Hello, I had a spider plant that was pretty much dead. After much research I decided to down size the pot, put it in my kitchen window so it would get LOTS of light (no direct) and water it sparingly as I read that they don't like too much water. I too, cut off a lot of brown leaves. Now, it has sprung right back and it is looking amazing! Be patient and it will turn around and look super healthy. So don't you worry. :)

Welcome to the Harvest Forum. It's a little slow right now, but wait until produce starts coming in!! I can answer some of your questions and I'm sure others will be along with more ideas. 1. I cut the kernels off corn cobs with my electric knife (after blanching). Stand the ear on the stem end in a bundt or angel food cake pan and slice away. The kernels fall right into the pan. 2. Haven't grown bushel cukes. 3. Don't do French Onion Soup. 4. You can freeze the peppers after roasting and peeling for use all winter. I don't usually do bell peppers, but I do roast, peel and freeze Anaheims to use in recipes calling for mild green chilis. 5. I eat the garlic in my dill pickles too! I have pickled garlic alone and for us, it's mostly a snack or a way to preserve some of our garlic for later use in cooked dishes (you don't really taste the vinegar). 6. Let's see...I can my peaches (peeled and sliced or halved). They can be used however I want later. I have canned apple slices (peeled, cored and sliced), but they get rather soft. I have dehydrated apple slices and have frozen them raw (quick dip in Fruit Fresh to help prevent browning). We don't eat much pie, so I prefer to just preserve the plain fruit and decide later how I want to use it. 7. Not sure what kind of marinade you're wanting to use to marinate your tomatoes so this is hard to answer. You can sprinkle on herbs, salt, pepper, lemon juice, vinegar prior to drying. Other: Do you have a copy of the Ball Blue Book (often referred to as BBB)? Great source of info and recipes. Small Batch Preserving is another good one. Here's link to the National Center for Home Food Preservation. The information here is reliable and up to date as far as safety. Hope to see more of you around here!!! Deanna (Pacific Northwest) Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP

Don't know how I missed this thread; glad to see it brought back up. As a preservationist, I periodically grow most of my beans for seed, regardless of their intended usage. Even my pole snaps are grown for seed every 4-5 years. You can get good dry seed production from pole beans - sometimes exceptional yields. My 2009 bean seed yields, as well as detailed discussions about plant spacing, can be found on this thread. To summarize, though, I get average dry seed yields between 1-2 ounces per plant for bush beans (6" spacing/24" rows) and over 6 ounces per plant for pole beans (12" spacing/36-42" rows). For short season areas like Vermont, bush beans - because of their earlier maturity - stand the best chance of success. Many excellent bush dry beans are available. Bush beans are also the best choice if growing beans in subsistence quantities, because the plants can be closely spaced & require little care. Pole dry beans would be the better choice if you could only plant a single row, and wanted the maximum yield. "Soissons Vert" and "Brita's Foot Long" are outstanding pole dry beans. A little bit of math, regarding my observations of bush vs. pole yield. While the 6+ oz. average yield per plant for pole beans easily exceeds the 1-2 ounces per plant of bush beans, there would be twice as many bush beans in the row using my spacing (6" vs. 12"), and the row spacing for bush would be 2/3 that of pole (24" vs. 36+"). If you multiply out the differences (bush beans twice the plants, rows X 1.5) the yields are comparable... so it really comes down to garden philosophy, personal preference, and choice of varieties.

Addie, I can understand your feeling overwhelmed, it is never easy to transform a yard into what you wish it to be. Couple that with the fact that you are just starting the gardening process and lack even much of the basic knowledge and you have a recipe for frustration. I strongly suggest you work on small areas one at a time and get your feet wet. The resources suggested in previous posts are all terrific, but it will be you who has to go out and work the soil, condition it, plant, weed, water, fertilize and manage it. As garden areas become established and require less care you can work on another area. If you try and do everything at once you have a lot of work and time to expend ahead of you. The vegetable garden area you mentioned sounds quite large. I have a 24'x24' veggie garden area that I am 'shrinking' to allow for a sandbox and ornamental flowers because I am finding that I simply don't need that much to grow the things my family of 4 eats. Next year it will be 16'x24' and that allows me enough to eat all the fresh produce I want and preserve enough to last until next season. My advice is only grow what you *know* you like to eat and leave just a small section for experimental plants that you aren't sure you will want much of. To condition an area for planting mow down any existing vegetation and leave it rot in place. This makes compost which is the single best thing for any soil type. Once this is done you can roto till or use the lasagna method to 'take back' small plots for planting as you are able to. I strongly suggest you use from now until spring to learn as much as you can, get some books, talk to the extension agents (although I find they often know nothing so just get their published literature) and in the winter get a graph paper notebook and start sketching how you want things to look when finished. Then start one section at a time as energy and finances permit. I live on 1/4 acre (undeveloped when I got here), have been here for 4 years and *still* am adding areas and pots. I expect this will continue for another couple years at least. The moral is don't expect to do everything in one year. Take the time to learn, look at other people's properties that appeal to you and figure out each section at a time. Otherwise you will frustrate yourself and create something that is a maintenance nightmare and end up redoing it.