Too bad we are so far away from eachother. We could have a great fish fry! Really, they are good with butter and garlic, if you can just catch enough of them! Hah! I have noticed the same thing -- some of the damnbusia are too smart to go in the trap. For me it is the large breeding ones that shy away from the trap every time. I tried making a larger more stable trap out of a rectangular fry breeding quarantine box I got at Petsmart. It is a plastic box with a net around it. I put a small coke bottle top through the net and attached it with superglue. I weighted down the trap sitting up on some rocks with the top just above the water. I put the fish food bait right into the open top of the box. I am catching more breeding adults with this trap, but still not enough. The big smart ones come over and take a look inside the door to the trap and then suddendly decide it doesn't look safe and swim away fast. But I did get about 4 of them. I next tried a new tactic that is a bit labor-intensive but it is working. I lower a large hand-held net into the water and hold it so that the top rim is slightly below the water on one side and above the water on the other. I put some fish food next to the rim that is above the water. The damnbusia swim to the food, and when a bunch of them get in there I raise the net out of the water really fast. I can catch the big breeding ones this way, a few at a time. It really is a pesky problem how these things overpopulate. Between my net and my box trap, I caught 300 over the weekend, but I still have plenty more to go. I wouldn't doubt there are 1000 in there and more being born every week.

Thanks guys. I am going to try and enjoy the garden and not let it worry me too much. Hopefully it was just a one time thing and won't happen again (although I have a feeling those Black Prince toms I planted might be tempting, LOL!) -LL, that is a very good idea with the lattice. You did that up at your mom's didn't you? Think I might go with a couple of those pre-made panels to fencing if they go on sale (since I am bad at woodworking, lol!). That will give more privacy too, since the alley gets a fair amount of traffic from people using it as a shortcut. Have a feeling latice might make good peep-holes 8-) -Susan, my neighbor (power tools guy) has a motion detecor light and it is a maddining thing! A sheet flapping on the clothes line overnight set that thing off. Funny story, some relatives in town have one of those motion lights. One night someone came and stole the lights right out of it...LOL! Yay! Had a downpour this afternoon. Great for the newly moved rose and plants!! CMK

Dick, you are ahead of me this year, A couple of mine aren't even flowering yet probably due to that little heat wave we went through but if we have a decent fall I should manage to get seed. We've been eating Purple Italian Marconi Stringless and Mr. Tung's, have a few others at the edible stage (Grandpa Gerono's pink seed, turned out to be a wax bean), (Grandma Roberts Purple Pole,) (Selma Zebra) and (Royal City Cannery) but only have 3 or 4 plants in, they are designated for seed. The others are chugging along, a few more beans forming on the Andean/Ecuador vines and the new scarlet runner 'Aeron Purple Star' from Wales is starting to pop, lots of beans forming on the 4 plants I have in, apparently our little heat wave didn't bother them a bit. I'm going to grow this one in earnest next year. I direct seeded Woods Mountain Crazy beans in a little raised bed where I have a rosemary bush, these guys took off and now look like a small jungle I can see what people are saying about having to look under the leaves for the flowers and beans, it looks like a solid mat of leaves looking down on them. All told I now have 4 different (patterned seed coats) Andean beans growing in the greenhouse, only one is flowering so far, I'm hoping that if some of these are day length sensitive, being in the greenhouse when the days get shorter they'll flower and produce a few beans. I can give them a bit of heat at night if needed, time will tell :). Annette

George, All of this is so interesting. I know that Insuk's Wang Kong doesn't set well in heat, but I keep trying to grow it anyhow. It would be worth growing just for its beauty, especially when in bloom. I do expect it will do better as a fall bean than a spring bean. I'm just hardheaded and want to grow what I want to grow, even if it won't produce well here. I'm planting Scarlet Runner Bean just for the flowers for the hummers. It never sets many pods for me either but it is gorgeous when in bloom. It is interesting that your Fowler bush bean crossed with the RAMPANT bean. Wouldn't it be great if you could get Fowler's heat and drought-tolerance and high productivity in a rampant pole bean? If you could get a pole bean that would produce well all summer in our heat like Fowler bush bean does, that would be pretty awesome. I can't help thinking that with Cherokee Striped Cornfield, it has to be the heat or that a shortening daylength triggers blooming or something. I find the heat here impedes pole bean production more than it used to, if that makes any sense. Is that climate change? In the early 2000s through at least 2007, I distinctly remember growing pole beans and harvesting from them in the hot summer months. They might shut down for a while it August, but not for long. You don't forget standing out there in the sweltering heat picking a multitude of beans from the bean teepees. Since 2007? I get some pole beans harvested early from spring blooms, then a huge lull in July and August where the flowers won't form beans, then if I can keep the plants alive through the long hot summer (or if I plant more in late July for fall beans), I'll be picking pole beans in October. I suppose this is one reason I have switched more and more to bush beans. They don't produce well in heat either, but since a lot of them produce earlier than many pole beans, they still produce a good harvest. I just can't help thinking that since 2007 we have had too much heat too early for the pole beans to have a chance to set many beans. The insane heat that used to arrive in July or August seems to arrive earlier....like in June. It seems to shut down the pole beans almost before they start. Another thing I've noticed? Flat-podded pole beans of the romano bean type will set better for me in heat than regular more rounded snap beans or even cutshort types. Why is that? Is is something in their genetic heritage that allows them to set beans better in extreme heat? I wish I knew. Still, at least Rattlesnake will set beans almost all summer long so at least there's that. This year I'm trying Tenderstar. (Back to that hardheadness of mine that makes me want to grow beans that don't want to grow here....) It is a commercial variety from Europe that is a cross of a French pole bean and a runner bean, and they list it as P. coccineus, so you know that means that growing it here may not work out well. I hope it flowers and sets beans well here, but I know there's a pretty good chance it won't. Still, in the photos of it, the pods look sort of semi-flat. Maybe they are more rounded than a typical Roman bean, but there is a lot of flatness to them so I am hoping that part of their heritage enables them to produce well here despite the heat. I'm always overrun with pole beans in October. I just wish they'd produce as well in July and August as they do prior to that (if planted early enough) or after the heat drops in autumn. The list of bean varieties I'm growing this year is huge. I hope I don't run out of room for them before I get them all planted. Dawn