Congratulations. I am so happy for you. How does one plant corn? My garden is too small, but I just wanted to know.

You buy a package of seed and plant the corn kernels in a block, with the seeds roughly 1' from each other. Some people use wider spacing, but I get perfectly wonderful ears from 1' spacing within the rows, and I space my rows about 18" from each other.

You plant once the soil is about 60 degrees, and generally that is late March here in southern OK and maybe as late as late April in northern Oklahoma.

Supersweet corns germinate better when soil temperatures reach 70 degrees. Planting in blocks is important, because the tassels at the top of the corn plant contain the pollen and the wind blows the pollen, which then falls down onto the cornsilks which are a couple of feet beneath the tassels on the same plant. If you plant your corn in a block, you get good pollination because the silks can get pollen from the plants on all sides.

If you plant one long row along one edge of the veggie garden (a very common mistake made by new gardeners), you tend to get poor pollination and poorly filled ears because each plant's silks can only receive pollen from their own plant as well, perhaps, from the plants on either side of them in that long row.

Corn is pretty easy to grow, but corn earworms and European corn borers like to tunnel into the corn and eat the kernels. They are hard to control, and I don't like to use any chemicals, so some years, the corn earworms get half the corn and the raccoons get the other half. This year, though, we got it all ourselves. Raccoons have an uncanny knack of knowing EXACTLY when the corn is a day or two from being fully ripe, and they will harvest it all in one night....taking a few bites from an ear, throwing it down, taking a few bites from another ear, throwing it down, etc. Their intention seems to be to destroy the whole crop in one night.

A couple of years ago we tried trapping raccoons in a humane live animal trap baited with canned cat food and releasing them way, way out in the country far away from any crop land, but it didn't help. I think we trapped three but other coons still got our corn. And, trapped raccoons are angry, scared, mean and vicious and attempt to attack you as you are carrying the trap they're in to the truck. That same year, the brother of a friend of ours trapped (and then shot) 18 raccoons on his farm, and the remaining coons STILL got all his corn. He didn't get a single ear. So, not having the coons get the corn is an AMAZING surprise and one that has me busy doing the happy dance!

I have grown corn in a small home garden, before I had the large garden I have now. You could plant corn in a bed as small as 4' by 4' or 8' by 8'. NOTHING beats homegrown corn straight out of the garden! When we lived in Fort Worth, I grew corn in a semi-shady area between the garage and shed. It was only about an 8'x 8' area, but I got a lot of corn out of it, even though I had feared that a neighbor's tree might shade it too much.

Dawn

Do you live closer to the Texas border? You deserve to have some corn that's untouched by those coons!! Did you harvest all? What becomes of the plants once you get the crop?

Mariposa,

I live so very, very close to the Texas border that I am surrounded by the Red River, and by the state of Texas, on three sides. If you look on a map of Oklahoma, you'll see a little finger-shaped portion of Love County that extends down into Texas and that is the part of Love County we are in. From our back property line, the Red River which is the border between OK and TX is about 1/4 mile west of us. To our south, the Red River and Texas are about 9 miles from us. And, to our east, the Red River and Texas are about 2.5 miles. Many, many people here in Love County live here where land, property taxes and the cost of living are generally lower and commute to Texas where wages and salaries are generally much higher. My husband and son both work in Dallas, which is about 80 miles one way. Continually rising gas prices are more of a problem than they used to be, but I don't anticipate moving back to Texas. We're all Okies now, through and through.

When we moved here from the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area in 1999, its' population was slightly over 4 million and we thought it was way too big, too busy, too crowded, etc. Now the population in that area exceeds 7 million and it isn't even as much fun as it used to be to visit family and friends there, or to go shopping there.....it is just too crazy, too hectic and has way too much traffic. I love Texas, but the quality of life here is so, so, so much better.

About half the corn crop is ready to harvest today, so we'll start picking it around 4 p.m. when the pecan tree has begun to shade that area. You can tell corn is ripe in a couple of ways.....the cornsilks dry and turn brown, and if you pull back the husk and puncture a kernel with your finger nail, a milky fluid comes out. If a clear fluid comes out, the corn is not quite ripe. The other half of the corn probably will be ripe in a couple more days, as those silks have just begun to dry out a little and aren't browning yet. The key is to watch it closely and try to beat the raccoons to it!

