I guess it is a pitifull germination rate result. If I was a farmer, I'd starve. But I never got any seedling to that point before so it is exciting for me. I don't know what the method is called for the seeds planted in the builder's sand. I was looking to experiment, found the instructions on google and I only planted one cup that way. The theory is that the seedlings aren't in danger of fungus or gnats. But, the other cups planted with cactus dirt didn't have problems with fungus or gnats either. I'm feeding that fat baby with a very dilute fertilizer, but at some point the build up could kill it since there are no drainage holes. I think I'll let it grow a little bigger and then try to transplant it. That will probably kill it and my yield will be zero. It seems that the key for me is not having drainage holes for the first few months anyway. I planted these in summer when it is super dry and then the house continues to be dry in winter due to the forced heat. I have to admit that I wasn't as diligent about checking them around the holidays. There should be no problem adding holes to the cups later. I'm working crazy hours until June (Nevada Legislature is in session) and then I'll be ready to try again. Thanks for your thoughts and input--I do appreciate it.

Great to see some improvement! I used the same soil method and am having good results. I know some people on here are fancy with soil mixes, but a simple bag of citrus soil and extra perlite seemed easier. As far as spraying the tree, you are right to use Neem at recommended dosages. I almost want to say that you could do without the alcohol. Neem works wonders on its own. Spraying twice a month would be a bit much. You should give it a "shower" once or twice a month with plain water in the bathtub, but only spray when there is something wrong. You can spritz with water whenever you want. Your tree will love any extra humidity. In the future invest in a bottle of liquid seaweed and mix that into a spray bottle as a "treat" for Mr. Meyer. He will benefit from foliage feeding once a month. That is also a natural deterrent against sap sucking insects (at least one of my gardening books says so). I would still expect to get scale or spider mites every winter. Or both. My meyer lemons trunk is pot marked with dead knots of previous branches that totally died back. This is actually the first winter my tree hasnt died back - and im glad because I have put in a lot more effort this year. Being in a cold zone it takes a lot more ambition to keep a lemon tree happy and healthy - it would have to be something sentimental to you or it would get forgotten. Your trees new growth looks good. It will take some time, but more growth is on the way. Any older leaves that are left will probably get dropped at some point as the tree makes way for new growth to replace them. Citrus will drop their older leaves anyways to replace with new better working ones - I think any single leaf has about 1 year of working life. Do you have a temp/humidity meter? If not I would highly recommend purchasing one. For me its the easiest way to know for sure if those needs are being met. Its hard to tell how much a humidifier actually raises ambient humidity around your tree, but keep in mind that if you are getting 'shocks' in the house then it is way too dry for a lemon. Enjoyed your update and pics! Keep up with the tree daily and I hope my advice doesn't turn you into a crazy citrus lady! ;-)

I love this thread! Mostly because when we started selling at Farmers' Markets we couldn't find anything and felt like we searched everywhere for supplies, techniques, etc. We ended up starting our own little e-commerce site that caters to small-scale vendor selling at Farmers' Markets (link in my signature). A few techniques that worked best for us was: Cleanliness! We always have a clean table and tablecloth. Clear and professional signing! (I've seen people that just write onto a square of brown cardboard) Don't forget to label your products too! Not everyone can tell the difference between straight neck squash and crook neck squash... Keep your pricing simple! I have an article here about pricing. BE FRIENDLY!! (someone already mentioned it but it is worth mentioning again!!). Be proud of your farm, and your produce, and your wares ( or whatever it is your selling) and don't be shy about talking about it, how its grown/made, where you farm/shop is, etc. People are generally curious. And....if they are shipping at a Farmers Market they probably deep down want to break away from their own lives to start their own little farm... Hope this help and happy farming, Jeremy www.elwellsupplies.com A Farmers' Market Supply Store

