If your plants are in clay pots, chances are they will not tip over. But in plastic yes. So what I did was surround each pot with bricks. or cement blocks and they never fell. You could even bury them in holes in the groung, pot and all if you are not concerned about some kind of pest getting into the dirt of your pots. Just a couple of ideas for you..:-) The before you have to bring them in in the fall, treat them at least 3-4 times with a good insecticide as soon as it starts to cool down on a weekly basis. Kneem oil is great. You can even water your plants with this stuff too to kill in soil insects. You might be lucky and bring no insects indoors by the time fall hits..-) Mike

There are no "bugs" in properly made compost piles that would harm anyones garden. There are several considerations as to where to put your compost bins and at the top is to place the bin(s) close to the source of material. Another consideration is to place the bin(s) close to the point of use, the garden. My bins are off to one side, some distance from the gardens because that was the easiest place to bring in manures with my truck, but then it is in the center of where the various planting beds are. If, and it is a big if, your brother in law does have insect pests growing in his compost there is a problem that needs to be corrected with the compost. Moving the compost further away is not the solution.

Remember that these are wild plants; they don't need special care or special soil. Plant a few seeds in the ground in an area you want them to come from every year, in the worst of soils, but well draining, and they'll do fine. When Cathy said I had to rescue the Cherries Jubilee allamanda I had to pull out about 500 volunteers shortly after removing the plant in the pictures you all saw, and today I will have to pull the ones you see in the pictures below that I took this morning, but the allamanda that was smothered is coming back beautifully ;-) Tom

It really depends. It depends on the variety, culture determinate or indeterminate, even zone, etc. I packed in VF Romas a foot apart and was very productive. If you have disease problems growing a sensitive heirloom you may not have this option. You can grow the indeterminate about a foot apart as well if you prune and single vine. The reason you would do this is for variety in limited space.Make sure the soil is up to it. If you don't want to fuss with pruning then you need to think about up to 36 inches apart for indeterminate. Toms are pretty flexible. I had a double 6 foot vine black cherry in a 3 gallon last year. It was one of the healthiest plants I had with not a spot of yellow all year and a nice supply of a dozen tomatoes a week. I dragged it in a green house in October it continued to fruit in November and ate the last of them during Christmas in zone 5a. I don't just do it for yucks, I have a limited space.