Hi Y'all! I think this is a fascinating thread. I lurk on this thread occasionally but don't post often.....spending most of my time on the Oklahoma Gardening forum. I do so enjoy reading all the different opinions, ideas and experiences everyone shares with one another. I learn something new about gardening every day and hope I never stop learning. Hi George! I haven't seen you on the Okla. forum lately, but know you are here on this forum a lot. I am glad to see you didn't float away in this summer's floods. :) I always learn so very much from YOUR posts, and I am immensely flattered to think that you might learn something from mine. Oldroser, I agree that some plants that are very well-adapted in the north do not grow well here in the south and vice versa. My DH grew up in Pennsylvania and I try (mostly unsuccessfully) to grow rhubarb here for him. I also have tried many heirloom tomatoes that grow great in the northern and northeastern states and they are never as productive here nor do they produce really large tomatoes here. Raccoons plague us here too. Last summer a friend of ours decided to trap and relocate the coons that were getting his corn. Three weeks after he first set out the live trap, he had trapped 16 raccoons! They got every bit of his corn too. PNBrown, I love CR zuke! It is one of the few spring-planted veggies that is still growing and producing like mad. It is probably one of the toughest plants I've ever grown....the drought and bugs don't bother it here, and it will produce until frost wipes it out most years. Digit, What you say about the origin of seeds is so true! I think many of us don't know a great deal about where the seeds we use come from. I have been trialing watermelons and beans purchased from Seeds of Italy this year....and it seems that many of the seeds I am trying were bred either in the Netherlands or Japan! I think the days of locally-owned firms selling locally-raised seeds are long gone. When I was a child, we purchased our seeds from two Texas-based firms: Porter & Sons, and Willhite Seed. Back then, I believe they actually did produce their own seed there in Texas. Willhite still exists, but I don't know if they raise their own seeds anymore. Some of the seeds being sold as Porter, Improved Porter or Dark Porter Cherry or whatever do not bear much resemblance to the Porter tomato we grew from seeds from the Porter & Son Seed Co. when I was a child, either. :( With your shorter growing season, I think it is amazing you can raise bell peppers at all! My favorite large pepper is Super Heavyweight, but it takes it FOREVER for the peppers to get gigantic and turn yellow. Mary, When I started gardening on my own in Texas when I was 23 or 24 , I thought I knew 'everything' about veggie gardening because I had literally grown up in my family's gardens. All I learned, and quickly, was that gardening is much harder than it looks and I did not, after all, know 'everything'! (Oh the unspeakable arrogance of youth!) Here I am 25 years later, and even though I feel like a fairly knowledgeable gardener in some ways, I now know that there is so much more I do not know and probably never will know. Still, I keep slogging along. As our climate changes, and as we have to deal with new and different challenges (including terminator seed technology, GMO crops and the ongoing consolidation of many small seed companies into huge conglomerates), I think we all must remain as adapatable as the plants we try to grow. If it were easy to produce yummy, fresh, healthy organic veggies in one's backyard garden, everyone would do it! And, clearly, everyone is not doing it. I wish you good luck in your gardening endeavors. Do not become too discouraged. Gardening in our climate is HARD. Don't let the difficulty of it rob you of all the joy it can bring! Dawn

This is timely instruction, Michael. I'm going to attempt to peg Crown Princess Margareta, and I've never pegged before. I planted CPM last year, and by the end of summer, her long thorny arms were a force to be reckoned with. I ordered some of the rose pegs from ARE. Will these be OK to use with the fountain-style pegging? -terry

Sorry to hear that the wood floor you installed did not meet your expectations. It sounds like you wanted a dense hardwood floor and instead got a soft hardwood or maybe a softwood floor like southern yellow pine? For reference, almost all woods will dent from things like hammers dropping, heavy dog claws, or narrow pointed things. The softer woods just dent more. If the wood species has a lot of character like oak(annual rings, rays, mineral, knots, etc.), then the dents aren't really noticeable. If the wood species has minimal grain like maple, then the dents will be more noticeable. With any wood floor you really need to use protective chair legs pads to protect the finish from scratching. Cabin grade doesn't have anything to do with the density of the wood. It is a flooring grade for pre-finished hardwood floors and is related to the appearance of the wood (amount of knots/mineral streaks/flaws present). If one piece is severely damaged then you could just replace that individual board.

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