The nice thing about Heuchera, is that fast TC process gives you a mature plant in 3-4 years quite easily. The hybridizer and grower understands what the plant is going to do before it hits market. Year 5 is release. USUALLY it is longer than that, but in the best case when you have a definite winner it can be that quick. While it is very much possible to get hundreds of thousands in 40 months, that's almost never the case. It's always a limited release the first year or 2. At my last job I was the buyer and grower, trust me, it's a TOTAL PITA securing new varieties. Heuchera are easy to grow and IN GENERAL (lets face it, there are always exceptions) all varieties prefer a certain set of growing conditions. So there isn't this terrible need to trial them nationwide for gardenworthiness. Much like hostas, or daylilies... easy to grow if you give them the right conditions. The problem comes in that the gardening public isn't always educated correctly. Not a dig against the gardening public, education is OUR (horticulturists collectively- I do my best) responsibility. Sometimes we do a bad job (IMO my industry failed miserably with the whole hybrid Echinacea thing, and those were definitely a long trial time, despite what people might think). Terra Nova has done a pretty good job with giving what species are in a given variety's background. If it has strong villosa breeding you know it's going to tolerate more heat and humidity and heavier soil. If it is mostly micrantha, it will probably suffer in winter in the far north and in high heat/drought. But in general, Heuchera want gritty soils. They like excellent drainage, period. Even villosa, pubescens, and americana (woodland dwellers) derived varieties really appreciate a gritty soil. The whole Limerock Ruby Coreopsis thing is a whole other story... basically 1 nursery making an entire industry look like Aholes with a capital A by NOT trialing a plant and giving false information about hardiness. It's still hard to sell new Coreopsis, despite some of them being bigtime winners. 2 great ones: Route 66 and Star Cluster. The Plant Geek www.confessionsofaplantgeek.com www.botanophilia.com www.facebook.com/botanophilia

Well, since I made the original post, I top dressed with a mixture of MG potting mix and my own compost, which is mostly leaves and kitchen scraps. I also watered with MG for tomatoes, and poured some very diluted fish emulsion on everything. Here's the update (3 days later). Everything BUT the tomatoes look a world better. the broccoli, carrots, beets, lettuce, onions, leeks, and peppers all grew overnight and look greener and healthier in general. I think the tomatoes have put on some new growth, and they have continued to get new flowers and set fruit, but they leaves are still all curled, and the plant in general has a sad look to it. I'm still at a loss about what the exact problem is, but I'm leaning toward it being a combination of poor nutrition and perhaps some herbicide drift from the neighbor's application. I think we are going to give the tomatoes some time, but we're also going to build one more SWC and get a couple tomato plants from the nursery, just as a back up. The two cherry tomato plants (sweet 100 and husky cherry) in our SWC are absolutely thriving - I think we will do more of those next year! Thanks to everyone for the input. I will update in a couple weeks to let you know if they lived or not! Granny - my tomatoes do look a lot like the over fertilized ones on EG's blog, but since everything else in the garden showed such overnight improvement when I fertilized, I have to think that at least one of the problems was lack of nutrients. But since the toms are the closest to the neighbor's yard, it very well may be herbicide damage as well.

Hey there! I am seriously surprised to see that anyone bothered to look at my post and then actually comment on it! A happy surprise, of course, because this forum is great fun and it is definitely a treat to get to know you guys online. Glad you guys enjoyed my writing. My husband is getting a little nervous about my kitchen fetish. But hey, a little competition to spice things up in the marriage never hurt! And it looks like our loans may be going through so a summer fling is possibly coming my way!!! Colleen--Wouldn't it be great if we could have a show/model kitchen and an industrial workhorse kitchen? Oh..where do the fantasies end??? Jterrilynn--I love that look! and it really makes the kitchen more affordable if you go with a dark stain instead of painted cab on the lowers! Buehl--You are always right on top of it. Thanks for the advice, it is because of you that I figured out I don't need a photosite account in order to post pics...just the html code. RJR--I am adopted, so it is always a possibility ;) Okay, unfortunately for all the forum members, I am an internet psychopath. I have my blog (linked below) and love *sharing*....sometimes I am irrelevant with it. Like, for example: where i am usually fantasizing about my kitchen oops! Posted by: sabjimata (My Page) on Tue, Mar 30, 10 at 6:22 hmmmm....it didn't link it...i guess it doesn't always pay to advertise ;) Here is a link that might be useful: where i am usually fantasizing about my kitchen Post a Follow-Up Your Name: Your Email Address: Subject of Posting: Message: Optional Link URL: Â Â Â Name of the Link: Return to the Kitchens Forum Here is a link that might be useful: where i am usually fantasizing about my kitchen

Not disputing Pink's advise but the clogged filter is not good but most fires I have read about or seen (neighbor had one) is from the vent being clogged with lint. Dryer sheets do make the vent sticky and the lint builds up worse in the pipe. Need to blow it out about once a year OR every six months depending. If yours is short, there will not be as much build up in it as with a longer run. Mine just goes from the back of the dryer straight out the wall behind it so I don't really worry about using sheets but I use liquid 90% of the time. About my neighbor, the girls Mom had been there and cleaned house and did the clothes. She left to go home and left the last load of clothes drying. It overheated due to the vent(mashed) they said, but were very lucky. The house didnt catch fire, just very badly smoked. The guy that lived there came home before it blazed up. The smoke was so bad he couldn't see when he opened the door but he crawled and got to the switch box and could tell the main breaker--anyway killed the power cause dryer was still running, then got to a fire extinguisher cause he looked for a blaze any minute. The clothes were burned. I really dont know why it didnt blaze, just timing I guess. It was a Speed Queen dryer too. It was so bad they couldn't stay there and Serve-Pro came in and cleaned everything. Some stuff the Ins replaced best I remember.