Once the crop is harvested, I pull out the corn plants. My corn is interplanted with pumpkins and winter squash because their coarse, prickly leaves are supposed to keep the raccoons out. It works in the years that the pumpkins and squash survive the squash bug and squash vine borer attacks, as they have this year. So, after I pull up all the corn plants and put them on the compost pile, the pumpkins and winter squash get a little more light and grow a little more vigorously.

In a really, really dry drought year when the pastures have been grazed to the ground and aren't growing because there's no rain, one of my cattle rancher neighbors usually asks if he can have the cornstalks to feed to his cattle. Of course, I always say yes. (He usually gives me old, spoiled hay or straw to use as mulch, or cow manure for my compost pile, so I never refuse to give him the corn stalks if he asks for them.) His pastures seem fine so far this year, so the stalks are going onto the compost pile. (They break down faster if I chop them up first with the riding lawn mower.)

IF the pumpkins and winter squash had been wiped out by insects, I would have left the cornstalks standing and would have planted pole beans beside each stalk. Then, the pole beans could climb the stalks. I won't do that though, because the pumpkins have had a huge head start and probably would shade out the pole beans before they get off to a good start.

I'll plant fall corn in a couple of raised beds that currently have tomatoes in them, because those tomatoes will be about "done" by the end of July. That gives me time to clean out those beds, add a little compost and manure, and plant corn in early August. I'll put the pole beans in a bed that currently has Irish potatoes which I'll be harvesting sometime in the next couple of weeks.

By continuously succession planting, I can grow several rounds of each crop each year. Some people plant once in the spring and that is it. However, with careful intercropping and succession planting, I can keep my garden planted full of stuff and producing for most of the year. I plant onions and other cool season crops starting in January or February, depending on the temeperatures, and I usually harvest the last of the fall crops by Christmans. By then, I need a break....but I start seeds of new crops (indoors) beginning in January to transplant outside in late Jan. to late Feb.

Dawn

Congrats, Dawn. I love fresh corn but I have raccoons, too, and really not enough space to grow it anyway. So I've been munching on some I got from the farmer's market last week. Yum. Enjoy.

Thanks, Pat. I am not sure why the raccoons gave us a break this year....could be they didn't want to mess with the pumpkin vines OR they couldn't climb the top layer of the new 9' tall deer fence...it is only chicken wire and was loosely attached up high so it would "flop" over if they tried to climb it...and perhaps they didn't realize they still could climb the two arbors that serve as gated garden entrances. I didn't expect the fence to keep them out, but maybe it has? Maybe they'll have the last laugh by showing up tonight to get the half of the corn that isn't quite completely ripe yet.

If we had a Farmer's Market worth visiting here in Marietta, I'd be there buying some fresh goodies too to supplement what we raise. The last two Saturdays that we've been in town, the "Farmer's Market" has consisted of two groups of people selling stuff off card tables set up beside their cards on Main Street. Just a few years ago you could still buy melons, corn, black-eyed peas and other stuff at little roadside stands set up at small farms or at places with really large home gardens. Most of those people don't garden/farm any more and a lot of those places now are cattle or horse ranches instead.

That is wonderful - I cannot wait in a few years to be able to plant a garden again and grow CORN! That is something that you just cannot grow in containers.

We picked all the fully ripe ears we could find--97, to be exact, and then spent the rest of the evening husking, de-silking, blanching, chilling, drying and packing ears of corn into freezer bags. I think we put about 70 ears into the freezer tonight, ate a few, and have the rest in the refrigerator to eat later this week.

That 97 ears is roughly half of the ears that were on the plants, but the others are in various stages of ripening.

My best guess is that the raccoons were in the woods watching us pick corn because there was a lot of "noise" in there and the one cat who was with us in the garden was nervously watching the woods. I am SURE they smelled the corn, because every time you snap an ear off the plant, that delightful fresh corn scent wafts through the air. I bet they are in the garden as we speak tearing up what's left of the corn crop to get the not-yet-ripened ears. If they do, that's OK. At least I'll know we beat them to all the ripe ones. And, if they don't, I'll try to harvest more every day as it ripens.

And the fresh corn was indeed sweet and tender and delicious and it is so nice to have a lot of it in the freezer. I hope to plant an even larger crop for fall and will be growing an old heirloom that we all love---a shoepeg corn called "Country Gentleman".

