Hi Carrie, I would love to trade for some of your coneflower seed and your pumpkin on a stick. I have some lemon drop peppers and some datura inoxia that blooms very fragrant with 8" white trumpets and some other ornamental peppers too. If you are interested, please email me. Thanks, Linda

I'd be interested in pumpkin on a stick seeds, can you look at my list and see if anything interests you and let me know at mamahack@hotmail.com

The deer around here love my garden. They eat the pumpkin leaves, too. But my deer are so impatient, they eat the tips of the vines with the flowers on them--they don't even wait for the pumpkins. One year, I put soap on my jumbo pumpkin and they left it alone, but it had a funny looking spot from the soap sitting on it. This year I planted my pumpkins in an old dog pen, but the dumb pumpkins don't know that they are risking their lives by growing outside of the pen. I have as many pumpkins growing outside the pen as there are inside of it. Outside the pen, the only thing that stops the deer from eating my pumpkins are the ones that start growing in the dead sticky weeds. I usually get at least one big one that way. But I'm not suggesting you grow weeds--there just happens to be an empty field full of weeds next to my little garden patch.

Hi writersblock. No, I have not tried Seminole pumpkin at all. Not sure if I would recognize one if it bit me, but I have had very good luck with sweet potato and white potatoes both in a large "tote" style container and in the ground. Their runners generally get to about 8 ft long. I generally plant the tote with 6 or 7 seed 'taters to use as a test bed before digging in my main bed, and you're right the vines will put down roots in fertile soil. For containment of the long vines I have encircled the large bed with a cheap roll of picket fencing and as the vines get long I just flip them back over on top of themselves. Right now they are stacked about 2 ft thick. This technique might work for you also. Before I forget to tell you, I have found a mulch that is great for all plants and I have used it with success this year. It's chopped straw (not hay) with a coating that glues it into place. Lets the water and air thru but doesn't blow away and the best part is that at the end of the growing season I just till it in to add organics to the soil. Are you aware of this product?