You guys really saved me. I had no idea what was slithering from the earth in the dark of night. I went out at midnight and I was amazed! There must have been hundreds of these slugs on the ground, in the grass and on the privacy fence and I had never seen more thn one or two before this in the yard. I set out beer traps as was suggested, no yeast because we don't bake, and immediately these things came out to feast. Easily caught 50 of them. I periodically checked the plates I set out and dumped them in one bucket and added more beer. However the ones in the bucket started crawling out. Fixed that buy adding a little salt. Does anyone know if they will avoid the beer trap if you add a little salt to it for effect? I think some of them survived after a night of binge drinking and will live to tell the tale! One thing I did find is that the plates need to be slightly in the ground if possible for easier access to the trap.

Forgot to mention that where the top end of the slider on the ruler is, is where the soil level is. It seems like I had to dig down pretty far to get to the root. I STILL didn't get down to the finer roots.

Ask ten people what your watering schedule's should be and you will probably get ten different answers. Thing is each growers situation is unique, and that's really something each grower figures out whats best for their plants through trial and error. But for that type of system where the roots will be hanging in mid air I don't think I would want them to go more than 15 min between watering. If it were me I would get a timer with 15 minute increments and start with 15 on/15 off, and go from their. As for connecting the flexibly hose to the 1/2 in pvc, in the irrigation section of most hardware stores they sell connectors that are barbed on one end (for the flexible hose), and threaded (to connect to the pvc) on the other end. I find here Lowe's has the best selection. Unfortunately I can't post pictures in this forum without going through too many hoops but I have pictures of the ones I used in another forum here: Third system (scroll down a little to see the images, and you can click on them to see the full size image) "I'm not sure of the terminology but i plan on flooding the top of the pipe and letting it drain back down to the resevoir. should i do this once evey hour and one time at night? " I'm not sure how you can flood the top of a vertical tube, but it sounds like if it truly is a vertical tube, you plan to use sprayers at the top, and let it rain down through the tube watering the roots on the way down. If so the 15 on/15 off cycle is what I would start with. It wouldn't need to be on for 15 minuets, but you will be limited to the timers settings. You may find a cycle timer online that you can set a particular on and off cycle (like 5 min on, and 15/20 min off), but I doubt you'll find them in any local stores. Digital timers have customizable settings, but most likely wont have enough settings to last through the day. At 3 on/off cycles per hour (5 on/15 off) that's 6 settings per hour. In a 18 hour period that's 108 settings. I have a digital timer that was supposed to have 144 settings, but I found out is over a 7 day period (and includes sunset and sunrise settings). Bottom line is it really only has 14 settings per day. 7 on and 7 off. So be careful and ask questions before you settle on a digital timer. At least be sure you can take it back (mine was on clearance so I couldn't).

I love a mystery. I vacuumed out my tower this morning. I still had a problem where some websites would open and some would just be blank....with that yellow triangle warning down in the left hand corner. Soooo I did a system restore back a couple of days. Right now, everything is working fine. The only thing I can think of is that I interrupted an uninstall of a trial version of Adobe 8 Pro and didn't finish the uninstall. That's the only odd thing that I can think of. Mystery is the bell. That would denote a hardware problem to me....but...? And I couldn't find one single reference to a bell ringing in the tower (except real bells in real towers, LOL). I can't be the only person with a bell in my puter. It's not under warranty anymore so I'll just take a wait and see attitude for now. Thanks all for your comments.