Dawn

what wonderful news Dawn.. !!!

I am going to need some advice from you about a larger garden next year.. would it be oK to email?

Kirts,

It would be OK to email if you prefer, but if you post your questions and concerns here, everyone benefits from the discussion. Your choice. : )

And, in a week like this, when we are harvesting like crazy and filling up the freezer and canning and drying produce, I always think to myself: "Next year, make the garden twice as big!" Nothing inspires a person more than success. Now, would I really like to have a garden that is twice as big so that I will have twice the produce to "put up"? Well, probably not. On the other hand, would I like to have two separate gardens so I can rotate from one to the other every year? Probably. Is it ever going to happen? Not likely. It takes so much continual effort fo put organic material back into the soil ("Heat eats compost.") that I cannot imagine trying to do it with a garden larger than the one I have now. On the other hand, to steal a phrase from the New York State lottery commercials "Hey, you never know!"

Dawn

I wanted to add some photos, to work out where to plot at, I would have to direct you around the low spots where water will stand/run when it rains a few inches. Plus I have a lot of young trees, that I have to watch for..

I am worried that we may have to get a tractor over here in a few years and use the two lots, plow them under to grow a garden, with the price of food on the rise.

I did read your report on Corn, and I would like to know more about that as well.. 8x8.. and a squares..

I am more about thinking about getting buy now, how to store our roots ( as in, onions,potatoes, etc) without a rootceller, or a place in the home to store it.

A say this because I am worried about food prices and the cost of living jumping more then it is now..
I can't even start to think about a can out of the store costing 1.50-2.00 a can.

I am not in a panic, but I need to start thinking and planning for next year.

Kirts,

I feel like you are being wise to plan ahead. With the continuing modernization of some countries, like China and India, where the demand for oil and gas and other petroleum products is increasing exponentially every year, I see our energy costs continuing to rise. Since the average item in a grocery store in the USA travels about 1500 miles BEFORE it reaches the grocery store shelves, obviously the ever-increasing energy/transport costs will keep food costs rising. The changes we are seeing in the commercial agriculture industry and the food distribution network may force a lot of us to try to eat more locally. In the slow food movement, I think they refer to the effort to eat only locally-produced food as being a locavore.
In addition, when you consider that a lot of the chemical fertilizers used by commercial farmers are linked to the petroleum industry, it is easy to believe that food costs will continue to go up because of rising fertilizer costs as well. I think people will turn to organic gardening as a means of lessening their dependence on foreign energy/fertilizers.

There are many ways to store food and I use several of them. We have a tornado shelter and I use it to store root crops like potatoes and onions harvested in the summer as well as winter squash harvested in the fall. I have even stored winter squash on a shelf in the garage/barn and have had it last as long as 4-6 months in there.

We have a large pantry located under our home's staircase. It is about 3 feet wide and maybe 12 deep. The height varies from 8' to about 2'. Back in that 2' area I store odds and ends we don't use often, like the pressure canner and my set of 4 huge stainless steel stockpots I use a lot during the harvest season.

I freeze lots and lots of stuff. I always chop and slice onions and peppers and freeze them. I can usually raise a year's supply (or more) in the spring garden. I usually freeze tons of corn (I could can it if I didn't have storage space, but I do have storage space so I just freeze it.) Some years I get enough corn from the spring and fall gardens that we don't have to buy corn at all. The same is true of green beans and black-eyed peas. I even freeze tomatoes--they go straight from the freezer to the soup or saucepot in the winter.

Okra is a little more iffy. We eat so much of it that I don't usually freeze much. I need to grow more, but the deer have been an issue with it for years, although I believe we've finally solved that problem. Thus, I should be able to grow more of it in the future.

Carrots do best for me in the fall garden. If you have them in a well drained bed, you can leave them in the bed for months and harvest as needed. Another way to store them is in a clean trash can filled with sand. Pour a few inches of sand into the container, then put down a layer of carrots and repeat until all your carrots are stored. You also can keep them in a root cellar OR a refrigerator for months. Carrots can be frozen and even dehydrated.

I dehydrate a lot of stuff. I then store all my bags of dehydrated veggies in the freezer, but you don't have to put them in the freezer. If you are careful to get out all the moisture, you can store dried veggies in the pantry.

