The most G HGTV ever had was just a handful of acceptable shows. I especially enjoyed 'A Gardener's Diary' with Erica Glasener; she knew her stuff. The sad fact about most TV show hosts is they are not hired for their expertise. They're hired for decent looks, bright white teeth and the ability to smile unaturally while talking (think Giada on Food NW). Years ago, there was a terrible HGTV show about houseplants with a shamefully unqualified female host who pretended (badly) to know what she was talking about, she also appeared as a workout model in my Nordictrack catalog and I caught her on a home shopping network hawking leg hair remover and claiming her long absence from appearing on HSN was due to the many hours she'd spent formulating the newest jar of crap she was selling! Most HGTV shows are cheap to make- follow someone around looking at homes for sale, film the progress of someone wealthy who has hired a landscape architect to design and a landscaper to maintain their yard, or an episode of 'my big giant over the top whole house remodel'. The rest of the shows are paid for by the Ho Depot and they are no longer subtle about that either. Landscape shows did and still do concentrate on 'transform my yard in two days', badly. No one ever talks about what the plants are or why they have been chosen, or God forbid there be anything about landscape design principles (they never talk about interior design priciples either for that matter). The comments above about the decline in gardening I expect are true; sad but true.

Just for the fun, while I was on the American Rose Society site I did a little browsing around. Did you know that there is an entire web page devoted to caring for roses? The page is called "Rose Care Articles" and is comprised of articles taken from the normal publication and these articles are available for download in PDF form. If one scrolls down the page, there is an entire section on Fertilizing. "Fertilizers - When and How" is an 'interesting?' read. My synopsis: Do I hear once a month? Once a month; now twice. Do I hear twice a month? Twice a month; now every week? Every week. Every week going once, twice, sold to SockITTO'EM in the front row. Reading that along with just the title of the article on Natural fertilizer - as in "A Look At" prevented me from pressing the Free I Believe button. karl_bapst_rosenut: I'd like to say how encouraging your words are. Thank you for them and for your personal efforts and your example. Maybe I missed it, but I haven't actually read anyone complaining about your comments and I think that's the best part of all. Here is a link that might be useful: Rose Care Articles

I have a worm bin in a rubbermaid tub but I bought the worms on ebay you garden web has a vermicomposting forum also you might find more help there

Sorry i didnt not get this earlier Jamie. They were ok but you have to stay on them or stuff wont get done. Their contractors drink beer on the job site. Make sure the contractors are using your specs cause they originally put my shower in the wrong way which would have messed up my bathtub and tile set up. Contarctors spilled a whole bottle of some red sauce they had for lunch on the sub floor and was going to leave it there. i brought to the attention of schumacher and they barely wiped it up, so i went in and cleaned it myself so I would not have ants down the road because their spill on my sub floor (when i say spilled the entire bottle, they left the spilled bottle ontop of the spill, that bottle was full the prior day when i was at the site). I will just say this stay ontop of your builder/project manager like you are monitoring a toddler. i didnt want to micro manage them but if you do not things will get missed even though its on your contract. Example: Shower plumber put in wrong direction, Missing lighting, missed painted spots on the exterior, cleaning is not the greatest prior to you recieving the house so be prepared to go in a do a deep clean once you officially get keys, door swing. These were just the things i did not catch during the build and pointed out after, there were plenty of little things during the build i had to point out to the builder during construction that were add in Precon that they were not doing per my contract. Overall house is good, but i did not like that i had to micro manage them to get what i paid for or i would be missing alot of my paid for items and upgrades.