Once the pseudostem of a banana flowers and produces fruit (edible or inedible) it dies. The pups will take the mama's place, grow, fruit and then terminate as well. The corm is the underground part of the plant. The pup is the new offspring, and the pseudostem is the above ground growth (some folks would call it a trunk but it is not) with leaves growing from the pseudostem (which is really part of the leaf). From your description, I would not alter anything you are doing. In particular, don't cut the main plant back because the flower and subsequent fruit will help you identify which banana you have. Steve

I'd agree with all that. Like Dee, I am also a big believer in disturbing the soil as little as possible. I try not to turn it over with a pitchfork, I just insert the pitchfork to the depth of it and lift the soil to loosen it. And you can add good organic compost to the top and just work it in to the top 3 - 6 inches of soil before planting. I like Coast of Maine organic compost in the bags if I don't have my own With a spade, just loosen the soil around the weeds and they should all pull out very easily. For an easy way to grow pole string beans, I buy four 8 or 10ft tall bamboo poles and make a teepee with them and tie them at the top with string and you can directly sow pole string beans, it's not too late. I like purple podded string beans called 'Trionfo Violetto Pole Bean' if you can find the seed. Why? Because the bugs seem to be less interested in them, they are prettier, they cook up green, and they are not too stringy. You don't have to do much to grow string beans, they are easy and fast. If you are planting tomatoes, I actually grow them in raised 4ft square beds and they get large and no more than two plants will fit in each bed. Plant them diagonally from each other so they won't shade each other. I use grass clippings from the lawn to mulch with, but that is because I don't use any chemicals or fertilizer on our lawn. I also put flowers in the corners of the bed or Basil plants along the edge. Nasturtiums or Marigolds are easy and pretty. And you will need some kind of support for the tomato plants. Regular tomato cages are pretty much inadequate for the size the plants will get. But if you stake them and tie the tomato to the stake as it grows and put the largest tomato cage you can buy over it, it should be pretty good. I use 8ft stakes, because they will grow 6ft tall and you need to hammer the stake about a foot into the soil. Good luck and hope you have fun!

