Stage Rat, thanks so much. I googled it and that is what it is. I will go right out and dig it up. I don't want those in my flower beds. I wish all my flowers looked that healthy though. I forgot to mention lesons learned about which containers worked best for me. My favorite is the round containers that I get cakes or cookies in (also an excuse to buy them). I make newspaper pots, and they are so much easier to plant out than to try and get the babies out of a milk bottle or 2L bottle. I think the newspaper helps the soil also. I tear off the top as I am dropping them in the hole so that they don't wick away the water. All of mine that were planted that way are doing the best. Also, I put a small water bottle in the center and use plastic shower caps (16 for $1) from the dollar store on top of them--it works great. The second favorite is the 1/2 size stem table aluminum pans from Sam's. The shower cap fits on them also with a small water botter to hold it off the babies. I think I will learn many more lessons from the responses to this thread. Thanks again for helping me ID the plant. Also thanks to everyone who shared their lessons learned. It is a great help. Jeane

Tara, I was torn between whether to give you the quick and easy practical answer, or the longer and more detailed explanation that might help you baby the plants along for a few more weeks. So, here's both: QUICK & EASY ANSWER: Extreme heat has set in this week and the cabbage plants aren't going to like it. You can try to keep them growing a bit longer by shading them. Be sure you let them have 3-4 hours of early morning sun and then full to dappled shade the rest of the day. Keep them well-mulched. You may or may not succeed in this effort. It is hard to say because the plants likely have had a lot of heat already. MORE IN-DEPTH ANSWER: This is a hard question to answer without knowing how much hot air and high soil temperatures the plants already have endured. In general, shading cool season plants will help extend their life a little bit, but it would have worked better for the cabbage if you'd begun shading them before your high temperatures starting exceeding about 75 degrees. When you wait until the temperatures are approaching 90 degrees, the cabbages likely already have had a lot of exposure to temperatures they don't particularly like. At this point, you might as well try shading them if you can. It won't hurt them, and still might help them---but not if they've already had too much heat. If I was trying to shade cabbage plants this late in the season, I'd let them have exposure to full sun only until about 10 a.m. Here at our house today, it already was 85 degrees by 10 a.m., so if I was trying to keep cabbage plants alive and growing with partial shade, they likely would have been whining and hollering for the shade by 9 a.m.....but you have to let them have 3 or 4 hours of sun at a minimum so they'll keep growing and form heads, if they can, in this heat. You can use shade cloth, commonly sold at nurseries and in the garden centers of big box stores. Often it is custom-cut for you and comes on big bolts and priced by the running foot. The first shade cloth I ever bought was folded and sold in a flat pack. I believe it was 6' wide x 50' long and I bought it at Sam's Club quite a few years back. Shade Clothe comes in different weaves that allow different amounts of light penetration--I use 50% shade cloth on the greenhouse and 40% shade cloth in the garden for heat-sensitive plants. If you just want to experiment with shading without spending money on shade cloth, you can use an old bed sheet or sheer to semi-sheer curtain. In future years, if you want to use shading to prolong a cool-season crop, start using the shading when temperatures are a little under 80 degrees in order to keep the plants a little cooler. It also helps the plants a lot if their soil is well-mulched. Garden soil that has 2 to 4" (or more) of good thick dense mulch on top of it can easily stay 20 to 30 degrees cooler, or sometimes even 40 degrees cooler, than unmulched soil in full sun. I was working in a new garden plot in very late April and early May, trying to finish the fencing, put up the trellises, etc. and get planting done. Obviously, nothing was mulched yet since we were barely getting plants in the ground. On one unseasonably hot day as I was transplanting cucumber plants into the ground, our soil temperature was so hot that it was unpleasant to touch the soil with a bare hand. As soon as I finished planting that day, I cut the lawn grass and used the clippings to mulch the planted portions of the garden. Now, every time we mow, I layer new grass clippings on top of the old. Our older, established garden already was mulched well-enough before we started working on the new garden plot, so this year, the new garden is getting most of the grass clipping mulch. By the time soil temperatures are exceeding 100 degrees here, I should have mulch on the ground thick enough to keep the soil about 20-30 degrees cooler than the air temp. Cabbage is a cool season crop and is happiest when the daytime highs are in the 60s, which is why we need to plant it about 4-6 (or even 8) weeks before the date of our average last frost. As you have undoubtedly noticed, we often go from 'too cold' to 'too hot' practically overnight here, which makes it tricky to get a good yield from cool-season crops. Planting them early is the key. The later you plant, the harder it will be to get a good yield. However, if we plant too early, the cold can cause them to bolt...so it is challenging. You have the extra challenge of having a precious child who destroyed your seedlings. It happens. Pets, children, etc. can be hard on our plants. I always raise extra from seed and try (not always successfully since cats can jump and climb) to keep them out of the reach of anyone who might accidentally destroy them. The good news is that with shading and mulching, cabbage seems to tolerate more heat than you'd expect. However, by heat, I mean maybe temperatures creeping into the low 80s, and not so much the low 90s. DIfferent varieties tolerate heat at different levels. I always try to choose varieties known for their heat tolerance and that have fairly short DTMs. Even then, sometimes the heat just arrives too early. Some years I have had cabbage happily tolerate a lot of heat in June. Other years, it has caused the heads to get puffy or the plants to begin splitting in order to send up a stem to flower. I usually plant far more cabbage than we need and start harvesting small heads in March. As the season goes on, we are harvesting and eating progressively larger heads up to a point. Then, when the heat arrives, I tend to harvest them on the small side again to get them out of the heat. This year has been a mixed bag of results. Some plants formed heads pretty early and were harvested early. Some were slow to form heads. Some didn't form heads at it. At our house, what do we say about such uneven results? Of course, we blame them on the weather, but we also just shrug and say "it is one of those years". Since the stonehead already has headed up, I'd go ahead and harvest it and use it. High temperatures can make cabbage go downhill fast and sometimes affect its flavor. I'd shade the Bonnie hybrid and try to baby it along for a few more weeks so it gets at least a fighting chance to make the head it is trying to form. The red types in general are slower than the green types to form heads. This year I had full-sized green heads while the red varieties were just sitting there in their leafy glory. They did finally head up too but it seemed to take forever, even though, according to their DTMs, they should have been heading up at the same time as some of the green varieties. I just think the reds are more stubborn. Reds grow great in fall, as do all cabbages, but you have to transplant young cabbage seedlings into the ground in August in order to get heads before really cold temperatures set in. If your red cabbage doesn't start trying to form a head in the next 7-10 days, it likely won't form one because the heat will just be too much for it, even with shading. Hope this helps, Dawn

