SAVE those glass gallon jugs. I'd buy them from you myself if TX wasn't so far from NH. Someone will want them, that's certain. My grandmother used mason jars to root cuttings back in OK years ago. Stick the cutting in the soil in a shady spot and put the jar over it. Check it periodically to make sure the cutting is still alive, and you should see new growth in about 8-10 weeks. I like that idea with the 5-gal water jugs that windsurfgirl used to grow spinach during the winter. What a great idea. Cheryl

Ken, I've seen the lids with fruit designs by Bernardin and have several boxes. I've found the gingham and salsa on a regular basis and usually spend a fortune thinking they'll discontinue them. I haven't found the Disney Characters; I bought several last year but down to my last set. I like to use those for the grandkids and a couple of adults who buy season passes to Disney. Nor have I found the peach, strawberry or grape like I described. One year I found some with a hat and shovel imprinted on a white lid with a plain white ring. I do check ebay off and on; there weren't any the last time I checked. I've also found the sellers want far more than I'm willing to pay and I've willingly paid the prices at Golda's Kitchen. I found some at Amazon but the shipping charges were twice the cost of the product! I don't want them THAT bad! LOL I don't care for the printed stickers; just my idiosyncracy. What I will do, is print out the jar content and for pie fillings, include baking instructions on a business card decorated according to the jar content. Using a single hole puncher, punch a hole into the corner and tie it around the ring with some ribbon or raffia. That seems to dress up the plain jars I want to give away.

I don't know where all the experts have gone here. Expert I'm not but know a couple things from reading so much here and trying a few methods. George Mander's specialty is miniature roses. I posted the link on another thread to his site, just google "cuttings from cuttings from cuttings" in quotes like that, and you should see his name or his site name "Roses of Excellence". To try to root it outside, here's one method that worked for me that is almost what you want to do. I suppose you could put it directly in the ground like you want, that's what I did when my mason jar cutting took. None I ever put into the ground but that one whether the mason jar or soda bottle rooted. But some have good luck that way. I also tried the winter method (you wouldn't want to do it for a mini). I cut pieces of cane I was going to throw away, can't remember if I used rooting powder or not, maybe not, and stuck them directly in the ground over winter. That works for some. By mid winter I went out and found mine lying on the ground. I don't know why they were pulled out as I had stuck them down in well, maybe the freezing ground heaved them out. I did another one that didn't work, but the amazing thing is those canes stayed healthy green nearly all winter. I wouldn't have expected that. These were thicker canes than I normally root cut into 1 to 1-1/2 foot sections, like a pencil. Another way was to take the smaller clear plastic solo cups and punch two 1/4 inch holes in the bottom not too close together. Fill with the closest to George Manders special mix as you can find or mix 1/2 peat and 1/2 pearlite and wet it the night before with boiling water. Then squeeze any excess out before to stick your cutting. Some do use regular potting soil, but many think these lighter mixes work better for some reason. Then you can "plant" the cup in the ground and cover it with the soda bottle. After 3 weeks or so (or whenever you want so long as you bury it again and cover) you can pull up the cup to see if you see any white roots near the bottom sides of the cup. One that takes, you always will see that, maybe not with a mini, never tried those. Some people tug on them; if they get resistance it means roots are probably formed but I don't recommend it. If you do what I suggested or what you proposed, water over the bottle with the cap on all around. I suppose you could in your case water directly in the ground but if you use a potting medium, it is not a good idea to water them directly. The ground all around inside where the bottle is secured will absorb the water and it will wick up into the solo cup through the holes. You should see moisture on the inside of the soda bottle again in an hour or so. But if you want it really badly and don't have many cuttings to work with, maybe that bud grafting method would be the best. I haven't tried that, but the reason I would not like it is that I like my roses to be own root and not have a graft so if canes come up from underground, I know they are not rootstock which you do not want.

