Because I'm a "10" here in California, I feel - at least to that extent - qualified to put forth my opinions on the subject of strawberries and lesser extent - blackberries. Don will - no doubt - disagree, but anyway - This is my 2-3 year with trialing a few raised boxes of strawberries - Quinault, Tri-star and a commercial variety (this is strawberry country), called Camarosa. The Quinault recommended for our area by local nurseries - is doing fairly well. The Tri-Stars while looking OK, do not produce as well and many berries are stunted. I believe they would prefer an eastern climate. If June doesn't show better yield, I will definitely make their space open to something more productive. The commercial berry - Camarosa - seems well-suited to this climate and am in the process of picking several handfuls a day from my small patch, very large and tasty. My impression on mixing strawberries and blackberries - would be that perhaps there would be a space problem. Blackberries grow long vines that need controlling, so if strawberries are planted beneath, they might suffer considerably. Also strawberries need quite a lot of "encouragement" picking off any infected leaves, keeping crowns elevated - in other words quite a lot of man hours to keep them happy. They also need considerable feeding to be productive. I agree that our sandy soil - when it is properly composted, etc., will grow a lot of crops successfully, and I have also given additional feedings of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium - to keep the strawberries producing. My experience with blackberries - is rather recent, but the Triple Crown that I planted this spring seems to be doing well. The most successful berry, however, is my 4th year stand of boysenberries. They seem to be the most successful berry for our zone 10 location, (right at home in the sand), with few problems so far and only minimal feedings so far. I think I would try to isolate strawberries from others however, - perhaps one of those strawberry towers if space is a problem. From my limited experience, I like the looks of Triple Crown so far for our climate zone. If space is a problem, up would be the way to go. I have seen tall T-bars with wires for tying vines - my boysens will grow 5 to 10 feet in length, and they will tip root later in the season if the tips touch ground. (dig up and replant for new runners). Just my 2 c's. Bejay

I agree with everyone else, put up the hoop house and run with it! I put up 2 tiny ones as an experiment last year, this year I used one of them again and built two more larger one. This gave me 1900 square feet of growing room. As I look back at the season, a huge majority of my produce I sold came out of those buildings. I am planning on putting up a 3 or even possibly 4th one next year and grow almost everything inside with drip irrigation. My tomatoes finally slowed way down this week. I only picked 125 pounds this week. They are getting ready to come back. They are loaded again, almost as many as there were this spring! I am hoping it will be a good fall harvest. Cherry tomatoes on the other hand are going CRAZY! I have picked 65 pounds in the last 7 days. I to garden on the 1/3 to 1/2 acre, but I have let some things go. Watermelon, cantaloupe, okra and outside tomatoes. The melon patch was planted late and the weeds took it over. I tried to weed, but I didn't do a great job. We have some melons for us to eat, but probably none to sell. That will hurt alittle. Last year I sold three small truckloads (only one level in a S-10 truck bed) probably 150 melons. This year, not so much! The okra is surrounded by buffaloburr sticker plants. The outside tomatoes don't have the quality or flavor as the ones in the hoop building. I am tearing them out next week. I didn't plant as many tomatoes as you. I put 102 plants in one hoop and 27 cherries in the other and other stuff. I guess I take really good care of them and sell almost every tomato. I have only pitched 25 pounds this year. Not to bad out of 2,200 pounds. Maybe it will be an Indian summer (warm fall) and everything will finish out for you.

All I can say is, if your architect's electrical plan doesn't show EXACTLY where you want each and every item, make darned SURE your builder knows you want to do a walk-thru with the electrician before he begins work. My architect told me that I'd get a chance to do a walk-thru and therefore didn't need to sweat the exact placement of every plug, switch, ceiling fan, and light fixture. Being a bit obsessive over this house, I was pretty adamant about getting him to put most electrical items exactly where I wanted them on the plans anyway. Darned good thing too b/c my builder had his electrical sub out to do the electrical WITHOUT any warning to me at all and without a walk-thru. One day there is no electrical work done and my builder is telling me he is trying to get it scheduled and will let me know. Three days later, I come back from an out of town conference and all the electrical work is "done." Apparently the electrician suddenly had some free time available and Builder told him to just install every item exactly where it is shown on the plans or as close to that spot as feasible. So he did. Now we're spending several hundred dollars to get the electrician back out to MOVE a dozen can lights. And, of course moving these things are "change orders" because the electrical installation WAS done according to the plans. GRRRR. We have to move the can lights b/c the architect just slapped them down on the plans with no particular rhyme nor reason. On the plans, with all the dotted lines running every which way and confusing the eye, it wasn't clear to me that they were unevenly spaced and didn't line up with one another or with any features in the house. Installed tho, they looked horrible and would have thrown far too much light in some areas while leaving others in shadow. The electrician actually wanted to charge us $15 MORE per light to move the already installed can lights over than he was going to charge per light to add some additional can lights. His change order bid actually read: Remove 12 can lights: $15 each, $180 total. Add 16 can lights: $60 each, $960 total. We managed to talk him out of the fee for removing them by saying, "well, how about if, instead of removing those lights and then reinstalling them, you just put in the 16 new ones and leave the others alone? We'll be happy to come out and take down the dozen that are already there ourselves and remove the wiring you used to install them. Then we can sell the stuff on ebay or craigslist. Of course, since we've paid for that dozen can lights, you'll need to provide us with the trim for them." LOL! And no, it's not like the electrician is making an extra trip out just to move these dozen lights. We had also decided early on we wanted to add a bunch of additional lights (including the 4 additional can lights) and some additional outlets and switches and had planned to discuss that with the electrician during our walk thru with him. And we didn't arguing about paying regular fare for the new stuff. Fortunately, MOST of our lights, ceiling fans, electrical outlets and switches were installed in the right place... but only because I kept insisting that my architect show switches on the side of the doors that they needed to be on, ceiling fans IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM, and wall outlets where they would not be covered up by the bookcases I'm planning to have. So, IMHO, a better plan is to tell your architect you want things "in the right place" just in case your builder doesn't schedule a walk-thru with the electrician for you. Then, when you do the walk-thru if anything still doesn't feel right you can have the electrician move it.

We do have a walk out basement. it makes a huge difference because that is all finished space with a bedroom, bathroom, and family room. We have big windows and a nice exterior door which all faces west so we get a lot of light. It goes out to a patio with a screened deck above leading from the kitchen. The house is on a couple of acres in a lake town, and our place has lots of trees. It reminded me of my grandma's house.