You can use store-bought sweet potatoes for to grow starts. There are a couple of things to watch out for, though. 1) They are often treated with a sprout inhibitor. It's best to try to find some which already have sprouts on them if at all possible. Generally, if you hunt through a pile of them, you can usually find a few starting to grow. If you can't, buy the freshest, nicest, least-blemished or bruised ones you can, and put them in a paper sack in a warm, dry place for three or four weeks. This will often start them sprouting. Alternatively, just plant in moist potting soil and see what happens. 2) Cutting in half isn't really an appropriate way to do this. I suppose it could be done, but I've never really heard of the pracice, and I think they would most likely just rot. Unlike "Irish" potatoes, sweet potatoes only have meristematic tissue capable of growing shoots on one end, in my experience, and the other end (generally the more pointy end) grows root tissue. So, if you do try cutting them, you need to cut them in half vertically (lengthwise) so that each half has some tissue from each end. 3) The usual method of starting sweet potatoes is from "slips" -- rooted cuttings. Generally, you can plant a sweet potatoe in potting soil, and it will send out several to many shoots. These will grow rapidly, and can then be cut into about 4 to 6 inch lengths, rooted in water, and then planted out in the garden (be sure to acclimate them to outdoor conditions first). You CAN grow them by planting whole tubers, I've done it, and it works fine, but it's more expensive than just buying one tuber and growing slips -- you can get many, many slips from one tuber. Hope this gives you some guidance. I'll be interested to see if anyone knows about cutting them in half.

Yum, I'm with you... I only have room for 2 tomatoes in my new retirement garden. (I used to grow 24). I also agree with Carolyn... Taste them in your own garden to try them as I did using pots if necessary. I tried Sweet Million a couple of years ago and it was terrific, but it cracked!! Then last year I tried Nectar. It was even more delicious and no cracking. I planted it again this year but also taste tested it in a pot, along with 5 other cherry tomatoes grown in 1 gallon pots. Now before everyone jumps in to tell me these pots are too small, please note they are TASTING SAMPLERS, not intended to be full grown tomato plants. When I get a taste of the tomatoes to compare, I'll toss the tomato plants. Nectar had to be one of the plants grown in a 1 gallon pot so all tests would be equal. It had ripe fruit second behind Ample which was also very good, but not good enough to bump Nectar out of first place for taste. Still waiting for Sakura, Sunsugar, Sunpeach, and Sugary to ripen. Sugary has the most blossoms at this point... Absolutely loaded beyond belief!! This experiment has been totally perfect in every way for me. It allowed me to see which cherry tomato was the best for my garden and my tastebuds with my qualifications... Early. Sweet. Delicious. No cracking, lots of tomatoes. Nectar wins the test. If I run into a tomato I feel I can't live without, I buy a bigger pot and plant one. :) I encourage you to try it next year and enjoy the ride!! Rebecca

I can understand how this can happen. I take an oil panting class I coaxed this info out of a fellow student. He was the original owner of an old time appliance store over 40 years in business still going strong. The big box stores are his most hated competition to his business yet with increase of population his sales are basically all he can handle. Sales are supported by service, delivery, set up, warranty, repair, and in his case home style local tech support. Think he told me it took 16 full time people and 8 trucks for supporting his store. I am going to use you LG refrigerator as an example. He might sell 2 a week. He probably going to deliver it and set it up for a flat fee. (I just happened to recently buy a LG delivered 55$ they had to remove my front door pull both door off the refrigerator took 4 people over 1.5 hours to deliver and set it up ) it was from another store not his but it was a appliance store not a builder supply store . This is where big box stores and appliance stores collide. Lot of the big box stores does not actually have repair technicians. Someone who runs an appliance store with full service does not want to support the big box stores sales (say 10 a week per store) who usually only offer delivery. There no way he could maintain all the appliances sold in his area and he doesnÂt want to. They canÂt make him do it. All LG could do is pull dealership and they wont because they canÂt force him to increase his support fleet to 100 vehicles. This is not just an issue with LG but with all appliance manufactures and warranty. He told me if you buy from a big box store think of the extended warranty like you would as a retainer for a lawyer but in this case as to have a repair technician that would actually come to your house because he not going to send his out . He could be sweet talked but it takes a while.

"plllog (and everyone else,) what would be the mid-range, but not top tier, gas ranges or gas cooktops? Your advice is beyond helpful!!" I think that we're back to the very good prior suggestion that you identify features -- down to the most basic functional attributes -- that are most important to you. 4 burners or 6? 30" 36" 48"? Are you really keen to have a grill or some particular type or output burner? In a range, something like a GE Cafe might be a nice jumping off point for somebody who likes a stainless range that has something of the pro-sumer-ish look to it, medium-high output sealed burners, etc. Getting something fundamentally different costs a bunch more money, not just a couple hundred bucks -- unless, of course, you find some screaming deal on a BlueStar, etc. That's a good sweet spot IF you want a 30" range and don't care about open burners, etc. The GE offers lots of features, but if it's not the type of thing you want, then it's not. One thing to notice is that price differences tend to shrink as you move from range choices to range top choices to cook top choices. If you are happy with a 36" cook top (and there are reasons to prefer the range top, etc.), then you might find a lot of value-for-money in looking at the higher-end offerings. For example, a 36" BlueStar cook top can be had for a couple grand -- that's a substantial up-charge over something good from the middle of the range, but it's a much smaller absolute difference in price than you'd seen in looking at ranges. If you don't want the higher output open burners, then you don't and the extra expense may be wasted -- but if you want them, it's a way to get something that's actually different without adding 3 or 5 or 10k to your bill.