G'day to all! A Chamber of Commerce day here in central Georgia. Been out in the workshop building a table for a farmer friend of mine and starting to get in the short rows with it. The same table on the internet sells for $549 with shipping. Just a token of appreciation for all the help that my life long friends do for me and my family. I am chomping at the bit to get started planting. Corn will probably be the first thing I plant as it can handle a frost and keep on ticking. Yall mentioned earlier about planting cowpeas in the corn. I tried it, but didn't care for it as corn loves nitrogen and peas don't need much of it or you get a lot of vines and not many peas. Plus, my favorite cowpea is Red Rippers and they make a heck of a bush with runners. It gets too 'snakey' to harvest either of them! I live near Eastman, Georgia (Home of Stuckey's candies) and buy my seed at a local home garden center (Chas Mar) as they have a good selection and are reasonably priced compared to ordering from the internet. Soon I will be taking my wife down there to choose the peas and beans she wants me to plant this season. My wife was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida, but loves the country. It does my heart good to see her so pleased at looking at the different kinds and making choices. Getting all sloppy now... lol Mr. Brown, I have a friend that lives in Avon Park, Florida (below Orlando) that loves gardening too and wonder if your 'winter home' is near there? George, we should keep quiet about the country life... hee hee We might not be in the country long if the word gets out... Shot

Zen, I didn't even know this was coir, haha. I was looking for ProMix and he said this was better and bam -- Id heard of it so I bought it. But honestly, I'm not against coconut coir; one of my favorite soils is by Gardner and Bloome, based wholly on coir. Some of my older pots are 5-1-1 based on that soil and I don't have any issues. Really it's such a small part of 5-1-1, I could probably use cotton balls and it'd work. But yes, generally, I like peat in 5-1-1 indoors because it seems to dry quicker than coir. Outdoors, it buys me an extra day when necessary, it seems. I've run out anyway and now have more Promix HP again. All is well again. Drew, I see what you're saying. Perhaps it does work with compost, but containers in and of themselves are kind of unnatural, too, no? Organic, in terms of not using harmful pesticides, is important to me, but if my sansevieria or columbine happen to grow in non-soil medium and are fed nutrients via my hand, I'm okay with that, too. I have mycorrhizae in the soil with Promix, and as you can see, I throw lots of stuff in the soil, haha. Josh, I must have missed this 55* stuff. Total oversight. I'm in Stockton and I doubt we went below 55 though I did wake up to 58 one day last week. This weekend, it's back in the 90s. I guess as a rule I will leave the organic stuff out. I really don't fertilize a lot, and just wanted to boost the soil a bit. DFish, I guess it's possible that pot just isn't draining well. I think I'll drill more holes in it before I attempt the pot again with new soil. Thank you!