Barb -- Even as an instructor, I've always found home canning to be an expensive method for food preservation if you have to purchase the food, and especially if you have to purchase canning equipment. In the home canning class I teach, we do cost analysis charts so people get a better idea of the true cost. Not to mention the hours of food preparation it takes from garden to the table. I used to break down the cost of utilities, but it changes periodically, and now there isn't just one cost, it varies throughout the day, so I don't bother with that anymore. It's not worth my time and trouble to plant, care for, harvest, and process 8-10 pints of pickled beets (about the average we would use in a year) when I can purchase them for 67-cents per can. That's one of the few commercially canned foods I buy. It's expensive for the cost of the utilities to process home canning, and for the extra energy to cool your home with an air conditioner while you process it. Do you have the kind of stove you can do home canning ON? Are your burners large enough (size and B.T.U. out-put) for the size of canner you are using? For a LOT of reasons, freezing or dehydration is a less-expensive choice for home food preservation. I also believe unless you have access to fresh-picked produce in the amounts it takes to fill a canner, you are probably wasting your time AND money because it means your home canned food won't have much in the way of nutrients after the delay from picking until it's canned if you have to wait several days to get the large amounts you need. It definitely doesn't pay to only fill a canner with a few pints/quarts when it takes nearly the same amount of energy to process a canner that is full. I also think most home canned foods are inferior when it comes to nutrition due to the lag time from harvest to processing, as well as from the heat processing, and how long and under what conditions they are stored in. And not everyone likes to eat home canned food.... Most of my friends and most of my students now can a favorite family recipe or two and jam/jelly/apple butter for gift-giving. Dehydrating takes very little energy, other than what it takes for blanching (but not everything requires blanching). I place my dehydrator in the basement where the heat it produces dissipates quickly. The exception is onions, which I do in the garage because of the smell. Kale can get a bit smelly, too. Dehydrated foods takes up less space than canning. It's amazing how many dried apple slices or dried tomato slices you can stuff into a canning jar!!! The FoodSaver product you are considering is fine for what it's designed for, but I think you would be happier with one of the full-size units which are more expensive. I have one of those small units and rarely use it (purchased it at Tuesday Morning for $19 several years ago), while I use the regular one many times each day (and have been using them since 1986). I'm into home food storage and have a whole room in the basement filled with vacuum-sealed dry goods. The FoodSaver is the center of my long-term storage, so it's a must-have for me. I have a new one, still in the box, I purchased on sale, ready to go if the current one quits. My entire freezer is organized with vacuum-sealed items, because they last longer in the freezer. No more freezer-burned food! I can pull out a plastic storage basket and flip through it for vacuum-sealed fruits or vegetables, all in a single layer in the bags. Cut the bag open, remove the amount needed, and reseal the bag and put it back in the basket in the freezer. I freeze soup/stew/chili in serving sizes. Pop it out of the freezer container, stack the "cubes" and vacuum-seal them a FoodSaver bag. Take out what I need and reseal the bag. I have all our breakfast meat in serving amounts and vacuum-sealed. I divide bulk amounts of chicken, and other meat products, into several bags and vacuum-seal it - both raw and pre-cooked. My pantry shelf is lined with foods in canning jars of various sizes. Instead of standing them up-right on the shelves two and three deep, and having to move them to see what's in the back, I lay the jars down on their side with the lid to the front. I have my shelves adjusted so they are the distance apart of one 1/2-gallon jar space (which is the largest jar I use). I spray painted the lids with chalk board paint, and I use a chalk board pencil or liquid chalk board markers (in fun electric colors) to mark the chalkboard lids. Some jars are covered with plastic Ball jar lids and you can write on them with liquid chalk markers. Not all of these are vacuum-sealed, but many are (especially those that contain freeze-dried foods). So my pantry is lined with canning jars filled with dry gluten-free pasta, dried and freeze-dried fruits and vegetables, baking aids like cacao nibs, chocolate chips (several kinds and sizes), chia seeds, palm sugar, arrowroot, whole grains and homemade cereal products, crispy nuts (soaked and dehydrated), pinto bean flakes, dried parsley..... And even more in the food storage room. You will have to determine whether a FoodSaver will meet your food storage needs and goals. -Grainlady