new thunder from the west/southwest as the next wave of storms approaches. Even though we had 2.7" of rain the last time it rained here, it didn't seem to make much of a difference. Some of the cracks in the ground healed up, but the ponds are still empty and the grasses haven't greened up much. You'd think almost 3" of rain would have made more of a difference. It was very hot/humid here early today, as it was yesterday. That's the down side of rainy, humid summer weather--a heat index that makes it feel so much hotter. I'd still rather have the weather we're having now than to have a repeat of last June.

Suzie, You're welcome. My garden is roughly 10,000 square feet but its size is hard to figure because it isn't a square or rectangular box. It is actually several separate plots of land, and the biggest portion of it is bordered by the woods on the north side, a grove of trees on the west side, and the driveway on the south side. It curves to go around trees, and a big mound of clay that is worthless and which I'd love to have removed, and a little pond for the wildlife. When we fenced it, it took 400' linear feet of fencing, but because it isn't a nice square garden, it really isn't 100' by 100'. It looks like a garden designed by a person who'd been drinking. I should have just hired a guy with a bulldozer to flatten everything to the ground, but I wanted to preserve mature trees and shrubs for the wildlife....so what we have is a crazy garden tucked into a clearing in the woods with fencelines that meander around trees, shrubs, cacti (even they shriveled up and were really dessicated last year), a berm and a pond. I have several smaller garden plots that are more squared off and normal looking, and I grow lots in containers...I have 60 tomato plants in containers, though I am tired of watering them and about to let them go. They're really struggling in all these 100-degree-plus days. I grow so much because I use wide rows 4' to 5' wide with 12-18" pathways, although I confess that the plants spill over into the pathways. I also grow vertically on every bit of the garden fence I possibly can, which explains why I have cantaloupes hanging up there 8' above the ground at the top of the fence. Tomorrow I am going to climb a ladder to harvest the beans growing next to them, and while I am up there I am going to put slings up to support the cantaloupes. Today (and I am laughing at myself here) I found a Moon and Stars watermelon growing on a fence about 4' above the ground. The issue with that is that Moon and Stars is a huge melon. Usually I just plant the little mini-watermelons by the fence and they do just fine when grown vertically. I'm going to have to figure out how to support the Moon and Stars melon as it enlarges. I didn't think I had any Moon and Stars melons in that specific garden plot. It is the Three Sisters Garden with 'Texas Honey June Corn', 'Seminole ' and 'Old Timey Corn Field' pumpkins, 'Worchester Indian Red' Lima Bean, and Red Ripper southern peas. I'm not sure if I planted a watermelon plant there or if it is a volunteer from compost. When I saw the plant climbing the fence a couple of weeks ago, I shrugged and wondered if it was going to be 'Black Tail Mountain' or 'Yellow Baby'. Well it is neither. It has the moons and stars of 'Moon and Stars' so I am sure that's what it is. I do remember squeezing in some birdhouse gourds on the other fence, and a few leftover gourd plants and okra plants at the east end. In the spot where the watermelon is growing? Well, I have Kebarika bush beans there. So, apparently there's a melon there. All of the above explains how I don't plant rows so much as I plant groupings that fill up the space both vertically and horizontally. Even when it is unplanned, it happens. In the big garden my Seminole Pumpkins have escaped from their bed and run 20' eastward, but they aren't growing on the ground. No, that would be too simple. They are running across the tops of the tomato cages of the 'Indigo Rose' tomatoes. Apparently while I was busy canning during the whole month of June, plants began running amok in the garden. Tim can't even see me when I'm in the garden, so he stands at the gate and hollers my name. My cats sometimes hunt me down but often they just walk up and down the adjacent driveway meowing. I tried Square Foot Garden and it was only okay for me. I just am not that structured and regimented in the way I do things, and I felt some of the plant spacing didn't work well in our hot climate, especially with big monster tomato plants. So, after reading John Jeavons book (linked below) I began planting and interplanting using his spacing and find I can get about 4 times the yield I got from traditional row spacing years and years ago. Here's a quick example of how you can get more from your garden. I planted three rows of tomato plants, with each row being about 18' long and with 4' in between the rows. In the middle of that 4', I planted rows of bush beans. The bush beans had matured and had been harvested before the tomato plants were 4' tall, and after that, I yanked out the bean plants and the tomatoes filled in all that space. I often do the same things with carrots, lettuce and radishes underneath tomato plants like a ground cover. It is a way to get multiple crops from one space. I grow all my melons under okra plants. I grow most all my vining crops on trellises and fences. Often the pole beans will climb not only the fences, but any tomato cages or okra or corn plants within reach. I work really hard to get the most from every square inch of space. I always think the garden looks great in May because it is green, lush and yet still soemwhat orderly. Then June arrives and the heat brings explosive growth (as long as there is moisture) and it gets rowdy, wild and out-of-control and becomes a jungle. I continue working night and day to manage the harvest, and likely will make the last salsa tomorrow. I've been running the dehydrator almost 24/7 and may finish drying the Principe Borghese tomatoes this week. After that, there likely won't be that many more tomatoes to harvest and dry at once, although every now and then I get a bunch of SunGolds at one time. I'm sort of moving on now, beyond tomatoes to peppers, trading in salsa-making and other fabulous tomato products for candied jalapenos peppers, jalapenos rings, Habanero Gold jelly and jalapeno jelly. I've also been busy making pickles. Today I made Spicy Pickles using a Mrs. Wage's spice mix that includes jalapenos. I think Tim is going to love these hot, spicy pickles, but they may be too hot for me. Tim looked at the counter a few days ago, with rows of tomato products (Pasta Sauce, Chili Base and Pizza Sauce) lined up neatly in their pint jars while I was trying to figure out where to put them and said "it's starting to look like you're a Doomsday Prepper". I told him no, that I was just a gardener who didn't want to waste a bit of the harvest. Doomsday Prepper indeed! (I do enjoy watching the show, but I am not one of those folks.) My Roma/Villawear tomato press/strainer is one reason I can so much stuff. Without it, the whole process is too time-consuming. With it, I can whip out batch after batch of stuff in the blink of an eye. I never would can this much if I had to peel tomatoes. If I never, ever again have to drop tomatoes into boiling water to begin the tomato-peeling process, I'll be a happy camper. Insanity reigns at our house this year--both in the garden and in the kitchen, but I am having a lot of fun (tiring fun) and getting oodles of food put up. The deep freeze is about 2/3s full, and I will finish filling it up (hopefully!) with okra, frozen peppers and mid- and late-season corn. My big worry has been that fires would start up and would take me away from the kitchen. Now that the tomato preservation is about done, I can relax and not worry much about that. We have had fires, but just not big, out-of-control ones like we had last year, and I've only had to leave in the middle of canning one time, and it wasn't at a critical time when I shouldn't leave. I have my eye on a place behind the garage where I want to be able to plant corn and pumpkins, but the soil needs massive work. I scatter sowed (with no tilling) a deer/wildlife plot mixture there last fall and it all seemed to grow well. This spring when Tim cut it, he came in and told me the turnips had grown entirely above ground. I told him that turnips will pop up like that, similar to onions sometimes (at least in our clay they do) and he told me they'd never been in the ground. I didn't believe him and went out to see...and there they were lying sideways on top of the hard clay soil. I cannot even imagine how much work we'd have to do to make that soil suitable for growing anything, but if we managed to do it, that would give me 1800 more square feet to play with. Dawn