Perhaps the clearest delineation I come across between gardeners can be found in the variation between how eager growers are to accept anecdote over science; or said in reverse, how diligent growers are in determining whether something can or should be taken at face value. How much we learn or how much we actually know about plants and gardening isn't necessarily related directly to the effort we expend to learn, or even to the effort we expend to gain what passes for experience. Experience is only valuable if we are learning from our errors and changing patterns so we don't make the same errors a second, third, fourth ..... time; and being bitten continually by the error half of 'trial and error' is actually one of the slowest ways to learn. It's not experience that has learning value if we are doing the same thing over and over again without improvement. I think experience is extremely overrated unless it's being used to validate previously acquired knowledge. IOW, learning by error and then changing 'something' in the hope of making things better is far less efficient than learning something from a reliable source and using our practical experience to validate that knowledge, or in some cases refute it as impractical for our application. Limiting our opportunities to learn to only those sources that are in accord with our personal views may increase the enjoyment we get from the affirmations we seek, but learning from a source that is concerned to the greatest degree possible with disseminating information w/o bias, puts us on the fast track when it comes to acquiring valuable experience, penultimately, and user-friendly knowledge, ultimately. I think it's pretty easy to take the measure of a gardener, at least on these forums, by considering how his observations and statements are qualified. The casual gardener is more likely to make broad statements and assumptions with little in the way of qualification; while the more analytical gardener understands that everything isn't always black and white, and illustrates the analytical side by thinking through his offerings to see if it holds water as a broad statement in all cases or if it needs qualification. As an example - the casual gardener might say, or accept on its face, the idea that because Mg is a critical part of the photosynthetic process, and that because banana peels or Epsom salts contain Mg, that adding either to your soil can only be a good thing. The analytic gardener understands it's not that black & white & qualifies the statement by saying it can be a good thing if the soil is deficient of Mg because they are both sources of Mg. Or, he might note that in the case of the banana peel, if there is no Mg deficiency, the excess may be (in the tiniest of degrees) a potential limiting factor that could be offset in other ways because of the addition of the OM. I don't think that analytic gardeners are necessarily better gardeners, but I think they have the potential to be better gardeners because they want to know 'why'. I also think that ambition has a LOT to do with how successful a gardener is. The diligent casual gardener will probably fare much better at harvest than the lazy analyst, illustrating that gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration; and the best fertilizer is the gardener's shadow. Al

Hi Flowrgir11 I just emailed you, please let me know if you received it or not. I have troubles sometime with my emailings. Thanks, Pixie

Snails. LOL! I haven't seen any snails here. How 'bout I plant a row of lettuce leading from my veggie garden all the way across the yard to the fence...a slug hi-way. The slugs can follow it to the fence and then crawl under it. LOL! ;-))Na that wouldn't work either...the slugs would just stay where the food was. :O Our yard used to be a wide open 3 houses wide park like setting. When these neighbours moved in....I went out one day and all the dirt had been pulled out of one of my barrel planters in the driveway. At first I couldn't figure out what happened....then I noticed little toys and toy road systems in the dirt. The ornaments were tossed to the ground on the side. This neighbour also never put their garbage out and it smelled really bad......they put it over on the property line between our houses...falling all over my yard. We used to park up beside our house in our driveway........but we couldn't stand the smell......so started parking down at the bottom of the driveway. Shortly after we build the 6 foot fence along that side. The bi-law people came and talked to them about their smelly garbage a few times, as well. The problem with the fence was, it looked really bare to me.....so last Christmas I put lights on it and some painted wooden ornaments....that neighbour kept knocking them off. I actually saw this neighbour hitting the fence one day with a big stick. I'm not talking the kids either. When I put the blooming bags up on the fence in the spring......I was worried......but I tried to make sure they couldn't be easily knocked off. They tried but couldn't knock them off. We also built a greenhouse where we used to park.....so the space isn't complete lost. They got rid of the dogs, but still throw garbage and wood pieces and stuff over the fence. I just pick it up and do my best to ignor them. Not much else I can do. We built the fence to bi-law specification of 6 feet along the sides of the property.....but it really isn't tall enough. Ooops now I got this thread off topic...My Bad! How about...for December gardening guide...keep gardening threads on topic. I will try..... Happy thoughts all, now wheres my seed catalogues. Sierra :-)

Having worked with Ann Lovejoy for a year and 1/2 at Bainbridge Gardens, I like her pretty well as far as gardening advice goes, with a few exceptions such as the compost tea thing. As for her writing, she writes that way because so many people buy it. Her writing style doesn't do much for me either, but she actually does know a huge amount about plants which is more than I can say for a lot of garden book authors (and nursery managers). How about that new Timber Press guide to Gardening in the Pacific Northwest or whatever it is. Worth a mention anyways, though I've only had a quick look at it myself. One other book I can recommend, though it will probably be hard to find, is the Readers Digest Encyclopaedia of Garden Plants and Flowers. It's HUGE, detailed, and pretty accurate, and England-centric - so of course much of it applies to here although it's a little weak on Mediterranean/California plants that do well here. Anyways, I still think it's good enough to be worth hunting down. My copy is a bit out of date (1990 I think) - I'm not sure if a newer edition has been produced. As for books containing information not available on the internet, true, but the opposite could also be said. Both are valuable sources of information in their own way.