Over the past 4 years, especially my first and second, my budget was SO tight. I only bought roses for less than $8, and bought many a grade #2. Honestly looking through my garden now, I can't tell the 1,s from the 1 1/2's from the 2's, and really don't remember or care which was which. I specifically remember two grade 2's I got from Orchard Supply - a Brides Dream, and a mismarked Pink Promise which ended up Pink Peace. They took a long time to mature, but they are both GORGEOUS now.

Majesty palms like lots of water, fertilizer, and epsom salts. I have one and its doing wonderful, put it in canadian spagnam peat moss so you don't have to water constantly, and before you water it everytime put about 1 teaspoon of all purpose fertilizer on the soil, and put 1 teaspoon of epsom salts with the fertilizer, and then water until the water comes out of the drain holes. The canadian spagnam peat moss will turn light brown on top, and when it starts turning light brown it is time to water. I keep mine in partial shade, and this helps keep it from turning yellow. I use 15-30-15 expert gardener all purpose water soluble plant food. What I think causes the yellow leaves is not enough fertilizer, too much sun, and magnesium, and not using enough water will make them turn brown, and dry.

DD just burnt a pan the other night. She scoured it (before she told me) but it was still looking pretty bad. I put water and a couple of tablespoons of baking soda in the pan, let it boil for about 10 minutes, running a knife around the edges as it boiled. Then I rinsed and ran it through the dishwasher and it came out good as new, no scrubbing. Can't hurt to try--good luck.

Xentar, yes I will definitely be doing some vertical gardening, in fact, at the northenmost end of the garden, right past the patio area, I'm going to put up 6 ft high trellises of beans and cucumbers to shade the patio, which is in full sun all day, which really makes it hard to enjoy. The sun comes from the South, so that tall trellis won't shade anything important. I'll have other trellises against the wall that gets all the afternoon sun, probably beans, since they do well with less direct sunlight. I can plant pole beans with bush beans at the bottom in 2 feet of space. That's a lot of beans! I'm also going to trellis tomatoes and squash to save space. I trellised tomatoes all the time in SC -- just put up a strip of hog wire and tied them right up. They did so well like that, and I was able to grow a lot of radishes in front of them. In the summer, I'll replace the cucumbers and beans with malabar spinach and lima beans, or I may grow sweet potatoes and trellis their vines to use the leaves too. I've seen people do that on YouTube. On the shady west side, I'm thinking of putting up those PVC growing towers for lettuce, if I can get someone to help me build them. I want to eventually plant berries on the sunny wall, but that's a future dream. Of course, none of this will be started until fall, because I have too much to do until then to get things ready. My courtyard is a disaster right now, and I don't have time to do anything about it, so I'll be torturing myself this summer trying to get it done.