Even cantaloupes, muskmelon, watermelon and other lesser-known melons can be frozen. I usually cut them into squares, or use a melon baller to make them into melon balls and freeze them. You also can slice them into rather thin slices and dehydrate them. Their flavor and sweetness are so intensified by drying them that they are like candy.

Anything that you grow in the garden can be dehydrated although some things take a pretty long time. I've never tried dehydrating corn, but I am sure it would work. Shelled beans dry naturally without dehydration and so do black-eyed peas.

Many herbs can be tied in bundles and hung in a dry, warm, dark location to dry naturally.

Canning is a lot of work and can be hazardous if done improperly, but as long as you follow all the recommended procedures and are careful, it is a great way to preserve food too.

Cabbage will store a long time in a refrigerator or in a root cellar type situation. Back when people HAD to raise all the own food, a lot of them make sauerkraut to preserve the cabbage for winter, but I am not much of a sauerkraut person.

There's always pickles too. You can pickle LOTS of veggies, not just cucumbers. You can pickle peppers, onions, carrots, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, watermelon rinds, etc. You also can make all kinds of relish and, there again, not just pickle relish but squash and others as well.

Fruit can be frozen, dried or canned and you also can make preserves, jams and jellies. You can even make tomato preserves or marmalade.

Storing food is not as hard as most people think, but it takes a lot of effort.

If you want to expand your garden for next year, you could start building lasagna type beds this year. Although, as much as the heat bothers you and with your allergies, you might prefer to wait until fall to start laying out your garden beds.

I like to clean out my garden beds in the fall and remove all debris. This is very important because many garden pests overwinter in plant debris. Usually I let the chickens roam around in the garden beds in December and they will dig and scratch and take care of lots of insects, insect eggs, weed seeds, etc. I also like to heap up tons and tons and tons of shredded leaves, gathered from our wooded areas, on top of the beds as soon as they are cleaned out after the first hard frost. The chopped-up leaves decompose into a lovely leaf mold or compost by spring. (If you don't chop them up, they break down a lot more slowly.) I also prefer to go ahead and add manure and compost to the beds in the winter months, so my beds are "ready to go" in the spring.

Sometimes in a bad wildfire year, though, I stay too busy to get the garden beds cleaned up and replenished with compost, manure and leaves in winter. In those years, I really have a hard time planting on schedule because the beds aren't ready.

I do all my planning and seed ordering in late fall to early winter. By the time the new seed catalogs arrive, I am usually about "done" although there is always something new that convinces me to order one more batch of seeds.

Because my family understands and supports my gardening habit, my Christmas gifts are always handy useful things like gardening gloves (five pair last year, everything from goatskin to latex-dipped cotton to suede) and hand tools and such. One of my favorite garden gifts (I always ask Santa for this one) is a big cannister of electrical zip-ties. I use them to attach tomato cages to stakes, etc.

There are several really, really useful vegetable gardening books and food preservation books that I find ESSENTIAL to my success as a veggie gardener. I have had most of them for years and years and years and still refer to them constantly. I'll make a list of them later.

I'm off to the store to pick up some more food preservation supplies--processing all that corn wiped out my supply of freezer bags, and I need some pickling supplies before the cucumbers get out of control.

I'll write later about corn and veggies.

Dawn

Dawn,

I'm glad to hear you managed to harvest so much corn and beat the raccoons to it. We were afraid to plant corn this year for fear it would draw the deer into our garden. They come into our yard, so I thought they'd probably get in our garden too, so we didn't plant corn or beans either. A local farmer here grows a large field of corn and sells to the public for about five days each summer. We went early one morning to pick a bushel, but they were unloading a truck full of "just picked" corn as we drove in, so we just bought a bushel instead. It's $10 a bushel if you pick it, $15 a bushel if they pick. I didn't mind paying them to pick it for me as I was a little concerned about black widows hiding out amongst the corn stalks, LOL.

