Last year was a poor year for my butterbeans, and my eggplant as well. Those of us in the North and Northeast had heavy rains in late May & early June which delayed planting, and there seemed to be some other factor at work... perhaps more cloudy days in early summer. There were many threads on GW last year regarding difficulty with eggplant... and since both eggplant & limas prefer similar conditions, perhaps the problems were at least partially climate-related. I don't know if Atlanta experienced those rains last year, but they could have been a factor... if they delayed planting. Did the butterbeans flower earlier, but not set pods? If so, excessive heat may have caused blossom drop. I also agree with Sandy, when someone talks of "beautiful plants" but no pods, the first thing I suspect is too much nitrogen present in the soil. Any combination of these (and other factors) may have caused the poor yield. Of course, this was also a new variety... perhaps it simply was not adapted to your conditions, or was weak by nature (like one large lima that I tried last year). Have I got you thoroughly confused yet? ;-) Hopefully something here will ring a bell.

Okay, so the ears were small, stunted, and/or failed to develop properly. The first thing I would ask is "Where did you get the seed for it?" Did you get it fresh from a vendor, or is it seed that you saved from the previous year? The reason I ask is that corn is very prone to something called "inbreeding depression". Basically, corn requires a large number of individual plants to stay healthy (numbers I've seen vary, but they are usually around 100 stalks as the minimum safe number). What happens is that the lack of genetic diversity causes the line to degrade (slowly at first, rapidly towards the end) where the ears will just get smaller, the plants weaker, until eventually the entire line will simply die out completely, no matter how perfect conditions are for it otherwise. You mentioned that you had a fairly small amount of corn (only a dozen plants) last year, so did you perhaps use seed corn from that planting for this one? Also, to get better ears, you should try to plant in a more square arrangement. Instead of a 15x3, try a 5x9. Corn is pollinated by wind, so you want as many stalks as close together as you can to maximize ear production. If you've got rows 15 plants long, plants 1 and 15 will be so far apart that they basically have no hope of pollinating each other. Move them closer together if at all possible. And if you are hitting a problem with inbreeding depression, your best bet will be to simply buy new seed. If that isn't an option (you're planting a rare breed, maybe), then try to get at least some fresh seed to mix in with the old. It will help inject some new vitality that should help out.

Last year, my bulbs were in lawless conditions. I bought a children pool and put them in it in their pots. It was easier to water them this way. I just poured the water in and they all got some. But then some rains came and completely drenched the bulbs. They were neck up to the water and they stayed that way for a long time by the time I noticed it and let the water away. So I ended up with most of the bulbs shrunk to tiny bulblets that I didn't think would even survive. Then I had to move to the new house, so I unpotted them, cut the leaves and put them in the new wine cooler I bought for this purpose to make sure that the bulbs do not freeze down. A month later I noticed that the wine cooler froze down and even killed about 10 bulbs. I returned it to the store and just bought a huge standing fridge that had the freezer part separately. I kept my bulbs in that fridge. Then I planted them up from Summer, hoping that they would still come back to me. And to my amazement: More than 50 percent FLOWERED! They shrunk, they were sitting in water, they froze down, they were in dormancy for a half a year or LONGER, and they BLOOMED! I am still floored by some of them. Now, they are out in the flower bed, fattening up. I hope they enjoy the situation. So you see, once they want to bloom, they just bloom, even if they kill themselves.

You guys are too much :-). And I'm shocked at how much a 2 year old's attitude resembles that of a belligerent teen! The refusing to answer when spoken to, the ignoring of direct instructions, the odd eating habits... No wait lists for any of the hotels but I did manage to find a room via Travelocity. The funny thing is that when I specified the town as "Mansfield" the hotel came up as available but changed to unavailable when I tried to book rooms. A call to the hotel itself confirmed that, no available rooms. But when I changed the town to "ashland" (about 20 miles away) the exact same hotel came up as available & allowed me to book rooms. So I did. Printed up my confirmation so I have proof. Now I'm even toying with the idea of flying out & renting a car. What with the cost of gas in my area it wouldn't be all that much more money! But I'm liking the thought of camping more & more & maybe later in the season we can get away for a few days to just camp. bring the little guy & the dog & play wild slumber party in the tent. Both the little guy & the dog would love it. Thankfully we have a big tent! Melanie, I'm beating myself up because I know better. I consciously left this until the last minute. It's a bad, bad habit of mine. I insist that I work better under pressure :-). Yes, Bill, how far west are you heading? And since you're in Maine have you ever done the trip east to Nova Scotia? Now that's a spectacular holiday! Nina