I have found 2 websites that have excellent pictures/ideas for container plant combos. I use the pictures for reference when daydreaming about spring and summer annual combos. The first one you can sort by season, container size, color combos, etc. which is very helpful ! http://www.provenwinners.com/combinations/ The second one shows very lush beautiful summer containers showcased in a novel way - relatively easy to copy without the price of ordering their product. http://www.sideplanting.com/gallery.asp Hope you enjoy them as much as I do. I will be taking some ideas from these 2 websites for combos this year !

A 'serving size' is determined by whomever hangs that label on a food product. And actually the feds have determined 'serving sizes' when setting up the food pyramid and they used several criteria. It is meant as a guide, however, and not a mandate and I think that is the way it should be. Does it realistically reflect the sizes people actually eat? Do pigs fly? The skinny on this subject (dear to my heart) is that there are restrictions and rules set down by the federal and also state governments on labeling. There have been many complaints by consumers over the years, there have been many judegments and regulations written. But it has and always shall be playing a game of catch-up with manufacturers with profit maximums in mind and the consumer is told to remember the principle of caveat emptor. I have a background in chemistry, agriculture and health. I read labels on every food product I buy and STILL find interpretting the label into nutritional common sense difficult. Manufacturers have lobbyists and think-tanks, and ad campaigns. Most want to stay legal, obviously, but they do it..........uhm.........creatively. Even and especially point-of-sale sites do the same thing. One of my local markets give the unit price, except when they have a food on sale. So, half the shelf is 'on sale' so that you can't determine what the price per unit is. LOL. There is also no standardisation where container sizes are concerned between brands. A calculator found it's way into my purse and lately I use it. The results are surprising....especially where quantity surcharge is concerned. Sometimes you pay a premium on buying the larger size. It's the store's way of using the cheaper by bulk mindset and taking advantage of it. You can bet any time a food contains the current media foe, like transfat, the serving size is going to shrink to whatever it takes to stay under the latest federal label law trigger. Like margarine with the claim of 'no transfat'. Again, do pigs fly?

Your questions are very astute, Chuckie, and go to the heart of the issue. Consider, first, the source from which you received the suggestion to feed worms a variety of feedstocks, because if you are talking about maximizing worm activity, it was not from the scientific community. Science has long understood and stated that, provided organic materials were decomposing, worms would grow and even thrive in the material. In nature, earthworms tend to live in environments with a narrow cross section of OM options; the worms living beneath turf stands feed in little more than grass clippings, for instance. And while a turf stand may support more than one grass variety, from a "nutritional" standpoint (as we humans percieve nutrition) those clippings are pretty much all the same thing. Yet worms thrive beneath turf stands. The largest vermicomposting operation in the US uses paper pulp as the sole feedstock for an operation that covers 75 acres, and their worms do magnificently. Variety of feedstock is not a requirement for maximizing worm activity and you will find no researcher who has suggested otherwise. I have been frustrated for many years that people are so often told they must feed their worms a variety of organic materials, and have long battled this myth. It is not a statement coming from the scientific community, however, but from worm growers, castings producers and home vermicomposters who forget to ask, first, the focus of the system about which they are answering questions to ensure their answers apply, and second, to verify that what THEY were taught about worm growing, vermicomposting or castings production is actually accurate. Few people are intentionally spreading misinformation. The perpetuation of vermicomposting myths is usually the result of misinterpretion of the data, misapplication of the data, or misinformtion gleaned from someone else erroneously assumed to know where-of they speak. Now, if you want to produce castings that maximize plant growth benefit then there MAY be some sense in adding a wider variety of feedstocks. Note that I said 'MAY', since there is not a tremendous amount of research on the subject at this point. There is some, however, and this coupled with data from composting research suggests that including a variety of materials, particularly some hardwood sawdust and livestock manure, tends to produce castings with greater overall plant growth response than do systems feeding single feedstocks. So, whether or not including a varity of OM options to the system is important depends entirely on your focus. Not everyone who answers questions on internet forums realizes that the person asking the question may have a different focus than they, thus, good information is often misapplied and vermicomposting myths are born. As to the recommendations to maintain aerobicity, here the confusion is a bit more straighforward. While worms can and often do perform optimally in or near anaerobic activity, the line between a "healthy" anaerobic enviornment and an unhealthy one (from the worm perspective) is very narrow and not measurable by the person managing the system. A stinky bin supporting a thriving worm population can become a stinky bin from which the worms are fleeing en masse in just a few hours and with no obvious warning signs to we mere humans. And, while worms often do perform very well in or near anaerobic pockets, few systems that are wholly anearobic support worm activity. Rather, it is systems where only a portion of the bin is anaerobic while other areas are nicely aerobic, giving the worms regions to which they can flee should the anaerobic by-products become problematic for them. Maintaining a bin so that it is only PARTLY anearobic, and so that the anaerobic areas are not actually toxic to the worms is beyond the understanding of even the most knowledgeable and experienced vermicomposter! Want more? Thre is also the human to consider. Anaerobic by-products can be attractive to vermin and houseflies in a way that an aerobic system is not. While not all anaerobic bins attract flies and rats, it is far more likely in an anaerobic bin than in one that is nicely aerobic. Because these systems are managed near and even IN our homes and living spaces, health departments and common sense usually dictate that home waste systems are managed to prevent possible issues with vermin. Thus, because we are speaking to the general public and because, while anaerobic activity may not be the worst thing that can happen to a worm bin, an aerobic bin is one that will always support good worm activity, and because we want to ensure a vermin-free systems it is generally recommended that a bin is carefully managed to maintain aerobicity. There is a wide difference between what a worm CAN do and what we want it to do near our homes. There is a vast amount of unintentional misinformation on the internet, resulting from the misapplication of good, scientifically verified data and technique. Every experienced worm grower/vermicomposter can tell you with absolute authroity what does and does not work in their systems. It is when they begin telling you WHY something does and does not work that confusion can creep in and erroneous recommendations become prevalent. It is the main reason I am ALWAYS saying that the best we can do is provide GUIDELINES for bin management, but no hard and fast rules. ALL 'generally accepted' vermicomposting methods should be questioned! Does that explain things, dear Chuckie? Kelly S

When one of our camping friends died, his widow didn't want to quit camping, and since our son and her kids were such good friends, I suggested I would teach her how to tow her travel trailer. so, she got pretty adept at towing, so we'd go on short trips--us in our pickup & trailer, and she in her Station wagon & Trailer. Her youngest daughter sort of adopted me as her substitute father, so i treated her as good as her daddy did, or so i tried to do. (She still calls me Dad) We were up in northern Ohio on one trip, and upon seeing a sign for a campground, we pulled in, and as my wife stepped out of the truck, a beer can rolled out of the door opening! This wouldn't have been so bad, but the camp was a religious camp! And then, my semi-adopted daughter got out of the car behind us, driven by her mother (Not accompanied by a male!) and hollered:"Hey, Dad, is this where we are going to stay tonight?" Well, by this time, my wife had been talking to the man in charge, and when he heard Debbie say that, we got the "Bum's Rush!" I suppose he saw the beer can, too! A funny thing about that situation was--there was never any hanky-panky going on, but we'd kid about me and my 2 wives and all our kids, wherever we went! We all had gone to Westmoreland Mall one day to shop! I didn't want to do all that walking, so i went to an ice cream store, bought a big cone and went outside to eat it! i sat on a park bench, and began talking to an old guy there. And then, the 2 ladies and 4 kids came up, saying:"Dad, why didn't you buy ice cream for all of your kids?" The old guy gave me a funny look, got up, and walked away, fast! by: Rustyj