We put up 75 ears, which should be enough to get us through the winter. DH generally doesn't eat much corn on the cob, but he's decided this is really good corn, so we probably should have bought two bushels. I will get two bushels next year and I know that will be enough for the two of us and our friends and family who come to eat with us. It's nice to get fresh, locally grown corn and not have to worry about luring the deer and raccoons into our own garden. It feels good having fresh produce in the freezer too. :)

My fruit trees at my old homestead got hit by a late freeze, and we don't have much fruit there. I bought some peaches yesterday at Stratford to put up for winter, but they are so GOOD, we may eat them all first. The Stratford peach festival is next weekend, so we may go to that too, and get enough peaches to put up for winter. I cooked some on the grill last night with our burgers, stuffed the empty pit with cream cheese, and drizzled them with honey. They were okay but not as good as they looked in the magazine I'd gotten the recipe from. I like them much better fresh, :)

Our tomatoes are putting off more than we can eat, but not enough that I've canned any yet. I am so used to bushels of tomatoes by now. I generally cook my salsa in an electric turkey roaster, which yields around 30 pints if I remember correctly. Now I'll be lucky to cook about seven pints this weekend, as we just don't have many tomatoes. I have never had such a bad crop. I know it's because we got our plants in late, then they got ravaged by the chickens, then it got hot sooo fast before they had a chance to set many fruit. Oh well, I will be prepared next year.

Our okra is just starting to produce. We should have plenty to put up for winter, and have all we want to eat this summer. I did put up a little squash so far this summer, but my one and only zucchini plant already bit the dust, and the two yellow squash plants are starting to peter out too. I'm hoping to get some more squash from my brother to put up for winter. I have one recipe that says frozen garden squash taste just as good in the recipe as fresh squash. I hope that is right, as I'm usually not too pleased with the taste/texture of squash I put up for winter.

You've got me thinking about growing a fall garden. :) With groceries so expensive, I'm trying to put up as much produce as I can this summer. I always feel secure with two freezers full of food. :) Thanks for all the tips and encouragement!

Dawna

Dawna,

It's great that you got some farm-fresh corn for the freezer!

In our part of the state, most people lost their fruit to the late freezes and also to the heavy winds we had for days and days. I hope we have a good fruit year next year. (I do still have some fruit in my freezer from last year!) Those grilled peaches sounded good--but, like you, I tend to like 'em best just plain and natural.

It is easy to understand why your tomato crop is poor this year and you know that next year is likely to be totally different. (Of course, we don't know WHAT will be different: snow in May? hordes of locusts? earthquakes? Maybe all three in the same day?) Y'all just had the worst set of circumstances converge all at once--any ONE of the three would have been enough to set back the plants--but the late freezes that led to late planting, the chicken attack and then the convection-oven-like hot/windy May weather were just the triple whammy. It has been interesting to note that even people in zones 3-6 who plant much later than us had the same problems--they stayed cold much later so planted later, then had EITHER flooding rain for weeks on end OR hot/dry/windy stuff like us, and they are having little tomato fruitset too. (So, at least most all of us are suffering together.)

Our okra is just starting to produce too, and it is about time. It probably would have produced sooner except the deer ate it (before the new & improved deer fence was finished). About half the okra plants the deer ate down to the ground died, but the other half came back from the roots, so at least we have some okra after all.

Usually, frozen home-grown squash does taste pretty good when used in recipes, but it simply does not have the same texture. Since the deer ate my squash and zucchini plants, I had to start over from seed, so am just now starting to get some. I'm going to try dehydrating some in my stove (new convection oven has a "Dehydrate" mode that is sooo cool) and see how it cooks up when re-hydrated.

Dawna, some years I put up a lot of stuff and some years I don't. It just depends on time.....in a bad fire year (which this hasn't been, at least lately), I don't get to freeze or can as much as I want to because I'm too busy with the fires. In a good year, I put up all I can. This year, I am putting up all I can find time to do. There IS a deep sense of satisfaction when you can open the freezer door and look at shelf after shelf of frozen food from the garden. I will definitely fill up the deep freezer, and the freezer portion of the kitchen refrigerator AND the freezer portion of the "extra" refrigerator that is out in the garage. If I have to, I can convert the garage refrigerator to a "deep freeze", but I hate to do that in the summer because we keep it full of bottled water, Gatorade, tea, soft drinks, etc. since we're outside so much. If the fall garden produces well, I may turn the garage fridge into a deep freeze at that point.

With the higher cost of groceries, I am even going to have a winter garden here. I think I will try to grow lettuce greens, carrots, turnips, rutabagas, chard, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts and carry them as deeply into the winter as I can....probably will cover them with frost blanket-type floating row covers set up over each row.

One of my gardening neighbors always plants tons and tons of collard greens and spinach around October 1st. Some years it overwinters really well and the harvest the greens using the "cut and come again" method all winter. Some years it freezes early and that's the end of it. Some years it produces for a while, then freezes, then regrows. After watching him do it for years, I think I'll give it a whirl.

