What a great thread! It is fun to read about how everyone started in canning and what they grow and where they buy what they don't grow! So, let's see....I started canning three or four years ago and started with things my mother and grandmother used to make - canned peaches and applesauce mostly. Once I found this forum I was seduced into expanding my repertoire VERY quickly! Like others, Annie's salsa is a must-try. I do the BWB version and love it. I do have a pressure canner, but very seldom use it (although I use it as a BWB because I like it better than my old kettle). I also have a rather large garden - I have learned to be careful calling it huge because there are people here with much bigger gardens than mine. We moved to our current home five years ago - it's on 20 acres, much of it native woodland. This property has accelerated our more spiritual move to becoming more self-sustaining and more aware of our impact on the environment. As part of that, we are growing more and more of our own food. It is a very satisfying feeling to prepare a wonderful meal and know where every piece of food came from. However, we will not be able to be completely self-sustaining. Although DH hunts deer (and elk), and fishes, I don't see us growing our own critters. So we buy beef from the Angus farmer down the road. I'm looking for a local source of pork and chicken. As for fruits and veggies, what I can't grow, I try to buy locally. My strawberry patch is not yet big enough to yield as much as I want, so I go to a local You-Pick. We can't grown peaches and cherries due to climate, so I buy from a person who trucks them in from Colorado. I have my sources for most everything I want to preserve. Even so, there's plenty I still buy from the store. So there you go, a short bio - LOL - as usual I can't keep it short! Have fun, this forum is wonderfully helpful and terribly addicting. Ann

Eyes of the wolf I would not like to see you go through what many of us did in our early years of growing tomatoes that is why I would not use soil for seedlings - fungus like that causing damping off and many other diseases fusarium etc are in soil - a good seed starting mix is the way to go even when you pot up you shouldn't use soil not even jiffy soil unless you want to take the risk of losing your seedlings - when they go into the ground they already have a rooting system established particularly if you use a mix like pro-mix pgx plug grade starting mix for plug trays and pro-mix bx for potting up - you can use the biofungacide version of both and add mychorrizae ie plant success - how many plants are we talking about ? There are several good seed starting and potting up mixes from not that expensive to moderste plus like I use Just hold off and wait to see how many people advise against SOIL Dennis

Some of the posts I have read suggested leaving the lid off and allowing it to dry a bit to kill the mites. I have a WF, and I only have 1 working tray right now. I have three layers of moist newspaper on top of the bedding and then the lid. Should I get rid of the newspaper? The directions that came with it suggested it, but I am wondering if it's part of the mite problem. Every time I take off the lid, there are about 12 worms on top of the newspaper and there is always 1 dead one covered in mites. Thanks, Gina

This question is more theoretical than practical, but I'm curious about saving hybrid seeds. I understand that Lemon Boy is a hybrid, and that saving seeds will not produce true Lemon Boys. ****** Bart, just so you know, there are two versions of Lemon Boy in circulation. One is a hybrid and the other is a genetically dehybridized OP. (My question is, if I only grew Lemon Boy and no other tomatoes would the saved seeds be true Lemon Boy? I think the answer is no.) If you grew the OP version and there was no X pollination and no mutations the saved seeds would be true. If you grew the hybrid version you probably would get different plants with fruits similar to but not the same as the F1 hybrid when you planted out the saved F2 seeds. (My second question is how do seed companies get seeds for these hybrid varitites? Where do they come from?!?!) Huge question Bart, but seed production for hybrids involves usually two breeding lines and the last selection in one breeding line is crossed with the last selection in the other breeding line to give the F1 plants and fruits with F1 hybrid seeds. The female recipient blossoms are emasculated to remove the pollen bearing anthers so that no self pollenization can occur. More recently some modern hybrids are made using male sterile female recipients, which negates the need to manually remove the corolla with the pollen bearing anthers. I'd have to look up to see when lemon Boy F1 was released b'c if it was one of the earliest of F1's released there may be only two parents, as is true with Better Boy, Big Boy, Ramapo and many more. Carolyn