"Courtney, MG has an agenda on these forums, which is to get people to embrace conventional agriculture with it's huge scale, poisons, synthetic fertilizers, depleting of underground aquifers, chimerical genetics, and etc. He's been scolded for bringing that agenda to this particular forum, so now he resorts to sneaky stratagems like claiming that his home-grown produce tastes the same as some tired junk grown on depleted fields, picked too early and sitting around in a truck and store shelf for a week or more." thanks pnbrown for telling us that! Once I heard him say he makes sauce from canned tomatoes I knew something was up! ;)

CMK, that is interesting about eggplant liking pots. I started planting a salad garden in pots and window boxes on my back deck a few years ago. I didn't really think about eggplant though. I'll have to try it this year. I find that leaf lettuce does very well in window boxes. I also grow baby cukes in pots and let them trail down the deck railings. I've also done peppers and tomatoes in pots. I mix in a few small pots of nicotiana (not near the tomatoes...does that really cause problems?? i've heard they should not be combined) so the hummingbirds come to feed. Woodyoak, how deep are the windowboxes you use to grow carrots? And which carrots do you choose to grow in them? I've been seeing more pictures of large pots in amongst plants in the garden and I think I may try to experiment more with that. Does anyone have pictures of pots fully incorporated into their perennial/shrub borders as a focal point? Also, does everyone in wintry climates bring their pots inside in the winter? Has anyone found a type of pot that does not crack with the freeze/thaw cycles of winter?

My favorite thing to do in my garden (besides garden!) is to sit in my aidirondack chair under an awning and look at my garden (very small but cottagey backyard garden that I proudly created from scratch!). My 4 year old son loves to run around and pretend each little section of the garden is a different animal habitat (the shady area with raspberries and climbing hydrangea is the "jungle", the wisteria is the "rainforest canopy", the blue spruce is the "coniferous forest" and so on...) This absolutely delights me because I want my son to appreciate nature (instead of watching TV or playing video games). I'm so proud that he notices when a particular flower is opening or when he sees a plant from our garden in someone's else's garden and says, "Mommy, we have that plant in our garden." He even knows the names of some of the plants. I like having someone to share my love of nature with. We also have birds nesting in our birdhouse, in a notch in the wisteria right above my son's sandbox, and last year, a bird tried to nest in our mailbox! All this in the very small space of about 1/4 of an acre! Jill

Georgia, I agree with the statement "you may not be able to find anyone who has even heard of it in another state"! I had to spend 2 years in Alabama with a job transfer, 18 years ago. I am from SC. They had never heard of Hercules! I had my saved seed and gave a few out to the gardeners at work. Planted the rest. I took some to work in my crockpot and told them to help themselves at lunch time. They went wild over them! The guys that I gave seed to kept the seed from theirs for replanting, because they liked them so much. One guy called me about 5 years later to tell me He had been giving seeds to his neighbors and friends, and everyone was crazy about them. I am now a legend in Andalusia Alabama! LOL I wanted to call him for some seed after I lost all of mine due to drought and deer, but I couldn't find his phone number!