My favorite soil warmers are TunLCovers. I have bought from the manufacturer, but I get them now from Gurney when they have an offer to buy $50 and get $25 off in February. I haven't noticed damage from heat, usually the plants love it, including the weeds. You can push the plastic up the ribs for ventilation if you want. If its going to be unusually hot I can just take them off, too. I have to take them off to water anyway. They are double-walled plastic, which might make some difference. Also they are only 18" tall so by the time tomatoes are big enough to start blooming I usually have had to take them off. This way I can reliably grow tomatoes in the 72-85 DTM range but above that I may not get fruit until too late to really get a good crop. Of course here with the cold night temps all summer the DTM may be more like 115-125 days. That's why getting those mid to long season tomatoes out in April really makes a difference in getting ripe fruit. The early plants bear consistently earlier than those planted later. I also grow some early tomatoes like Juliet, Oregon Spring, Siberian Pink, and Verna's Orange Oxheart so I start getting tomatoes earlier. After last summer's cold temps I am cutting back growing tomatoes a lot this year though, and growing more beans and greens. The really neat thing about the tunnels is they also can be used to dry out the soil for planting as they keep the rain off, so I put them out for a couple of weeks before I want to plant. I used to wait until April 15 to plant tomatoes but found a 30-year weather report and there is only a couple of degrees difference between then and April 1. I start seeds under lights in late January to February and start planting out about April 7, or when the plants hit the lights at 11". I just have to have some dry time to actually dig holes as I plant, and I put fertilizer and compost into the planting hole. I bury the plant up to the bottom leaves so it will only stick up 6 or so inches, then the tunnel boosts the temperature during the day and also at night. I've had frosts and snow on the tunnels with no harm to the seedlings. Since the tunnels keep rain off I need to water sometimes, and I also use Iron Phosphate snail bait under them as slugs like the plastic. The soil is just too cool here for peppers and eggplants, so I do plant them in pots to keep the roots warmer. I get great results setting squash and cucumbers out early with them too, which I start 6 weeks before setting out- with the tunnels I can start them in April, without I would start them about May 1. The squash plants really love them. I haven't had good luck with spinach either, I'm glad to hear why. I do like to plant winter hardy coles like overwintering broccoli, turnips, and wild red kale by July 15 so they get big enough to live through the winter, then I have early greens the next spring. One year I had great bok choy planted in July as a fall crop, too. Chard, collards, and mustard do very well here as well. Unfortunately, I also tried tunnels over pea and fava bean seedlings, in an area I had grown pole beans for a couple of years. I guess it had built up a big vole population. I pulled up the tunnels to check on germination and the ground was just churned with vole tunnels going up and down the entire bed, only about 3 peas managed to come up. I do succeed with peas planted in March in a box with hardware cloth in the bottom.

So wha's this about a 3 week cycle? I don't think mine have stopped making blososms since it began more than a month ago, though to be honest I wasn't checking. **** New blossoms are produced at about a 3 wk time frame but since it's not synchronous you see them as being made all the time. It's helpful for folks who grow in very high heat areas to know that since they often lose ALL blossoms due to blossom drop b'c the high heat destroys the pollen. When new blossoms are made and the temps dip and the pollen is viable then they can often get fruit set. Carolyn

Element, I have received plants at a plant swap that were in cans (such as the soup can you mentioned). They had simply punched holes in the bottom (looked as if they had used an ice pick) and potted into the can. Just a thought if you think the newspaper is not going to hold out. It seems to me that the smaller roll of newspaper into a larger can would work well, also.

Ya, I look at his little face and I think he seems sad. He's so thin and his eyes are so big in his little head. He can still get around though I think it's difficult for him. He does go up and down stairs (not sure why now that the litterboxes are upstairs) but it's really hard for him. I have to pick him up very carefully or his back legs shudder - I think because it's painful for him. It's somewhat difficult for him to lie down or get up - he kind of plops down and kind of struggles to get up. I think the saddest thing is that he no longer sucks his tail. The whole time we've had him (over 12 years) he has always sucked his tail like a baby before he goes to sleep. It seemed like this was a huge comfort to him - and no he no longer has that. It's so sad when it gets to this stage. When my last cat died I thought no more. I had two left and I figured that would get me through most of the rest of my life. That lasted about two years and then I adopted one from a shelter. So I now have three - soon to be two I guess.