I use the super-easy newspapers pots inside my favourite containers (Costco salad boxes or milk jugs). The dead-easy method is just to cut a 4" strip off the bottom of the page (4 or 5 pages thick), wrap the strip around your fingers to form a tube and use a small piece of tape to hold it together. Pack the tubes into your container and fill with soil. You don't need a bottom on the tube as your plastic container keeps the soil in the tube. I used the top of a milk jug as a funnel to fill the tubes, and a chopstick to stir the soil a bit to make sure it got to the bottom of the tube. Make the tubes only as deep as you want your soil. I discovered that if you leave a rim of newspaper exposed above your soil level, you just have to rip it off when you plant out, or you have a short newspaper fence around every seedling.

Jane, I haven't saved seeds from melons, so I'm inexperienced. I wouldn't go with floating row covers, as pollinatoras may be able to crawl under them. I think you'd need to protect both the male and female flowers, by covering, or tying them up individually(the ones used in controlled pollinations). Then using a paintbrush to pollinate the females, with pollen from the male flowers. After pollination, the females would have to be protected until the fruit starts to form(so the bees don't pollinate as well). I'd look for better instructions than mine, on the internet, or in a book. Douglas

nomorebluekitchen - For oven bacon, I use a half sheet pan lined with parchment paper (easier cleanup) and lay the bacon strips out side by side . I cook at 350 or lower to cut down on shrinkage. This is how we always did it in every restaurant I worked in. Although usually in the restaurants we would partially cook it this way and then finish on the griddle. I cook it this way at home because it generally creates less mess and you don't have to turn it and look after it the same way. caryscott - I'll have to try the Piller's taste Better than Bacon, thanks for the tip.

Dave, I'm from Dan's neck of the woods and I use Clark's tree wrap, starting at the base of the trunk and ending at the first branch, then duct tape the wrap at the top, making sure the duct tape is on the wrap, not touching the trunk of the tree. In a mild winter it'll come through fine. I'll take it off the tree in spring, roll it back up and reuse it. In a tough winter it'll sometimes tear in the wind. I just use some more wrap to cover any exposed area and apply more duct tape. The disadvantage is if it does tear, you need a warmish day to get the duct tape to stick properly. Most of our local nurseries carry it, but you can also order it from Amazon or Gardenharvestsupply.com The local advice here (5,000 ft altitude with intense winter sun, very windy) has been to wrap at Thanksgiving and take off at Easter for the first 3 years. The local nurseries this year have amended the advice to on at Halloween and wrap thin barked trees for 6 -7 years. I don't know if there's science behind the new guidelines or if it's marketing but sunscald and frost cracking are a real problem here. The advantage of the wrap over pipes or tubes for me is not every trunk is perfectly straight and it's easier to compensate for that with wrap. If you have low branches to work around and you want to apply wrap higher than the first set of branches on a very thin barked tree, the wrap also allows you to do that. You'll have a learning curve on the first couple of trees, then you'll get the technique down and will be able to apply nearly as fast as the tube protectors. I would suggest buying the smaller rolls as the big rolls are a little unwieldy. Clark's tree wrap Barb