The black specks are worm poo. As far as getting rid of them....if you have time in the morning, check the undersides of leaves for tiny sparkly round things attached...those would be moth eggs, most likely. If you get rid of those you'll have prevented the hatching of more worms. The least toxic (to people and plants and animals)solution to any caterpillar problem is BT spray. I am going to misspell it, but it's a liquid with bacillus thurengesis in it. These are bacteria that will kill the caterpillar about 24 hours after they take a bite of the leaf. Assuming they do so as baby caterpillars, you won't see much damage, and eventually the population will drop off to just a few every now and then. Follow the directions on the bottle. It is supposed to be safe to harvest same day. I still rinse my maters well, just to be on the safe side. BT is generally considered acceptable by most organic gardeners...(certainly not all). Another thing you can do is to encourage birds to pick off the insects and worms...but if you do, you'll need to pick your maters at first blush and let them ripen in a window indoors.

I am just down the road from you in Sun City, now part of City of Menifee. My last frost date is March 15 and I started seed first week of Jan in small amounts and a few more today. I plan to spread it out thru Feb and beyond due to our long growing season. First part of April is probably safer as a plant out date, which leaves you plentry of time. Most growers suggest seeding 6 weeks prior to plant out date. I have Earth Boxes that go under patio cover to protect the early ones from late frost. Linda

Have you any familiarity with the Kheulavator? Agri Supply carries them. It takes some doing to get a variety of widths on raised beds and so I really can't recommend one. However, I've dealt with one for about 10 years now. I have a Kubota L4400 with a Lands Pride rototiller. After I rototill the garden I use the k'vator to hill the row/bed. I then rake it by hand to level it and establish the width and height. Usually my beds are about 10-14" above grade. The width can be anywheres from 8" to 36" wide. Wider than that isn't really practical and it's actually easier to just use the rototiller. I recently decided to design and build a bed shaper to fit on the tiller. I typically will ask the community at 'tractorbynet.com' to assist me with the design, under the appropriate forum(s). You can't cross-list so I try to ask specific design questions rather than one general question. I've been doing raised beds with a drip irrigation line arrangement for a long time. If you'd like to share info on them we could start another thread here or share on tractorbynet. I need to start taking pictures of the garden and progress anyway. I'm not the best a) housecleaner or b) photographer. I get a little shy of taking pictures of my garden as there is always some level of chaos i.e., tools scattered around along with drip fittings, pvc, implements, dying vegetation etc. Inhibits me from shooting pics. However I am sort of computer literate and can handle the upload side of stuff usually. This year I decided to put into use my jang jp3 seeder. I just did leeks and bulb/bunching onions. CAn't comment on singulation or skips as they're just starting to germinate after 2 weeks. I have a good assortment of rollers and look to use the seeder this season in order to get familiar with it. I have had it sitting unused for the last 10 years. The reason is the raised beds aren't really accepting of a multi row hand seeder. It also was binding on the rollers to the extent that you could not push it down the row cause the driving wheels would stick! Pretty lousy for a 1k USD machine. This year I hand sanded the rollers and their receivers until enough movement was created to allow the seeder's use. Johnny's seeds has been goofing around with them. They have a good cross referenced EXCEL sheet with their suggestions for type of seed/roller correspondence. Makes roller selection better than guessing although the top of the seed hopper has indentations for seed/roller identification. If setting up a thread for discussion sounds amenable to ya let me know ok? Is there a way to PM on garden web? psient Psient

1) Can't applybuilder just pluck a sucker and root from that. Winter doesn't last very long in So Cal. Sure folks can start new plants from suckers of varieties they like. I didn't mention it b'c I know most folks like to trial as many different varieties as they can, always looking for that perfect tomato, LOL, so almost all of my friends in high heat areas don't grow the same varities for the Fall crop that they do for the Spring crop. And one wouldn't anyway, if concentrating onlong and midseason for the Spring crop and early and midseason varieties for the Fall crop. And has been mentioned above by me and others have chimed in, plants overwintered don't usually produce as they did in the previous season; lots of variables there. 2) "Try to avoid the high heat conditions...". It's coming into the hot summer months here in July and August. But half of my crops appears stunt and havent' set at all. I want to pull them and plant a few plants to have a late harvest. Are you saying to not plant in the summer months ? What I'm saying is that you have to plant early enough so that the plants will pollenize while temps are still moderate b/c high temps inhibit pollenization and/or fruit set, and you want the fruits to mature before the high heat kicks in. None of my S Cal friends would be setting out plants for the Fall crop until maybe early to mid September. and so stating seeds in maybe early July or so to get those plants to set out transplant size of maybe 6-9 inches. And your nurseries there offer a lot of varieties to chose from for the Fall season as well as the Spring season. I never really appreciated the problems that folks in zones 9 and 10 have, as do others in other states, until I was invited to give a weekend program on heirloom tomatoes at Hortus Nursery in Pasadena. I also spent time at their then store in Orange County and it was great b'c I got to meet a lot of folks I knew from online. Hortus went out of business, but Gary, who ran it, has now been with Armstrong Nursries for quite a few years. Does the above help? Carolyn