Yeah those kids are smart as hell! I plan to get the tubing to make it happen just as they show in their videos. Not all teens sit around playing video games and texting I guess. ;) I grew up on a real farm and texting wasn't invented yet (and cell phones were too pricey for any farm kid to own). I just had video games, but they always took a back seat to school and working for my family. Yup.. we both shared "The Yellowing" of our plants. So far so good with adding that sifted pine bark and more perlite. I cannot remember the initial proportion of peat to vermiculite to perlite that I used for my base soil medium, but I remember it was said the proportion that Miracle Gro uses in their non Moisture-control. The only reason I made my own (which was a lot of work) was because I had 5 Earthtainers to fill and it was cheaper in the long run and I didn't mind getting my hands dirty. I mixed this in the 3:2:1 ratio (soil medium:pine bark:more perlite) for this year's mix. Anyhow you're probably asking about the fertilizer mixes, so for that I used 1 measuring cup of OLD Tomato-Tone + 1 cup of NEW Tomato-Tone for the fertilizer strip (in a 30ga ET). I blended those together and laid the strip. Then for EACH tomato hole I put in approximately 1 cup of my homebrew worm casts. My worm bins are very simple. Take two 5-gallon buckets, drill 3/8" holes randomly through the bottom of one bucket (50 holes or something). Fill this bucket with shredded paper (junk mail, paper bags from fast food and credit card offers are what I use). You will want to moisten the paper and squeeze the water out like a sponge, so it is just damp. This is the worm bedding. Add this and then next add worms and organic matter like banana peels (primarily my worm's major source of material). I use red wiggler worms provided by a class I took a few years ago at UK. Put this bucket inside the other bucket which will serve as the outer bucket to catch whatever drips from the worm's activity above. I use that worm leechate on my Blueberry bushes. Also get a lid for the worm bucket bin. The worms get enough oxygen by lifting the lid every now and then to toss in more organic waste for them to work the bacteria off of. I've gone weeks without lifting the lid. The hardest part of the worm bin is collecting the casts 6-8 months later. I can describe that process if you want. Here's what my bins look like: From 050509 Harvesting: From 022810 From 022810

Hi phantom_white, I have: Purple Aster (New England Aster) Celadine Boneset Gayfeather All Heal (prunella vulgaris) All Heal (prunella grandiflora, pink) Leopard Flower (if you mean Blackberry Lilly?) Balsam (if you mean Balsam Impatiens?; have pink and deep pink) Poison Hemlock May even have some burdock to harvest....trying to eradicate it though! ....several heirloom tomatoes to choose from... For your: Cut Leaf Self Heal Chocolate Habanero Carbon Tomato Box Car Willie Tomato Pearly Pink Tomato (and if you find enough of mine....) Korean Melon Danvers Half Long Chantenay Chantenay Red Cored Let me know if you are interested, Tina Here is a link that might be useful: My trade page

Your info on variegated Japanese corn (popcorn?) sounds promising. It makes me believe that you are isolating them far enough apart to be effective, but practical. I like the idea of the ears being multicolored much more than being dark burgundy. My genetic knowledge is more animal based than plant based. However, a few generalizations apply. Choosing from the best ears for your purposes is right on track, but I would choose kernels from the best 20 ears instead of three. However, if there were seven ears I rated highly, followed by 13 I rated mediocre, I would choose only from the best seven. My question arose because I thought you may have made the same error I once made. I had a race of ornamental corn that had lots of colors. Every ear you husked made you smile. I liked the colors, but thought the yellows and especially the whites added nothing to the beauty. I planted only the colors I liked and zero yellows and whites. My yield still had plenty of yellows/whites and I kept selecting against them. This was decades ago so I don't remember exactly. But about the fourth year I was opening husks to find very dark ears that would have looked nice in certain arrangements, but none really made you smile. I discontinued the project completely. My lesson was to not place emphasis on individual kernels, but to rate the grains/silk/stalk/husk/tassels/leaves/cob/root system as a whole.

Amy, No firefighter has ever been bitten by a venomous spider at the station. They know to shake their boots and knock them together to shake loose any spiders that might have climbed in to them. I bet the beagle was surprised! Bon, I grow a type of radish called rat-tail radish and the pods are good stir-fried. The flowers are very pretty and attract a lot of beneficial insects that attack caterpillars. Mine generally reseed for me most years so I just watch and see if any sprout, and then if they don't, I sow the seeds. I've been surprised how well the tolerate the ridiculous summer heat and just keep blooming their heads off and setting seeds. I imagine any radish, if left in the ground, would flower and set seeds, but rat-tail is the one I grow as a companion plant because wherever it was that I first learned about planting radishes with squash, it was rat-tail radishes that was recommended. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Rat-tail Radish Seed at BCHS