I have a fertilizer frequency / quantity question and this seems like a good place to ask rather than cluttering up the board: I have tomatoes and peppers in SWC's and am using MG 18:18:21 "Tomato Plant Food", which seems to be a little off the recommended nutrient quantities but it's what I have. Is there any guidance on how much fertilizer I should use and how often. I've just started using it and am diluting to the level suggested on the box of one teaspoon / gallon for indoor plants - which I assume would be similar to containers as they are also closed systems. Is this too strong or too weak? Should I use this quantity every time? Should I increase once the plants start producing? Final simple question - does the fertilizer go in at the top or do I add the fertilized water straight to the reservoir?

"It looks like you switched to the Dyna grow 9-3-6 last year. Do you still use CRF in your soil mix if you are still using this fert?" Actually, I rarely use the CRFs at all. I like the near complete control the soluble fertilizers give me in containers. I'm pretty diligent about fertilizer applications, so I really don't need the CRFs to cover the 'in case I forget' base, or for any minor elements they might supply. I included them in the soil recipes to make it easier for others. As long as you're faithful to your nutrient supplementation program, you can easily do w.o them. If you think you'll be lax at times, I'd include them. 109 ppm alkalinity is nothing to be overly concerned about with fast container soils. It would be interesting to learn how the Ca and Mg levels are though. Alkalinity is related to pH because alkalinity (practically speaking and for our applications) determines your water's resistance to pH changes. If you have water 'A' at a pH of 9.0 with an alkalinity of 75 mg/L CaCO3, and water 'B', with a pH of 8.0 (a full point lower to begin with) and alkalinity of 300 mg/L CaCO3, it will take about 4 times as much 35% H2SO4 (sulfuric acid) to bring the water with the lower pH down to That aside - your water is better than mine, so I really doubt you'll have Fe/Mn issues if you're using either the 9-3-6 or MG. I will say though, that bark/peat soils have a potentially high Fe:Mn ratio, so applying Fe w/o Mn could easily create a deficiency of Mn. If I were in your shoes, I would do nothing until I actually saw evidence of an Fe deficiency. Then, I would acidify. Oh - the other likely cause of an Fe deficiency is too much P, which combines with the Fe to form an insoluble precipitate, so avoid the high P fertilizers - they are useless unless you are using them to supply the exact amount of P needed while intentionally (severely) limiting N. I used this strategy last year: I fertilized with regular dosages of 9-3-6 until the plants were well established. I then cut way back on the dosage and added ProTeKt to the solution. I rather like to envision that I used the added K (and got the benefit of the added silicon) to change the fertilizer ratio to 3:1:3 from a 3:1:2. This allowed me to reduce the dosage of N (reducing vegetative growth) while still having adequate P and K. Take care. Al

Rusty is right. JD dumped many small dealers and now you have to drive for parts. They don't follow the successful Walmart program of many little profits making a huge profit. Bad move in my mind. As a part time job, I service, on average, one machine every day of the year. 90% are Sears, or MTD. I really have to do almost no repair on the bodies, mostly routine stuff on the engines. I always loved my Wheelhorse 312A, non-Toro, but when I bought a used JD316, I have to honestly say that JD has it all over my Wheelhorse. Neither one has nickeled and dimed me, but my Eaton hydro pump did fail on the Horse after about 1000 hours. That set me back $800 for the part.

Microsoft Security Essentials may be a little better for you, download it to the desktop from the link below, don't double click the set up file just yet. http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ Once you have the set up file for Microsoft Security Essentials, visit the link below and download the AVG REMOVER choose the 32 bit or 64 bit according to your system. http://www.avg.com/us-en/download-tools AVG Remover eliminates all the parts of your AVG installation from your computer, including registry items, installation files, user files, etc. Once the AVG remover has done it's work you can now double click the Microsoft Security Essentials set up file and proceed to install it. Once those steps are complete, run the temp file cleaner following the instructions below: Clean out your temporary internet files and temp files. Download TFC by OldTimer click Here to your desktop. Click the Save file tab, save it to the desktop. Then double click it to run it. Double-clickTFC.exe to run it. Note: If you are running on Vista, right-click on the file and choose Run As Administrator TFC will close all programs when run, so make sure you have saved all your work before you begin * Click the Start button to begin the cleaning process. * Depending on how often you clean temp files, execution time should be anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or two. * Please let TFC run uninterrupted until it is finished. Once TFC is finished it should restart your computer. If it does not, please manually restart the computer yourself to ensure a complete cleaning. Let us know how it all goes.