My original Goldsturms grew and spread in full sun on the southwest corner of my house, but eventually after 4 or 5 years developed a black mildew problem which got worse every year thereafter. I believe the mildew was a combination of my naturally wettish clay and my crazy neighbor who watered his grass (and oversprayed into my yard) twice a day. Anyway, I removed this big patch of BESs one windy fall day. The next season I had BES seedlings in several different areas of my garden. Each year they have spread to more areas. I have removed many of them, but they keep popping up. They seem totally oblivious to encroaching shade in my 15 year old garden, easily settling in happily in nearly full shade, if the area is dry enough for them. They have become a real nuisance in my hosta beds under two Coralburst Crabapple trees. These are wonderfully shaped trees, but provide low dense shade. BES is crowding out and growing through these hostas, as well as gobbling up my somewhat limited tree shade, faster than I can remove the BESs. So far they have not invaded any building shade areas.

Well I would have to say it was a so...so gardening season. Just to re-cap. First when the snow disappeared, I found vole holes and damage everywhere in my garden. Lilies blooming this season were few and far between....so many lily shreds. The nan-king cherry was replaced...with two....one looks like it didn't make it...not sure why. The two roses that I replaced with just 1, turned out to be miss labeled. We had lots of hail each month of the summer....lots of storms and so much rain. Then to top that off we also had frost each month as well. What is so amazing is that most of the plants in my garden, want to grow. Most of them seemed to bounce back and keep going and flowering, even if a little worse for wear. There were a few that didn't make it, but hey, you can't do much about the weather. There also seemed to be fewer pests this year. The start of the season, there were way to many aphids...but I guess they didn't like the weather. Snicker ;-))) What really liked the wet stormy weather was the slugs.....way to many...slimey ickys. Grab a slug, Fling a slug...STOMP STOMP STOMP. Thats the slug dance in case you see me doing that as I walk around my yard. :O Mosquitos and little black flys are just horrible around here from end of May till end of July...so its not so bad at this time of year...just a few around. My garden season is just about finished. I have already dumped out some of the planters..to get a head start on the fall cleanup. This year, will make sure that everything is cleaned up and the grass cut short and the weed whacking done right up till the snow flys to try to prevent the vole damage next spring...hopefully I won't see that much damage again next spring...or ever again for that matters. Okay it may have been one of the worst gardening seasons, I have seen so far.....but there is always the hope and promise of the next seaon to come. Now how long before the seed catalogues start comming in. :-) Sierra

Okay guys today is the day! The weather is going to be iffy; cloudy with rain showers starting around 6 so I thought we would proceed. Might be a relief to how HOT it was last year. Warning about the directions - the balloons on my mailbox may not happen. Bought them yesterday and they are already dead! Will try to get more but it is not guaranteed. I will post a photo of my house for you. livy, I can hold on to your plants for you to pick up later. Let me know. I can also take them and plant them in my grden for you to have next year. I will check this forum often today so post with any questions or email me. I will also print out the entire thread to have here for everyone to refer to. See you at 1! WG

Mia, Yes , I think it will work. Interplanting tomatoes with other crops is something I do all the time. I often grow smaller plants like lettuce and carrots underneath and between tomato plants, essentially using them as a living mulch beneath the taller tomato plants. I also mix all kinds of herbs into the tomato beds as well, and think those herbs help explain how I grow so many tomato plants and yet only rarely see even a single tomato hornworm or fruit worm. You sometimes will get less yield per plant when you interplant multiple kinds of crops together using close spacing, but since you have a lot more plants occupying the soil, you still get a good harvest . The best carrot crop I ever had was a result of me broadcast sowing lettuce and carrot seed randomly into the tomato bed after the tomato plants already had been transplanted into the ground. My garden was smaller then and I had run out of space, so was packing as much into each bed as I possibly could. I just thinned carrots and lettuce after they sprouted. When I grow onions with tomato plants, normally I hammer a stake into the ground where each tomato plant will be planted later, and leave a small unplanted spot there as I plant the onions. When it it time to transplant the tomato plants into the ground, I put one tomato plant next to each stake. If I have to pull up a couple of onions to make room for a tomato transplant, it isn't a big deal . We eat those onions as scallions. I started interplanting multiple types of plants together long ago, after reading John Jeavon's book "How To Grow More Vegetables...." book. It is amazing how much you can pack into even a small space when you interplant. Even when I grow tomato plants in molasses feed tubs, I generally have pepper plants, herbs and flowers mixed into each container with the tomato plants. Look at how Mother Nature mixes everything up together. On the eastern edge of our woodland, for example, we have native pecan and oak trees growing as the dominant plants, but underneath them we have wild cherries, American persimmons, possumhaw hollies, and redbuds, and beneath those understory trees we have American beautyberry bushes, native blackberries, inland sea oats and brushy bluestem, peppervines and several native wildflowers which ebb and flow with the seasons. All of them happily co-exist. Why can't our gardens be the same way? To garden bio-intensively in this manner, you need to pay careful attention to soil fertility and irrigation (if adequate rainfall is not being received). Obviously when you interplant several types of edible crops together, the plants will be competing with one another. I get smaller onions in interplanted beds than I get from onions grown in a monoculture with recommended spacing, but still get tons of onions. We still have several dozen onions from last year's crop, though now they are starting to sprout. There pretty much is nothing grown in our veggie garden that isn't interplanted with several other things. If I ever were to plant even one single monoculture bed, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like the way it looked and would be out there trying to fix the bed by adding more stuff to it. In fact, I do have my onions planted as monoculture beds right now, but that is because they are the only thing I've put into the ground so far this year. The onions will not be alone in those beds for long. Hope this helps , Dawn