Hey All, Barry thanks for the well wishes:) I hope you had a good summer! Send me a mail and let me know how your garden did. Megan, I would be glad to trade with you, mail me a list of what you want and I would like your garlics, carrots, leeks , and basil when they are ready. Send me direct at liznbeatle@aol.com and we can trade addresses and such, thanks very much. Lisa Guile, I would be happy to trade for your Cambells 1327, Mortgage Lifter, Amano Orange, Waltham butternut, fordhook acorn, and buttercrunch. I only have a few left of Sudduth but I have all the rest. Please mail me at the above to exchange addys. Thanks for trading:) Lisa

My Mother winter sowed one thing. Tomatoes, seeds she saved every year from her best tomato plants. Sun dried them and saved until late fall early winter. She had an old wash tub filled with sand, garden soil and A little manure from the old pile by the barn, all mixed together. This old tub was leande up against an old oak tree on the north west side of the house where it didn't get much direct sunlight This she would work up and scatter couple hundred seeds and cover them with more sand and forget them. This was in the hills of north west arkansas which I think is still zone 5. Anyhow come spring they would come up and if it was going to be really cold they might get a couple of burlap bags tossed ovwer them, however mostly they survived on their own, And she always had plants for ourselves and to give away also.This was my first experience with winter sowing and I didn't even realize it until I seen This web site. This was over 60 + years ago and this was the way most people did those kind of things. Just reminising over days gone by. So no I don't think you messed up. Mothernature seeds in fall and plants come up in spring and frost doesnt really bother them if done natures way. and as some one said you can always cover them up and it doesn't take anything really heavy. jim

"Here's hoping for a warm and dry September!" I certainly got my wish. 1" of rain and lots of heat and sun for the whole month, and my Tom and Pepper crop is going nuts. I just brought in ~15 pounds of slicers, cherries, Romas and assorted Peppers; yellow, red and green Bells, Habs and Jalapenos. I've harvested this much each week this month, in addition to eating dozens right off the vines every day. From the looks of it, it'll keep on as long as the weather holds. The vines are still flowering, and I have fruits at all stages. We've eaten Tomatoes every way imaginable, frozen a bunch of sauce, and run a few loads through the dehydrator. I'm really pleased with that machine. Dried Cherry Toms are better than candy, and we'll have enough of them to last through the winter. We've given at least 50 pounds each of Tomatoes, Peppers and Onions to family and friends, and we still can't get through them all. I'm pleased to report the WS Toms have far out-distanced nursery plants in production and longevity. One store-bought 'Early Girl' is still producing, but the WS 'Early Girls' have beaten it at least 2:1 in output. The other nursery plants are dying back now, while the WS plants are rolling right along. Maybe I'll learn to moderate next year. One thing I'll try to do is grow more determinate plants, to maximize dehydrator use. I haven't been able to fill it up with the staggered harvests of indeterminates.

Sorry to have disappeared. Had to travel out of town for work. So here are some details. I used the welded wire fencing as it is sturdy enough to stand up but flexible enough to be bent/cut easily. To save your hands get a decent pair of wire cutters. You can buy this in 25-100 foot rolls at anywhere from 3ft to 6ft tall. Depends on how much you think you will use as to which size you buy. Also, how much cutting you want to do. Three foot sections give you perfect 1/2 cut (one cut to give you the 18inches) and still works well for the tent sides to use at the beginning and end of season. I use the 6 mil clear plastic sheeting and would fold it over a few times at the edges where I would attach it to the fencing. I usually used a hole punch to put a hole in the folded plastic then used string (anything that will stand up to the outdoors) to tie the plastic onto the fencing. You could use twist ties, zip ties, light weight wire. I think I tried staples and they ripped through the plastic, so something you can "tie" around the wired fence works best. Depending on how your plant layout goes, will depend on whether you need to do one around each plant or one long wrap around a whole area. I gardened using the square foot method in most cases, so I used long sections of the plastic lined fencing around up to 10 plants at a time. If you use the conduit for supports, you can either cut them to just stick up enough to support the surround (after they are stuck in the ground as deep as you can) or you can make them taller and use them to support the tent lid later. If you have a windy area, you may wish to tie the surround to the supports. If you have the supports sticking up at least 4-6 inches over the side fencing, you can slip the tent over those support poles and use that to hold the tent up. Picture a dog house. The surrounds are the walls and the tent is the lid. You just cut a small hole in the plastic right where it will go onto the lower support poles and you are set. You can also use the parts sticking up to open the tent, by setting the tent on top of the supports (not through the holes) to give some ventilation on warmer days. I wish I had photos of this set up to share, but so far I have not found any in my BOXES and CDs of photos. I'll keep looking though. The two years I did the tent over my tomatoes, I had grown them against the south wall of our house, then shed, so I hung a lean-to top (one sided) from overhang of the house instead of "tenting". I did use the tent method over my peppers though. Again, the great part about this system is it's fairly cheap and is reusable for years and years. I don't mind spending the first year to get things going, but I like to reuse as much as I can. Good luck and if I find some photos, I'll post them.