I have over 45 minis now with more in the works. Since I am pretty much out of room for giants, large and mediums I am reworking my want list by adding all sizes from the hosta registry so I know what I can squeeze in. I have a lot of Giants and Large that are spaced out for maturity which has taken up a lot of room. I have a few around my Empress Wu that will have to be moved out within the next couple of years but pretty much everything else has its own space to grow. As I watch certain hostas develop I am finding a few that I do not like and will have to get rid of like Whirlwind, Carnival and Twilight. My mature Frances Williams will probably go too. I already gave away a mature Love Pat because I don't like how the leaves hold all dirt and debris. I did keep a start from it since I have had the plant for 20 years. Someone gave me Abiqua Drinking Gourd as a gift so I can't get rid of that one.

I'd advise against using salt in the garden, with the exception of killing weeds between paving or other contained areas you don't ever want to grow plants. Salt is highly toxic to plants and will dissolve in to the soil where it doesn't break down. About two years back I had a garden party and a small container of salt got knocked over on to the lawn and spilt perhaps a table spoon full. Till this day there is still a permanently dead patch in the lawn that will not grow. I'm going to have to cut it out, discard the soil and re-turf that patch this year. The salt just hasn't washed out like I thought it would. Even if you haven't had any adverse affects yet, it's building up in the soil and will make it toxic. Anyway, about those slugs and snails... I just noticed yesterday while weeding that there was a whole colony of the things living under some stones. I didn't realise they'd be out yet. So, I promptly reached for the nearest can of slug pellets. I'm not a huge fan of chemicals, but really the newer slug pellets are better than ever. They don't poison wildlife, nor the soil (iron phosphate is a trace mineral plants actually need), and they seem to work well. If you apply them at the first sign of slugs and continue thoughout the year then very few will have the chance to lay eggs, thus it will significantly reduce the population this year, and next year there should be very few of the things. The main down side to using pellets is they don't kill the slugs instantly, thus they can still continue to munch through your plants for some hours after exposure. They're a great way to lower the slug population, but a circle of them around a plant won't stop it being dammaged. Conversely, many brands contain something that *attacts* the slugs, so you may even draw slugs towards your plants by doing this. For those slugs-salad plants you're going to have to repell them with something. Copper tape or an inch wide circle of sharp edged gravel should work well. In my experieince slugs hate gravel of any kind, but the sharp edged stuff (I buy big bags of it cheap for the drainage layer in house plant pots) seems to repell them the most. I've mulched whole raised beds with the stuff and not found a single slug or any damage, not even when my garden was infested with slugs. It also looks quite nice and helps the soil stay damp. Going around just after its rained and collecting them in to a bucket can also give fast results and lower the population of them. I've filled a 6 liter buket with the things before now. The one thing people rarely discuss when suggesting this method however is diposal of the resulting 4 lb or more of slugs... I've actually found it quite difficult and don't have any really good suggestions. Everything resulted in either my being grossed out and/or some kind of nasty mess I didn't want.

