josh, I water the old fashioned way -- by hand using a watering wand. It's not so bad in the Spring after everything is planted but by late June when the plants get big it becomes a huge PITA. My sister watered the three weeks when I was gone and she wasn't a happy camper and was glad to rid herself of that task. By the end of August it took me an average of 90 minutes to completely water the garden each day and I estimated that on average I used 150 gallons per day. On heavy watering days I used 200 gallons and on light watering days I'd use 100 gallons. By late August I'd spend a minimum of one hour and a max of two hours with most days in between that. Now that we're in late September we're getting more rain and it has cooled so I'm not watering that much any more. This year was a lot worse for water because I'm using that pine bark mix in most of the containers and they drain very quickly requiring more water. The upside is that the plants did well and I had for the first time a tomato crop with decent yields and nice looking tomatoes. I still made mistakes via not fertilizing right and hope to do even better next year. I don't know why it took me so long to realize this but next year I'm installing a drip irrigation system. I've been doing google and found a couple of sites that seem to be decent. It does seem kind of complicated but there's all winter to figure this out. :-) heebiejeebie, the honeydew melons are in a tall wastepaper basket that I gleaned from the alley and made into a container. I estimate it's more like 10 to 15 gallons of container space but its narrow and tall. The honeydew melons were an experiment for me. I wanted to see how they would grow in a container that was narrow but deep. I put two plants in there and so far they've yielded 8 melons and the plants had tons of flowers and looked really healthy. I wasn't expecting much out of this but I think that having deep containers for the roots to grow down might have been better than a wider, shallower, larger volume container. It might have something to do with the Perched Water Table (or something like that) per Al's dissertation in that other thread. I like these deep narrow containers since they take up less space and allow the vines to cascade down the sides. I won't know until I dig them out if they became root bound but I suspect they did. The plants still look healthy and there are two honeydews still growing late September here in Chicago. People around here are always throwing out those tall plastic wastebaskets and I already have two more stored for next year. I'm thinking of trying cucumbers or cantelopes in those containers next year and see how those do.

I am late to this thread but have found it extremely entertaining. Every propagator knows there is a good time to take cuttings and that is when the plant is in the right stage for it, not when the moon is in the right stage. And this times varies with each plant species. As for experiments and proof, I look no further than some of my neighbours, they faithfully plant by the moon, and when harvest arrives they have no better yields than the rest of us. Just because an idea has been around for years, and many people still hold to it does not give it validity. The great thing about science is, that when it is proven wrong it accepts it, it does not cling to an idea that no longer works just because it has been handed down thru the ages. Science is there to move us on, and to teach us new things so we can better understand which beliefs to drop, and which to hold on to. I for one will drop the idea that the earth is flat, that my destiny is dependant upon the zodiac, and that planting by the moon has any noticeable benefit.

this is what I am putting in. 3 Blue Tie dye 2 Split personality 2 pink Moonvine 5 blue silk 1 Milky way 1 rose silk 3 verigated rose 2 red and blue pekotee dbl 1 yellow trumpets mg 1 henka Asagao blue blizzard 1 lavender moonvine 1 jaquemontia tamnifolia 3 mount fugi several varieties I will be using as bonuses. hope we get more oddities and rare mg for this rr . We havent got alot of different mg's yet. Tho there are still several folks who havent sent in yet. I think I have a good system figured out for sending them back out.lol wish me luck Kelley

I've been interested in mycorrhizal associates of plants for decades now. Very generally speaking, most studies I've reviewed where an attempt to "inoculate" soils or media with specific strains of known mycorrhizal species have been disappointing. Notable exceptions were in cases of extremely depleted soils, mine tailings, and other essentially "sterile" media. Now this is not at all intended to cast doubt on the importance of mycorrhyzae. Just the opposite, they are indeed being proven to be everywhere, in every type of plant community, and in virtually every geographic region. What I am saying, is that so far, man-made attempts to duplicate what nature does every day in this regard have been decidedly unspectacular. It seems that two effects are in play: One, if the soil and associated plants have been in association with one another for a good length of time, very likely such mycorrhizal associates are already present. Adding more, in the form of supposedly viable propagules will not effect the balance. The other aspect is, nobody really knows exactly what species is associated with a given landscape plant. True, there is such knowledge in silvicultural studies, usually associated with coniferous species, but to simply extrapolate what is know there to your average garden situation is extremely unlikely to work. Additionally, we do not know what is happening when a soil already colonized by such organisms is having another strain, or an altogether different fungal species, introduced to it. Are we accidentally ruining a good thing? Are we just wasting money and effort? I find such matters of immense interest, and I don't think the book is closed, just that perhaps it needs to be set aside for a while and taken up again later when understanding has increased. This is complicated stuff, especially in a world where very large acreages of land are given over to just two plant species-corn and soybeans-where the parameters of nutrient requirements have been pinned down tightly. In other words, mankind's largest horticultural enterprises are vastly more simple than what is likely happening in that little wood lot that didn't get knocked down for more development near your home. We're rank beginners at this...may as well face it. +oM