Dirt man, They sound like blister beetles and I saw two in my garden this morning. I promptly snipped each one in half with my Fiskars gardening scissors. Blister beetles may or may not be a problem in any given year, and I think it mostly depends on how many you have. One way they are harmful is that they can completely strip the plants they like of every scrap of foliage, and they can do it very quickly. However, most years I only see a couple here and a couple there and I try not to overreact when I see them since they are beneficial. How are they beneficial? They devour grasshopper eggs. I wouldn't have snipped those two beetles in my garden in half this morning, but they were on my pepper plants and after babying those plants through this heat and drought, I'm not in the mood to have to fight the blister beetles. I've seen larger numbers of beetles strip plants bare in just a few days. You already got great watermelon advice. Watch for the browning, drying tendrils. Watch for the yellow spot, and it is more than just the color change. The color will be a creamy yellow and the texture of that spot will be different than the rest of the watermelon rind. Sometimes it even feels rougher while the rest of the melon rind is slicker or smoother. Learn to recognize the sound a ripe watermelon makes. (Try thumping a few melons at the grocery store and listening to the sound. Then you'll know what sound to listen for in the garden.) A ripe melon makes a dull, hollow sound while an unripe one makes more of a sharp ringing sound. Also, keep the DTM of the specific variety you planted in mind. If you planted a melon with a DTM of 90 days, you're not going to have a ripe melon at 65 or 70 days, so use common sense in that way. Size helps too. If you planted a watermelon that should be 25-30 lbs. when mature, then it isn't likely to be ripe when it reaches 15 lbs. You need ALL the above signs....not just the dull, hollow sound or the dried tendrils or the creamy yellow spot where the melon sits on the ground....or the right DTM and weight...but all of them. If you still can't tell, do what my old farmer friend, Fred, sometimes does. Use your pocketknife to cut a circular plug out of the melon. It can be nickle-sized or so. Sample the flesh. If it is ripe, harvest the melon. If it isn't, replace the plug and hope fire ants don't circumvent the plug and get into the melon. (I'm not saying you should do this, but rather that my friend sometimes gets impatient and cuts out a plug to see if a melon is ripe....and if he can't tell a melon is ripe or not after a lifetime of growing them, what hope is there for the rest of us?) I usually watch for the drying tendrils and yellow spot on the part of the melon that sits on the ground, and then I thump it. Then, if I think it sounds ripe, I still wait 3 or 4 more days in case I'm wrong. Mine usually don't split, because they don't get watered as they're maturing...only get watered when the melons are still tiny....and animals can't breach my fence to get them. If you only have a couple of melon plants and can watch them daily for flowering and think you can keep track of which bloom fertilized when, then you might find it helpful to know that a watermelon usually is ripe about 45 days after the bloom was pollinated. About tomato cages....it isn't necessarily the cage. It is the way the cage is staked. You can make very sturdy cages out of concrete reinforcing wire, but mine are made of a lighter weight welded wire fencing because I find it easier to cut. You can buy welded wire fencing in different gauges at home center stores or farm supply stores. All of my cages start out being staked with 3' wooden construction stakes or 3' to 6' tall metal T-posts. I base the decision on which height of stake to use on my prior experience with any specific variety. Some of the really big monster plants get 8' metal t-posts, and Tess's Land Race Currant, usually the biggest monster of them all, normally gets 3 or 4 8' tall t-posts for an 8' tall cage that supports a 16' tall plant in a good year (8' tall and then it cascades back down to the ground for another 8' and once it hits the ground, I lop off any future growth to keep it above ground). If you are in an area exposed to a lot of high wind...like high on a hill, or on a flat plain with nothing to block the wind...skip the 3' or 4' tall posts and stakes and start out with 6' or 8' tall t-posts right from the start. Still no hornworms here, but have had swallowtail cats on the parsley, which is planted just for them. No hornworms here either. It is a pretty good insect year except for te spider mites and grasshoppers, and they're always bad in a drought year.

To give you some encouragement, I was fairly successful DESPITE my methods. I didn't even use a seed tray! I usually buy peppers every single year from the farmer's market. I saved some seed, thinking I will give it a shot in the spring 'just for fun'. I totally forgot about the seeds until around March, and then proceeded to start 50 seeds in a single dixie cup sitting on top of my fridge, assuming that 'if I am lucky, I will get 1 or two to sprout up". Well, I got basically all 50 shooting up. I was busy, and didn't even move them into individual cups until they were already a month old and strangling one another. I used no lights - just my south facing windowsill - and I stacked my cups on top of one another like a pyramid to try and maximize how many I could fit. They toppled down twice, but I just put them back up. By the time the last frost hit, most of them were flowering. I moved them outside in what I thought would be a great spot to harden them off (started researching by this time!) and I severely damaged half of them in one day. Anyways, by the time September came (I get frost in September) I picked 2 grocery bags full of peppers. I can't imagine doing things more wrong. It was about as 'ghetto' and low-tech as you can get. I still don't use a heat mat - I don't even use seed starting trays. I just use empty styrofoam egg containers with a bit of soil in each cell, and I set that on top of my fridge (haven't taken a temperature reading) and I got about 90% germination. Anything you have - a computer, DVD player, etc., - that puts out a bit of heat you can use. You CAN get it to sprout even without heat, but the germination rates will be lower, and they will take longer to sprout. I use lights now, simply because I am growing way more varieties this year, but still have a few that I couldn't fit under the lights sitting on my windowsill. I can definitely see the advantage of lights now, but I am still expecting to be picking some nice peppers at the end of the season even from the ones sitting on the windowsill (after the frost and I get them in-ground, that is). So, don't worry. Your germination and growth rates may not be optimal, but you will experience some success. Besides, this way is the 'green way', right? :D Good luck!!