Congratulations on improving a patch of soil. It may be the most important work a human can do. It IS work and takes effort and patience. I started a veggie garden about 3 years ago in some of the sorriest thick heavy clay, but with vermicomposting and heavy mulching, it is coming right along and turning into fertile loam. Bought my worms (sold as red wigglers) from the local bait store and they have done a great job and thriving in this soil. Also have noticed big night crawler earthworms have moved into the garden. They burrow much deeper and aerate the soil even better. If you avoid chemicals, you will get beneficial insects to prey on the pests. Compost, Compost, Compost- if you can find a source (your local diner?) for coffee grounds and egg shells, get them to save that stuff for you. If you have the time and energy, pulverize the egg shells down to a fine powder, so the earthworms can digest that good stuff. Another good thing you can do for your soil is to grow nitrogen-fixing legumes- beans and peas. Get a few soybean seeds and grow your own edamame! Try clover or alfalfa as a cover crop in Winter- I've heard hairy vetch is good as well.

Here's the mycelium at 1 week, kept at 70*F. I put coffee grounds on it, then thought I should take a pic. --Rr width of paper is ~4 inches:

Thanks Josh, the pruning, root pruning, and downsizing of the pots is what I have read everywhere, and everyone seems to agree on it. That is why I canâÂÂt figure out why the ones I left in the large pots and didnâÂÂt prune as much did the best. In fact, the Carolina reaper plant, that I didnâÂÂt prune at all, is doing the best of all. IâÂÂm glad I did my little experiment and didnâÂÂt prune them all back and put them in smaller pots, because if I did I wouldnâÂÂt have any left. Unfortunately, my experiment left more questions than answers. My conclusion is, all the small pots died, all the large pots on the left side of the same window died, and all the pruned plants on the left side of the widow died. The ones I messed with least are thriving. I just canâÂÂt hash out what is a coincidence and what caused my problems. I should have mentioned before that the ones on the left side of the window and right side both have a heating duct.

I wish that WC didn't have to be there, or could be reconfigured, so you could square off the island and get it a little closer to your stove. As it is, I'm afraid your island won't be of much use to you as cooking/baking prep space, because of the narrow end across from the stove. Since that puts the most convenient and roomiest prep space between sink and stove, I'd definitely swap the sink and dw so that it's not in your standing space. Not a big deal now with you alone in the kitchen, but from a mom with kids who help with dishwasher loading/unloading and setting the table while I cook, I think it will be later. I'm guessing you situated it that way, because you're used to having your dw to the left of the sink, but I think that's problematic in the new plan. The other good thing about swapping it is getting it closer to your dish storage, which I'm assuming will be in your island, since I don't see any other storage near that area. I have dishwashers on each side of my main sink (we have 8 kids, so lots of dishes), and the one that's by far easier to unload is the one that's on the dish storage side of the sink.