Mine are planted in sandy soil, neutral ph. (naturally acidic, but I have high ph water - soil test I did just a couple of weeks ago says 7.2). My soil is naturally red clay, but in this particular bed, I had soil brought in, and it was pure sand (now amended). Perhaps the trick is to keep them watered and not let them dry out? Since the soil is sandier there than other areas, we seem to water it more often. I also have roses in that bed, so I try to make sure they don't get too dry. Or maybe I had success because they're in sand instead of clay. I don't know - I just planted them and they did well! :)

Don't give him cold shoulder. Lay it all out. Specifically. I don't like it when you _____________ because I feel _____________ when that happens. Then tell him what you will do. Example. My 7 year old (yep, because that's how old your dh is acting!!) keeps not appreciating what I do for her. Not only that, but acting like a little brat prior to us doing fun stuff. I finally told her today that I am tired of feeling like this. I told her I cannot control what she does, but I can control how I react to it. So the next time she doesn't listen to me about eating in the living room or whatever, I'm not going to get all upset. We're just not going to do the fun stuff we had planned. Then I won't feel that she's taking advantage and martyr myself. End game. I think she got it. So, what will you do when DH does something like that? DH: I think your tattoos are hideous. You: I apologize for my husband. That was innappropriate to say to you, a guest in our home. Would you like to come with me to the patio for some tea? DH: Rush Limbaugh is an idiot, I don't see how any smart person could listen to him. You must be an idiot. You: It's obvious we have different opinions on this subject. Aren't politics a heated subject!! By the way, Aunt Jen, this is a lovely coffee cake. How did you make it so fluffy and light? By doing that, it takes the attention from him, lets him and everyone know that you won't stand for it, and lets him off without the humility of being kicked or told off. Just smile, and cut him off at the chase. Diffuse while in the heat of it, then when you get him alone have specific things to tell him, without anger or blame.