harry potter has a watering wand. I have two. They leak at the seal and don't shut off. It's a space shuttle o-ring issue ⦠And it was supposed to be a good one ⦠At least I thot B&D was a good brand ⦠you screw the wand on the end of a hose. Some wands allow different sprays with a rotating nozzle. Most have an on/off lever that allows you to close off the water whilst you walk back to the house and shut off the hose at the spigot. dave

There is a lot to be said here but I will restrain myself. For only charcoal filtration, any faucet should work. Use a charcoal filter that is standard size (guessing without moving my keister to measure that standard means 3 inches in diameter by about 10 inches long.) Pressure drop should be modest until depleted so flow would be high. With R.O. water, one needs a pressure tank and at least 3/8 poly tubing to use with a standard faucet. One may also need other active components to keep the pressure up. My R.O. system feeds a Brizo Venuto, a Brizo pot filler, a plant wand, a refrigerator ice maker, and eventually a bar sink faucet. However, I have a peristaltic brine-driven pump from Spectrapure, and two pressure tanks. With R.O. filtration, it is possible in some cases for the resulting water to become soft and acidic, and this can leach lead where present. For such cases, a lead free faucet is needed. My R.O. input is municipal water that has been dosed at the source with alkali chemicals, and pH measurements show that it is still alkaline after R.O. filtration. kas

Sorry Eva but your question got lost in all the other discussion. In the future it is best to start your own thread, ok? I don't know what the foil is supposed to do but it could be making the soil too warm. It can also abrade the stems. Wilting can be caused by many things - over or under watering, over-crowding, transplant shock, the potting mix you used, or even by all the things you have sprayed on them. What are the containers filled with? One problem is obvious, the size of the plants right now compared to the size of the container means they could easily be drowning if you are actually keeping 35 gallons of soil wet all the time. With a container that big what is usually done is to fill it only 1/2 full, plant the small transplant and then slowly fill the container with mix as the plant grows. That keeps the scale of plant to amount of soil in line. Could your tell us the actual dimensions on the container? Are you guessing at the 35 gallons or is that what the nursery claimed? The reason I ask is that 35 gallons is a very unusual size for containers sold to the public. In all my years in the nursery business I have never seen a container that shape that will actually hold that much mix. Standard sizes for hard sided containers is 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 50. Your plants are quite leggy, with long skinny stems and long spaces between the branches. That means they are not getting nearly enough sun. Plus are you sure they were aphids? It would be unusual to see aphids in soil. More likely fungus gnats. Either way I'd suggest laying off on all the sprays. Those home-made remedies usually only make things worse. Based on your photos I can only tell you what I would do. Reduce the plants to no more than two in each container, dig up the two you choose to leave and bury them much deeper so all that bare stem is buried, bury them right up to just below the top cluster of leaves so new roots will develop all along that buried stem. Then feed them with a well balanced fertilizer, preferably a liquid one so it will work quickly and move the containers to where they can get much more sun. Next year, if you plan use those same containers, first take the time to do some research into large container growing. It has some very unique requirements. I hope this is of some help to you. Dave

Well, the books I have (in rereading them) are not clear on some points and I probably misunderstood from what you are saying. So does that mean on the A&M Fall Direct Sow dates that they direct sow doesn't mean in the garden? I interpreted direct sow and sowing directly in the garden. I won't have this problem next year as I will start all of these types of plants in the spring. I will probably still attempt to start them in the garden. BTW, we build little tubes from aluminum screen that are about 6" tall and 3" in diameter. We closed off the tops by pinching the screen closed and using a couple of brads. I placed these over all of my seedlings and that seemed to stop the bug problems. I'm pretty sure I got near 100% germination on my tomatoes. They are looking really good, too. They are about 3-4" tall with 6 or more leaves. The soil temperatures under the shade canopy have been ranging from 85-93 degrees. Even yesterday at 102 out I only saw 93 in the soil (about 1/4'-1/2 down). I'm still waiting on my pepper replantings to germinate (they took 10 days or so last time I replanted about 7 days ago). All but 2 peppers were eaten by bugs before I realized what I needed to do. My second direct sow attempt at beans as been much more successful and they are beginning to come up. I added a shade canopy over this bed Friday (I resowed the beans on Monday). My second planting of corn and popcorn are almost all up and some from the first planting are close to 6" tall. The germination of the corn and one of the popcorn types has been a high percentage. I only had trouble with one of my popcorn varieties but some of them are coming up in the successive planting. Things are looking good and I built some toad houses out of stone from my property and I have a toad that is living in the garden now. He must have slipped under the gate as that is the only way for him to get in and out so I was surprised to find him. We have identified around ten varieties of frogs and toads on our property and we have literally thousands of frogs and many toads. I saw a wheel bug and I'm overrun with dragonflies so that is good!