Hayne, you need to get an update to that report to reflect the real world scenario. These sheep & goats in India last summer tell a differnt story. ** Continuing Controversy in India over Mass Death of Sheep from Eating GE Cotton * BT cotton in yet another controversy By Uma Sudhir NDTV, June 1, 2006 Straight to the Source (Hyderabad): There is yet another controversy linked to the genetically modified Bt cotton plant and this time it is the alarming reports of sheep and goat taking ill, even dying after grazing on leftover Bt cotton fields. This is what farmers and shepherds in Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh are saying. The central government has reportedly ordered independent toxicology tests on Bt cotton leaves to ascertain the facts. "They just became very dull and lifeless and died," said Pendala Venkatamma describing what happened to her sheep. Earlier this year in February-March several villages in Warangal reported that sheep and goats were dying in unusually high numbers from a disease they did not recognise. The only clue they had was that the animals grazed continuously on fields where Bt cotton had been grown. "They were grazing on Bollguard cotton. In 4-5 days, they became dull, their stomach swelled up and they died," said Gantaiah, Shepherd. Fact finding team An independent fact-finding team that surveyed three random villages said animals that fed continuously on Bt cotton for up to a week became listless with erosive lesions in the mouth, nasal discharge and blackish diarrhea. The mortality was as high as 25 per cent against the usual 5-10 per cent for this season. "They took one or two sheep from the dead animals. Doctors conducted post-mortem but could not find viral, bacterial or fungal problem with that," said Ramprasad, scientist, Centre for Sustainable Agriculture. In Warangal, about 11 hectares was on cotton this year and 20 per cent of that officially on Bt cotton. But the unofficial figure puts that at upto 50 per cent. In January this year, following rains and some irrigation, there was fresh foliage but few bolls, so the fields were let out for grazing. "Animals that have been grazing on non-Bt cotton also, shepherds are reporting that on such fields even if they grazed for 15 days, there was no problem reported. Whereas on Bt cotton, with 3-4 successive days of grazing, they started showing symptoms," said Kavita Kurungati, Researcher. When contacted, Monsanto, which has released Bt cotton commercially in India, said safety studies on goats, cows, buffaloes, chicken and fish have been conducted as part of the regulatory process to get Bollgard approved. "We conducted goat-feeding stury with Bt cotton seed and found it to be safe," said Dr Vishwanathan, Industrial Toxicology Research Center, Lucknow. Critics point out that there was no bio safety study on Bt cotton leaves, which is consumed by cattle during open grazing. But Monsanto says Bt protein is present in miniscule amounts in cotton leaves and a goat will have to eat over 24 tonnes of old leaves to reach the upper safe limit of 4300 mg/kg body weight of Cry 1Ac toxin present in the Bt plant. The company says the deaths could have been due to pesticide residues. Inquiry ordered The state government has ordered an investigation by the animal husbandry department. "We have immediately alerted animal husbandry dept to give us the details of villages where this has happened and what are their findings regarding this. We are certainly going to pursue this further with the research institutes genetic research institutes, which can analyse the whole thing and yes, it is a cause of concern," said Poonam Malakondaiah, Agriculture Commissioner, Andhra Pradesh. Only a detailed scientific investigation may be able to establish whether at all there is a link between Bt cotton and the mortality in sheep and goat. Even otherwise it would be wise to go for much more comprehensive bio safety testing not just for Bt cotton but the whole range of genetically modified food crops that may soon be part of commercial Indian agriculture. ** (http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_646.cfm) This report about biotech risk assessment came out last week. This seems to be the standard procedure for industry assessment of studies whose results are different from what industry would like to have us believe. ** * GM Potatoes are "unfit for human consumption" GM Free Cymru, Feb 16, 2007 A secret feeding study of Monsanto GM potatoes, conducted in 1998 by the Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and suppressed for 8 years, showed that the potatoes did considerable damage to the organs of the rats in the study (1) (2). In comparison the rats in the "control groups" which were fed on normal potatoes or on a non-potato diet were healthier, and had much less organ and tissue damage. This research, fully supported by Monsanto through the provision of the GM potatoes, was conducted at approximately the same time as Arpad Pusztai's research in the Rowett Institute. **

Talking about one's first trip to England ... When I was in high school, my dad worked for a company that would send him to England for two weeks, then he'd be home for two weeks, then Germany for two weeks -- lather, rinse, repeat. He was able to take my mom with him on a few of these trips, but I had all of my "teenage things" going on and it probably never even registered to me that I might enjoy going as well. When my high school graduation was approaching, my parents offered me a trip to England (all on my own, although we had/have friends there at the time who would've looked after me) - OR, help with buying my first car and a trip to hang out with a family who had an adorable college- aged son in Daytona Beach. Guess which one I (foolishly) chose? I did consider the offer of England, though, and even had a lovely high school teacher who was quite an Anglophile himself, and when he learned of my consideration he tried to sway me in favor of England. He brought me books to read, maps, brochures, and outlined an itinerary for me. He was truly a lovely, lovely man (now long since passed on). Anyway, I got the new 1980 Pontiac, got the trip to Daytona (where I deepened my crush on the college boy, to no avail), and England returned to the deep, dark recesses of my mind. Sometime in the 90s (I'd have to dig deep to remember the actual date), my mother asked me if I'd like to accompany her to visit our friends -- the ones who would've looked after me, had I chose to visit after graduation) in their 450-year old thatched-roof cottage. Well, of course I wanted to -- so I did. And thus began my love affair with England that, despite several instances post-trip where I told myself, "OK, that was the very last one", it remains in my blood and I truly don't know if I'll ever be done returning. I will never forget that very first trip, though -- of being in Gerry's car (with him driving on "the wrong side"), whisked from London-Heathrow to just outside a little village in Wiltshire where their cottage stood, and saying over and over to myself, "I can't BELIEVE I'm in England!" Waking the next morning to the raucous call of the rooks in the tree out the little wonky window of my room, I thought, "That's ENGLAND out there!" And after many other trips across the pond, I still think the very same thing each time. It never gets old. I don't think it ever will.