As for the tips and encouragement.....you are so very welcome. Sometimes it is the hardest thing in the world MENTALLY to start a fall garden because it just seems too hot. My body certainly says it is too hot! (LOL) But, it can really pay off. There was a year in the early 2000s, although I don't remember which one, when we didn't have a freeze at our house until mid-December. I had the BEST fall garden that year and had ripe tomatoes sitting on the kitchen counter into January! I'd love to have that kind of autumn gardening season this year.

Do you ever overwinter a pepper plant or two or a determinate tomato plant or two in the greenhouse?

Dawn

Dawn, I so appreciate your wisdom that I have been coming back to read more about your corn and other veggies you planted. I also read with interest the comments about growing our own food because of the higher cost of living.

We have relatives who live in Europe, and they have been doing this for years now. We just got back from a month in Europe, and I have to say that I admire the way they use everything, throw out a lot less than we do, and conserve, conserve. I wish more Americans would get off their fannies and begin turning the thermostat down, trading in their gas guzzlers, recycling, and PLANTING more.

What started off as an attempt to grow flowers (I miss the beautiful flowers in Europe) is turning into an interest in growing herbs and veggies. My husband is also very keen and today we admired a small kitchen garden that was never seen before not to far from us. They planted several rows of corn, cabbage, lettuce, herbs, tomatoes, squash and other items I could not identify. I was surprised! This is in the city. They took half of the yard and converted it into a kitchen garden. I so wanted to find out who lived there and congratulate them for being so proactive.

You all are such an inspiration :-)

Mari

Mari,

Europeans have been ahead of us in this area for centuries! The French and Italians are especially famous for growing incredibly yummy food in a very biointensive way--enriching their soil constantly, planting very tightly so not one inch of space is wasted and making an "occasion" of each meal from the garden. It is such a wonderful way to live. Sometimes, at our home here in the summer months when the produce is piling up all over the kitchen, entire meals are from the garden--who needs meat when you can have an assortment of garden fresh veggies?

We try to eat healthy (and no, definitely not health food fanatics!) and prefer to eat organically. Organic fruits and veggies are SO expensive in stores, but we grow them here ourselves and it is so worth the time and the effort.

Gardening is one way that we Americans have got it all wrong--we expend huge sums of money to maintain carpet-like lawns that are sterile in the sense that they aren't even producing food for wildlife, much less for us. We spend billions of dollars planting, fertilizing and mowing our lovely green carpets.....and, except for their appearance, they really are pretty useless. Everyone would be better served by having a lovely kitchen or potager garden, fruit trees, berry vines and brambles and even large full-fledged veggie gardens if they have space, wouldn't they?

Every year, I convert a little more space from lawn to either veggies, fruits or mixed beds of trees/shrubs/vines and flowers. My ultimate goal is to get rid of all the bermuda grass and grow something USEFUL instead.

Even my dogs grow their own garden....I decorate our yard with gourds, winter squash, pumpkins, Indian Corn, etc. in the fall. When the decorations are "done" and I am replacing them with Christmas decorations the weekend after Thanksgiving, I give the old fall "decorations" to the dogs to play with in their fenced-in dog yard. They chew everything up and play with it until it is demolished, and sometimes they even bury gourds or small pumpkins. In late spring, plants "magically" spring up from the ground. This year, they have a dozen or more gourd and pumpkin vines growing in their dog yard. The ones nearest the fences climb the fences and survive being trampled by the dogs, and help shade the dog yard too. They also planted their own sunflowers after playing with some big dried sunflower heads I gave them one fall, and now the sunflowers reseed and come up in one part of the dog yard every year, which gives them tons more shade. I like that even the dog yard produces gourds, pumpkins and tons of sunflower seeds for the birds.

And, by the way, most gardeners love to show off their garden so, if you happen to be driving by or walking by and those folks are out in the kitchen garden, stop and say hello and compliment them on their efforts. I bet they would love to hear that someone has noticed what they've done.

Dawn

Dawn, I will do just that. I think it's a good idea to acknowledge neighbours who are doing the right thing for themselves and the environment.

Thank you so much for the time you take to help us newbies to garden. I was talking about you today, and my daughter asked, "since when you have a friend named Dawn," LOL