I like tomato byproducts such as spaghetti sauce, ketchup, and salsa. Both my husband and I dislike "raw" tomatoes. Scientists have done studies and discovered a certain percentage (about 10%) of the population dislikes the taste of raw tomatoes. Tomatoes are in the same family as nightshade, which is poisonous. Some scientists believe certain people developed an aversion to the taste of tomatoes as a way staying alive. People just avoided eating anything in the nightshade family whether it was poisonous or not. I am growing tomatoes this year to make my own salsa and maybe spaghetti sauce. I am sure my husband will use some of the tomatoes in chili. One way or another I will have to learn to can. My mother in law will be very happy to teach me. She's always trying to get me to spend more time in the kitchen. (In my house I grow the food, and my hubby cooks the food.)

I can hear that you're very frustrated, but I don't understand why you want to take such drastic measures, lol. Though, I have thought about scrapping the whole thing from time to time. I'm a first time gardener. I have to tell you that we had snow on May first, lol, so it sounds like we have similar areas. If your squash are otherwise healthy, you shouldn't get flowers until now anyway. Spray the evil bugs off with your garden hose and then give em a real good spray with soapy water. I was a little freaked out over a few different kinds of good bugs in my garden (ex: pill bugs eat compost). Are your cucumbers small because they've just formed? Or do they need to be pollinated? If they're healthy, they'll just keep producing more cukes until a few get pollinated correctly and one grows to full ripeness. If you planted in mid-May, most tomato varieties won't be ready to produce yet, lol. I have two romas that are two feet tall. Every other plant is four feet tall or taller, but those romas I started a bit later (mid-May, btw) and haven't started their real growth yet. One of them has decided to keep up with the Joneses and is trying to produce, and that has it's own set of issues. Overall, if your leaves are green, you're doing just fine. Toss a bit of compost on those squash and get rid of those bugs. One word of caution is, if those little bugs you found are squash bugs, I understand they'll saw right through your stems, so you should take immediate, decisive action. It doesn't sound like them from your description. IMHO: you're doing just fine, you're entering the home stretch, don't give up just yet. Grace, Carolyn P.

All of these ideas sound useful. I dug up the front lawn this year the hard way , that is I cut squares out of the sod ( beig careful not to damage the Silver Maple roots running through it) then sat around shaking the soil out depositing the remaining tufts into the municipal bin ( no room to store). Apart from getting to enjoy being outside for 3 consecutive weekends from dawn 'til dusk I met all the neighbours as they walked by in disbelief

Cut them back by at least 1/3 and try to get as much root ball, intact, as you can. Once potted up, if you see them starting to struggle, cut them back further. With climbers it usually takes about 3 years for them to build a big enough root ball to able to send food and water up those 12 ft. canes. That's why climbers are usually slow starters and hence the adage, 1st year sleep, 2nd year creep, 3rd year leap! Think about it, 12 ft. is a lot of cane to nurture. The rose needs a large, strong root ball to push nutrients up or out that far. You need to balance the amount of root ball you retain with the amount of cane it needs to feed.