Posted by debodun:"I had two Eastlake caned seat chairs out last year with a $35 each price tag. A couple of young bucks stopped and offer me $5 for BOTH. I told them where to put their $5. Sometimes a person will ask if I can do better on the price, so I say "Certainly!" and make it a higher one." That seems a little extreme, and combative. I don't expect young bucks to know about antiques. But even more so, I don't expect most sellers to understand that the antiques market has taken a serious down-turn. When I have had sales, I was never insulted by the amount that someone offered, but how they make the offer. Saying "I'll give you..." is an insult, Asking "Can you do better?" is not. I don't know the persons circumstances, perhaps $5 is what their budget should allow? Or perhaps they are poor negotiators, and have watched too much of that Pawn Stars fake reality show, and have picked up poor haggling habits -thinking they have to start low to get the best price. When I had a sale it was stuff I wanted to unload -that was the objective. So, I priced it to sell. I was a picker and sold to dealers and I had a shop for a while, and did the flea market route -so I had an idea of what dealers would pay. If I had 20 pairs of Salt & Pepper shakers and marked them $2 a set, I would have an idea of what I would do for the lot, so if a dealer picked out the 8 best pairs and asked what I could do on them, I'd have a figure in mine mind, I might even tell them before they asked "If you're getting that many, you can have all 20 for $1.50 a pair, that'd be 30 bucks". My main rule with sales was that I would try to leave a little wiggle room for serious buyers. I could waste my time and take the stuff to several different antique dealers, or wait for them to come to me and save gas and time. I also price things 'each' and in multiples, so with a stack of identical plates I'd hang a sign. The price difference may even seem a little ridiculous. "Plates $2ea or 10 for $5". People thought they were getting a great deal and didn't feel a need to haggle, I already did it for them. But inevitably, someone was going to ask to pay $4 for 10. I wouldn't get mad, no. Some folks feel it doesn't hurt to ask, so they do. I would pretend that their math skills weren't too good and I'd say "I'm sorry, you can buy 2 for $4, or the best I can do is 10 for $5", if their math was really poor, and they had to ask again, I would repeat the same thing, "No, 2 for $4, 10 for $5" The crip-crap that I really didn't want to box up again at the end of the sale, I always priced like that. If you are only going to buy a couple of plates, your wasting my time, if you are going to buy a stack, I'll give you my best price up front. If people feel like they are getting a deal and had a good time they tell their friends. And if I had an item that no one was paying much attention to, but I really didn't want to pack up again, I would come down on it the first day, or the first time some weird young buck picked it up, looked at it and said "cool" "It's marked $10, but you can have that for $5." But my main rule was I came down on multiples and big purchases. If someone collected $40 worth of junk and didn't even ask to haggle, I might give them a discount at the till anyway -again, because they will tell their friends. "Oh, I had that marked $10? You're buying so much stuff, you can have it for $5." See why people wanted to be on my mailing list? For the most part, on the high end and antique items I didn't come down until later on in the first day or on the second day. But if I had a couple of hot items at a very good price, like beautiful Eastlake caned seat chairs for $35, I expected folks to want to haggle before they bought them. It makes them feel better. So, I might price them at $40 ea, and if some young bucks said "Will you take $5" I wouldn't be insulted, I would give them my come down price "tell you what, $70 for the pair" If they made a counter offer and it was the beginning of the day, I would tell them "I haven't had them out very long, and I was planning on going half price (or what ever) tomorrow, if you come back tomorrow and they haven't sold, you can have the both of them for $40." The next day I might change my mind and not even put them out, or if the young bucks come back, tell them "someone offered $50 for the pair yesterday before I closed and said they would be back with the money this morning. I told them the first person to pay me $50 today will get them, those folks haven't come back yet, so if you want to snatch them up, you can have the pair for $50 right now." But I usually kept my word, If I quoted a 'tomorrow' price, I sold it for that the next day. And if it was for an item I just wasn't sure what kind of interest there might be for it, I would say, come back tomorrow, I am going to mark everything down tomorrow, we can wheel and deal then. If it was an item that every early-bird dealer and collector picked up and asked what I could do on it, I knew it would sell eventually and I might even re-tag it higher after the first few hours, so I could come down half off the next day or later in the day. If it's marked $12, and every dealer offers $6 after I say I'll come down to $10, then I would mark it up to $20, so the next dealer to ask, I tell them "the best I can do is half price." Sometimes it sold to a collector for the $20 or $15.

I do not eat enough salt to get my daily requirement of iodine, but I do eat a lot of seafood and kelp. I love kelp salad and buy dried kelp salad at a Japanese market. It is easy to rehydrate and make into a salad. I always put wakame in my Japanese soups as well. Most of the salt that I used is not iodized, but the sea salt that I bought at Trader Joe's does have iodine added to it. However, I very seldom use this salt, as I prefer the other salts that I have. I use very little salt in my food anyway, except when I add soy sauce.