I am no expert, but definately buts for the holes. As for brittle and yellow that tells me overwatering and wind damage. Yellow is a sign of overwatering, and the brittle is wind damage. Funny hot you can have overwatered dried out plants. I just wetn through this with some tomato plants. My gramma told me to cut milk jugs and put them around the plants to keep them safe from winds! Luckily the winds have died down here and I haven't had to and everything is doing well now. Cut back to watering every other day and see if that helps. My cucumbers seem to not like a lot of water. So I try to direct water the plants around it rather than hosing it all down. I hope others chime in and correct me if I'm wrong. Its my first year gardening so I've been reading and learning a lot alogn the way but am no expert ;)

Hmmm, I'm inclined to think his strategy is designed to make the best use of trellis space. But you can only pack 'em and stack 'em up to a point. Peas and beans are planted closely and grow densely; so mixing them up isn't likely to increase the yield. And yes, it will get messy. He will need to leave the pea vines wither in place to avoid damaging the beans.

Ruth, I have one, had it for years found it cumbersome so don't use it, IMO not worth the money they want for them. I have been experimenting the last couple of years with lengths of conduit. My hubby is a wood turner so he makes me assorted tops to either plunk into the top of the conduit or collars to fit around the top, leaving the top open so I can stick an umbrella in the hole if I want to protect my beans from the weather. I even use the conduit as single poles, these I wrap a piece of jute around the pole for the vines to cling to. So easy to store when not in use. Not having access to a woodturner shouldn't be a problem, even a cork with nails to hang strings from or, even pieces of 1" board, squares or circles, with a piece of dowel to fit in the top of the conduit would work as well. It's amazing what you can come up with when you start thinking outside the box. Annette

See phylis's link above for some wonderful stuff. Through houzz/gardenweb and another site, I have been SO blown out of the water by tormato's swaps! The main swap is Mostly Mystery 'Mater Mailing (MMMM), with some pepper seeds, misc. veggies, flowers, etc. In one year, I got so very many tomato seed varieties that I almost groan about participating again. But...if he's going to include "everything but the kitchen sink", there are still some pepper and various bean and pea varieties I would enjoy trying. You can send in your spare commercial seed if it's not too old, as well as seed you may have saved, with reasonable effort to avoid much crossing. Also, there are people with a super-abundance of seed who might be able to sponsor you, in one or all categories, if you are very seed-challenged. If nothing else, you can purchase a seed variety or 2 (preferably not very common, if you can find it) and send some of that in to the swap. Recently, not as many peas came in to the swap as people wanted to get back - hint, hint... One of the "mysterious" parts of Gary's swaps is the rules (or lack thereof). In the link noted above by phylis, Post #170 might get you started. However, reading through the entire roughly 300 posts might get you a few laughs...your mileage may vary. In previous years, the legume swap was separate, but I'm not sure it will be this time; part of the mystery. Gary's online access will likely be curtailed until October 3 or so; if you have a question for him, Patience is a Virtue. Since I do have a vested self-interest, I will especially invite people to participate if they have any of the following seeds to share. Pepper -Cayenne, Sweet -Corbaci aka Sari Tatli Sivri -Chimayo -Kaleidoskop -Melrose -Orosko aka Orozco -Ot Chi Thien -Santa Fee Grande aka Caribe aka Guero Bean, Common -Carr Virginia -Florence -Fowler -Lazy Wife (roundish, not oblong, seeds) -Red Eye Greasy -Robert's Royalty -Seay Cut-short -Sequoia -Tennessee Green Pod -Waterloo County Mennonite aka Mennonite Purple Stripe -Zuni Shalako/Four Corners Gold Pea -Green Beauty -Minnesota Sweet (not a "sweetpea") -Sugar Magnolia There may well be 100+ participants in this swap, and some of them are quite generous. Whether you have much to contribute or not, you might be able to jump in and participate. The deadline to have seeds arrive at his end is November 10th (or November 1st if you are a procrastinator). Thank you, houzz/gardenweb, for introducing me to tormato and his swaps.