I've tried just raking the flowers from plant but it leaves them looking raggedy with flowers stems poking out every which way. Rather I use my pruners and cut each flowering stem back to a set of leaves or flower buds below..takes a lota time tho. I have a lotta 2 1/2' self-sown plants this year so am only harvesting flowers from a few. The other's I prune back hard to about 1' and they still will produce new blooms but just not as quickly for removal of new ready to bloom buds. As you know the foliage can look great all on it own! Today will be my 3rd harvest this year already. Vera

I make sweet and sour chicken in the crockpot all the time. I don't think it will necessarily be a flop. Here are some tips for success - use all thighs or a mix of breasts and thighs--not the super-size breasts. Brown the meat first before putting in the crockpot. Don't cook for 8-10 hours, cook on low for 4-5 hours. I always start the dish on high til it gets up to temp and then turn down to low. Do not put the green peppers in the crockpot, green peppers turn bitter when slow cooked. Saute the green peppers in some canola or soy oil and add them before serving the chicken. Don't add the cornstarch at the start. When the chicken is done, take it out and add the cornstarch to thicken the sauce. I usually pour all the sauce ingredients of the crockpot into my braising pan to thicken with cornstarch. Then I add the chicken back in and serve the whole dish from the braising pan--I like it for presentation. I serve over brown rice--yum! These tips work with all my crockpot chicken recipes--moroccan chicken and chicken cacciatore too. I get raves when I serve these dishes to guests, which is something I wasn't expecting for me preparing meat dishes since I am usually vegetarian when cooking for myself. The tips came from the Cooks Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen Cover and Bake Cookbook. Good luck, and report back how it worked.

Casey....this is so great! Just add boneless pork chops to the top of your dish.....and you'll have a family favorite of mine....Pork Chop Casserole! Posted by casey_nfld (My Page) on Mon, Sep 1, 08 at 14:52 I make these all the time....you can't get any easier than these. And you can't tell that the sauce is cream of mushroom soup. Oh, and I don't use their amounts for potatoes and onions, I use as many as will fill my casserole dish, but I do use the amount for the sauce. Easy Scalloped Potatoes 8 cups thinly sliced potatoes 1 cup thinly sliced onion 2 cans (10 oz each) cream of mushroom soup 1 cup milk ½ tsp salt Layer potato and onion in a 3.5 L casserole dish. Mix soup, milk, salt and pepper. Pour over top. Insert spoon here and there to allow some sauce to penetrate. Bake, covered, in 375 º oven for about 1 hour, 15 minutes or until tender. Remove cover during last 10 minutes.

If it doesn't rain, try watering it in. The science doesn't support any particular benefit for aerated compost tea, either for plant growth, disease suppression, or enhancing soil bacteria. Compost and vermicompost do have these benefits without any "tea" making magic. Partially dissolving some compost in water in order to get some nutrients to the root zone a little faster can be a sensible practice now and again, but the benefits are still far more limited than many people claim. Compost tea is a very, very dilute source of nutrients. Natural soil processes driven by soil life, fed by regular applications of organic material to the soil, will do far more to supply more and better nutrients to plants at all stages of growth than any "compost tea" can do. As for soil bacteria, they are already there: they just need the food provided by organic material and by plant roots giving off exudates into the soil. If you want to "optimize" the beneficial effect of soil bacteria, you can do nothing better than engage in soil management practices that protect and feed the *entire* community of soil life - which includes a lot of other living things besides bacteria, from worms and springtails to fungi, all interacting with each other and with plant roots. It's true that vermicompost seems to have some special benefits over other kinds of compost, apparently because it is rich in particular strains of bacteria that produce plant growth-promoting substances. But watering vermicompost down does not do anything to enhance those benefits, and most likely reduces them. Aerating compost tea, or using additives, or any of the other "recipes" you will find are just unnecessary complications designed to make you feel like you're doing something sophisticated. http://extension.oregonstate.edu/benton/sites/default/files/garden_myth.pdf http://www.deeproot.com/blog/blog-entries/dont-believe-the-hype-unless-its-supported-by-science http://www.gardenmyths.com/compost-tea/