Jay, I think the bolting has to be related to that weather in the 40s, but that's just my best guess. I am not sure if hail would trigger bolting. I don't know how hot it was there, but it hit 100 here and that's too hot for me. From now on, I'll hibernate indoors in the air conditioning as much as I can. I try to get out to the garden as soon after sunrise as I can, and back inside before it gets too hot. At this time of year, I often only harvest....and when I carry everything inside, I always intend to go back out and weed, mulch, water, deadhead ornamental flowers, etc., but once I hit the air conditioning, all that garden ambition flies out the window and I just stay inside so I can stay cool. I don't know of any sure-fire way to get the birds to leave the tomatoes alone, other than Surround or maybe by putting red Christmas balls in the plants a month before your fruit breaks color. The birds peck at the Christmas ornament, determine that your plants' fruit is not edible, and train themselves, via association to leave it alone. This works for some people, but not for others. Sometimes I've used bird netting, but a really persistent bird finds a way underneath the netting anyway. We did have some pecked fruit in May, but not much since then. That may change with the arrival of summer heat. We don't have grackles here at our place, though I see them in town a lot. Sometimes, though not often, we have starlings. As long as the Purple Martins still are in residence in the purple martin houses, they'll chase off the starlings. Once the martins head south, the starlings become more of a problem. Carol, I'm sorry your tomato plants are not looking well. It sure is a disease-y year for tomatoes in our good too. Some of my plants look pretty bad, and some don't look too bad yet, but have started going downhill. I don't care. I am tomatoed out and have no intention of doing anything to/with/for the tomato plants except harvesting the fruit for as long as it lasts. If a storm took out all my plants tomorrow, I'd shrug and say "oh well, it was a great year" and then I'd move on. I've already preserved enough tomatoes to keep us happy until next year's crop is coming in. Of course, I'd miss having fresh ones daily, but I'd get over it. Dorothy, My favorite salsa is Annie's Salsa, from Annie on the Harvest Forum. She developed the recipe, but worked with her state's extension service to get it tested for safety. One thing I really like about it is the texture--you added canned tomato paste and sauce to give it incredible texture. Also, you can substitute a like amount of ReaLemon or ReaLime or both for the vinegar in the recipe. I make it different ways...sometimes all ReaLemon or all ReaLime hut never all vinegar because we don't like salsa with a real vinegary flavor. Sometimes I use 1/3 each of vinegar, ReaLemon or ReaLime, sometimes I use 1/2 each of ReaLemon and ReaLime. I keep mentioning them by brand name because they are the only bottled lemon or lime juices that consistently test at the pH needed for safety reasons. Store brands of bottle lemon juice and lime juice test at the right pH range much less consistently so could be a safety problem. I'll link the recipe below. We used to make 6 or 7 different salsas and didn't especially love any of them. Since I started making Annie's Salsa, it is the only one we make. Like you, I'm moving from crop to crop, putting up as much of the excess harvest of each one as we can after we've eaten all we want to eat fresh. Here's my garden report: Clearly 2012 is the year of the tomato. I've been canning and dehydrating for at least 3 weeks now, or maybe 4. I'm starting to run out of ways to use up tomatoes, and my paste tomato harvest just started, in terms of a good quantity of fruit, in the last 4 or 5 days. Most of what I had canned prior to that was from slicers. All the warm-season crops are producing great, so in between processing tomatoes, I am just trying to stay caught up on everything else. The hot peppers are producing like gangbusters and each plant is very heavily loaded with fruit. My first big pepper harvest was just about 7-10 days ago, and now I am having to pick them about every 3rd day. So far, I've been using them in salsa and eating them fresh. I am about to start roasting and freezing them beginning tomorrow, and am just starting to get enough cukes to make pickles, which was on the schedule for today and tomorrow and likely will be done only tomorrow because I'm about to run out of time to do it today, and I am too tired to start a batch now. The sweet peppers are not producing well yet, but that's normal when May is hot like it was. I feel like the May heat wave/drought really hurt them and they'll be later than usual this year. We have far too much yellow squash and zucchini, but that's hardly news to anyone who raises either or both of them. So far my plants remain pest-free and disease-free. I just started harvesting okra this week, so right now there is not enough of it to freeze--just enough to eat fresh. We're getting a good pole bean harvest after having had a very heavy bush bean crop. We have muskmelons but none are ripe yet. The onions and potatoes, and all other cool-season crops, are done, done, done. The early corn is harvested and processed or in the fridge for fresh eating. We're waiting for the mid- and late-season corn to be ready to pick. The pickling cucumbers are producing well, but are heavily infested with spider mites so I am not sure how long they'll last. The watermelons and winter squash are taking over every available square inch of unoccupied space. The herbs are fine, but basil keeps trying to flower in this heat and I keep pinching it back. The Armenian cukes are all over the place. They're such big monster plants! I pick produce in the morning, and then spend however long it takes to process the portion of the harvest we won't be eating fresh. Some days I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. The garden looks really good, although the tomatoes don't look nearly as nice and healthy now as they did a month ago. They still are producing heavily. As near as I can remember, here's what I've canned/frozen/dehydrated so far this month: Plum Jelly: 92 half-pint jars Strawberry Jam: 8 half-pint jars Blueberry-Lime Jam: 6 half-pint jars Bumbleberry Jam: 6 half-pint jars Catsup: 21 pint jars Chili Base: 5 pint jars Annie's Salsa: 90 pint jars Tomato Sauce: 32 quart freezer boxes (stored in the deep freeze) Dehydrated Bite-sized Tomatoes: 3 gallons (stored in the deep freeze) I have other veggies in the deep freeze from May, but I didn't keep a list of what I put up. It seems like there was 23 quarts of beans, and each quart usually makes two meals for us.In the freezer There's also sweet corn and sliced yellow squash, and shredded zucchini. The yard-long beans, lima beans and southern peas are just beginning to produce because all of them went into the ground pretty late. I was trying to spread out the harvest so that all of the above and the pole snap and bush snap beans would not be producing at the same time. So far, the bean harvest has been spread out pretty well so I'm not snowed under a big pile of beans yet on any given day, though there were a couple of days in May when the bush bean harvest was huge. However, at that time, I wasn't harvesting enough of anything else that required a lot of processing so I had time to deal with the beans. All the flowers are gorgeous and the gourds (birdhouse and mixed decorative gourds) are climbing all over the place, as are all the various winter squash varieties. I hope to add a lot more tomato products and other veggies, but we are starting to have fires, so how much I will be able to harvest and process will depend on whether we have a slow start to the summer fire season or a fast start. The garden looks as good as it ever has and everything not only looks pretty good, but is producing really, really well. We're about to harvest our first butternut squash. It seems impossibly early to harvest butternut, but I planted early and it stayed so hot that it grew like mad and flowered and fruited early. This is the most productive garden year so far that we've had in quite a while, and I am loving it, even though all the canning is wearing me out. At least it gives me a good excuse for spending lots of time indoors. Of course, as Tim points out to me every day "this kitchen sure is hot and steamy", but I still think I'm better off in the hot, steamy kitchen than outdoors. At least in the kitchen, I can stand under the AC vent and it cools me off. Today will go down in history as the first day I ever found a snail eating a plant in my garden. For so long, we just didn't have any snails at all, most likely because they don't thrive in dense, red clay soil. I guess we finally have improved the soil enough that the snails are coming to the garden. Tomorrow I'll scatter Slug-Go under the okra plants since it was feeding on an okra plant. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Recipe For Annie's Salsa